Friday, April 27, 2007
Do you understand me?
We don't always understand people because people have different way of communicating. We also leave a lot of room for interpretation when we don't say exactly what we mean. Often when talking with close friends I don't say everything and most things are picked up because of facial expressions. Normally this is effective but sometimes it does not always work. Recently I played a game at work with a few team members. One person had a picture of shapes and was told to describe the picture to the person sitting at the table. The person describing the picture had to face away from the person drawing. I found in this exercise that each person thinks differently and that if we have a message to pass along we have to be very precise by giving specific instructions such as draw a circle in the middle of your paper. The circle should be 2 inches in diameter and 2 inches in length.
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5 comments:
Do you believe that some of the problem may be attributed to poor listening?
What an interesting experiment. I may have to borrow this for one of my team bonding sessions.
Question: do you think it was the message being sent or the way a receiver was interpreting? Was the message sent the exact same way each time or did different people send and other's receive?
Great post!
Hi Angela,
Excellent blog so far!
I use this exercise (a similar one) in many of my classes and it's always interesting to observe the way people have a very difficult time communicating. Most of the receivers' shapes are very, very different! Signals both a describing and listening issue!
Glad you had the opportunity to experience this!
Dr. D.
Wow, that was a neat exercise. I think I may have to use this with my students.
Your Blog is Great!!!!
I think some of the problem could be to poor listening but I think the problem comes because each person has a different way of viewing a situation. A group of people may hear the same thing but walk away with different ideas and concepts. I attribute this to the different knowledge base each person has and begins with.
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