I can only imagine the difference it would make if instead of telling about your idea you could show it
This is why it’s critical for us to predefine thematically relevant words and phrases we intend or assume to be relievent to important discussion. Language is an imperfect tool. This is a common communication factor considered for philosophical discussion that I think is undervalued in day to day discourse.
That’s why it’s key to communication to have the person you’re speaking with reform the idea and send it back to you. So you can both agree that you have the same idea.
When it’s just one person sending the idea, verbally, or even visibly, and the other person just agrees. You don’t know the model they’ve internalized. It’s not until they act, or until they re-explain the idea back to you that you can have confidence you have a mutual understanding.
That’s why active communication is so critical. You especially see this in crew resource management
Agreed. It’s often called steelmanning which is the opposite of strawmanning.
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/steelman
Thank you, that’s a phrase I was not familiar with.
It seems more appropriate for critical analysis rather than communication between peers. But it’s a great concept
There’s research that shows that even when 2 people are talking about very simple matters, the their mental models of the issue and interpretations of the subject are completely different the vast majority of the time. There was an interesting podcast about it that I’ll try to dig out from months of history in my podcast app.
Found it! Had to look through 4 months of history.
That’s compatible with information theory. You have a piece of information, the moment you encode it (turn your idea into words) that piece of information is transposed to a little different piece of information, then the channel of transportation adds a bit of noise (depends on the environment, most often literal background noise), and then the receiver decodes the to a different piece of information (turn your words into an idea of their own).
Understanding this concept is an important communication skill. Information theory gives a bunch of tools to minimize the difference between the idea in your head and the perception of the idea by your peer.
- You can add redundancy, aka say the same thing twice in a slightly different way.
- Use questions to validate your understanding.
- Have your peer use their own words.
- Use a different encoding, aka draw a picture, a diagram, or use gestures instead of using language to communicate
I really hate it when people call for impromptu meetings and are completely oblivious to what you mention. People are absolutely incapable of bridging mental gaps. Nobody explains common vocabulary. Nobody explains the expected goal of conversation. Nobody evens the playing field. Instead, you watch people confused and asking stupid questions, before they arrive at a constructive mental place, right before the meeting is over.
Communication is art and a skill. Just because someone is talking a lot, doesn’t mean they communicate well.
If you can efficiently enable a group of people to arrive in a mental context where they can contribute value to a decision or process, you are a valuable team member.
IMHO this always requires preparation. You can’t expect to have a valuable exchange if you yourself can’t fully imagine the mental context the other people are in. At every moment you have to understand what might be keeping them from understanding you, and then approaching the specific conflict. “Why don’t you understand me?” is something you should never have to ask yourself.
Also, yes, build more prototypes and actually watch some shit go instead of talking so fucking much. Pictures are a thousand words and a real thing is like thousands of pictures. Stop talking already!
