Communication Failures

Communication failures can press all kinds of buttons for people. When everyone is trying to get their own points across and make connections based on their own understandings, and the concepts aren’t processing as it goes from one person to another, tempers can flare. Everyone wants to feel like they are being listened to and understood. When you feel like that isn’t happening, anger can happen.

At that very moment, you have a choice. You can get upset, and further deteriorate the situation, or you can figure out what the failures are in the communication and calmly resolve them.

Today I had to deal with this. A co-worker and I are setting up a system, and the process requires both of our expertise. We ran into a problem. Based on his knowledge, he thought he knew what the problem was, and he started asking me questions in language that I did not even understand. Meanwhile, I understood better what was happening, but didn’t know exactly what the problem was. So I was asking for him to do things such that I could resolve the problem.

So both of us thought we knew what the problem was, and we were both failing at communicating the details.

Then we had a meeting where we had to explain our progress to our boss. I felt like my co-worker was explaining it all wrong and misleading our boss. Our boss asked questions in my area of expertise, but my co-worker kept talking, answering them to the best of his knowledge. I tried to interject, since this was my area, after all. He kept talking. I tried to interrupt. He kept talking. I decided to wait for him to stop. Eventually I successfully interrupted such that I could clarify everything in the language of my expertise, which my boss understood, as well. I perceive that I clarified some things, but who knows, really. And I may have made some points that could be seen as rude - trying to draw parallels between this situation and one he had been through recently.

My boss and I uncovered and fixed the problem. The co-worker still wasn’t clear on what the issue was, and had some questions on how it affected his area of expertise. The short answer is, it doesn’t. But somehow we weren’t communicating that to him in a way that processed, because he was still worried.

Basically, my co-worker and I both got pretty defensive, and then he was mad at me. I couldn’t find him, so I wrote an e-mail explaining the issue and how we resolved it (I told him I would, to document what happened) and I apologized for getting frustrated and expressed how we seem to talk in different languages due to our areas of expertise, and how that is confusing our communication such that no one’s point is completely getting across. I said I’d work on communicating my points better. I also said maybe we should hear each other completely out before trying figure out how both of our perspectives fit together. When we jump into each other’s comments and start making our own assumptions and try to force each other to speak in our own language, it just doesn’t work.

He didn’t read the e-mail.

Then I was mad at myself. Mad that I got frustrated. How could I have handled this better? I’m doing all this soul-searching, applying the concepts of seeing things in a more relaxed and loving way, and yet I still managed to walk right into this mess.

Lost in my thoughts, I comforted myself that I’d done all I could do, and brainstormed on how I could handle it better in the future. Then I asked myself, what do I do now? My intuition suddenly spoke up.

Talk to him.

Here I am propping myself up, telling myself I’ve done all I can do, but I did nothing! I just e-mailed him. Maybe I was scared to talk to him. I just wanted it to blow over. I expected him to come talk to me. I expected him to read the e-mail and be fine with everything. I don’t get to get off that easily. I have to go talk to him.

So I did.

At first he didn’t want to talk to me. But then the communication started flowing. There were times I completely agreed and supported his comments, and other times that I had to bite my tongue or think really hard about how to word things. But I held it together and explained myself well. We even talked about how to improve the communication between us in times like these. It ended up being a really good talk.

Things happen. It’s all in how you deal with it. And if you get off track, just ask yourself honestly: What should I do now?