The meaning of my communication is the response I get

Sometimes an event like the tragic attack on the World Trade Centre and other sites in the United States leaves us lost for clear thoughts, let alone words.We have all sorts of emotions, feelings and reactions inside, some stronger than others, some bursting to get out and others simmering away gathering force or passing through, fleeting images and ideas that move in and out.Our rational mind tries to make sense of this and we try to find causes and consequences, blame and justifications.Perhaps it is better to simply stand back and observe at these times for the forces and energy behind these events are of a complexity and history that are hard to conceive of in our individual consciousness.If we wish to do something, we can pray for those who have lost loved ones and we can send light and prayers to those most immediately involved in the conflict, with the desire that they are able to find alternative behaviours.Behaviours which will allow them to express their feelings without the same destructive disrespect for innocent life.

We have been reading NLP newsgroups on the net, interested in how people with NLP training have reacted to the tragedy.There has been a wide spectrum of reaction from the horrified to those expressing sympathy, from the hard-line to those who attempt to step inside the minds of the perpetrators of the act.These are all valid and natural responses.One of the comments that most impacted on us was a contributor who reminded us of the NLP presupposition ‘The meaning of my communication is the response I get’.This belief can serve those of us on the sidelines as a very useful starting point for learning something of personal usefulness from this sad affair.It can be used as a blueprint for our behaviour from this moment on. And to some extent as a tool to understand what happened.In NLP, however we tend to prefer looking towards developing more functional future outcomes and behaviour rather than dwelling on the past.We accept the present and find choices for the future.

So from now on let’s ask ourselves whenever we get a response that we do not desire:

‘How did I communicate so that the response I received was not the one I wanted?’

The beauty and simplicity of this phrase is that it reminds us that we have the power to be careful with the way we communicate and that we can thereby facilitate rapport, agreement, understanding, the hoped for answer or whateverour objective should be.It is like the ‘I messages’ we mentioned back in RT News 2, in which we encouraged people to take responsibility for what we think by expressing it as something ‘I feel or believe’ rather than trying to make it seem like someone else’s idea or standard (eg. That is wrong.That is not the way to do it.)By recognising and applying this presupposition we permit ourselves the option of choice.Namely, that if we do not get the response we like, weadjust the form in whichwe communicateuntilwe getsomething back that we like better.This is considerably easier than trying to change someone else or ‘make them see reason’ as in those cases we are simply attempting to replace what they feel with our map and interpretation of the situation.

What do we look for when we examine our own communication?A good place to start is with our body language and gesture.

When you recall or relive the moment you communicated to the other(s), what did your body say?Imagine you were looking at yourself then.How would you have read you?Did any gestures accompany your words?What facial expressions did you use?Was there movement in your body?What did your voice transmit?Did your intonation and manner of delivery adequately help to convey your intention? What about your breathing?Was there any other physical factor in the transmission of your message that could have affected the way it was received?

If you start to perceive that there were some incongruencies with what you wanted to say and the way you expressed it you are probably on to something. We often say something but have reservations or differing opinions in our brain that we choose consciously to ignore.Unconsciously, these reservations can come out via your body.You can all picture a guest who upon tasting the host’s strange new dinner party concoction says ‘Delicious’ with as much gusto as his voice will manage and contradicting that word with a fleeting grimace across the face as the tastebuds react negatively in shock.Or when we tell a child ‘That’s great!’ as they show us their painting at a moment when we are preoccupied with some other matter.Our comment comes out as being distracted or half hearted as our mind is really dealing with our problem not the picture.This double message may not harm the communication much in some situations but in others it will.This is when we can be alert, stop and do it again, ensuring that we adjust our words to more closely represent our internal image or concentrate more clearly on fully showing what we want to say with all our body.We may really think the picture is great so let’s banish our problem momentarily and be fully present in praising the artwork.Or it may be more congruent to find a different response to the food that fulfils our social need to make a complement but which is nearer to what your tastebuds and brain are wishing to communicate.

In school situations, we usually pick up quickly when students are not grasping what we are saying.Sometimes we are quick to rephrase and check meaning again and sometimes we plough on insisting on explaining it in the same way when it is clearly not going in.This is the precise opportunity to experiment with an alternative.We can tell a story or portray the information in picture or mime, we can ask the students to tell us what they have understood, we can use different words.Whatever works.

We can also be very careful with potentially conflictive moments.When we transmit a message and we perceive that the other is responding to it with hurt or aggression our best bet is to deliver our message again but differently.(We may need to choose a different time when the other person has more resources at their disposal). When we insist on the same message in the same form, we risk setting our communication in a stuck state. The response from the other will usually remain the same and a closed communication loop emerges in which behaviour becomes predictable and no progress or opening of the loop occurs.Each pair of message-responses entrenches each party to the communication in their positions as they become increasingly certain that their point of view is the right one.This is not conducive to solving the dispute or finding some common ground.We have so many options available and yet we mostly persevere with the same one.By being attentive to the context, by observing the reaction of the other(s) carefully and by being flexible with our own body and mind, we can achieve our objective more elegantly and effectively so that no party is the loser and so that the communication continues to flow.

Ó Laura Szmuch and Jamie Duncan 2001