Communication is Like Driving a Car

Communication is kind of like driving a car.

It’s not like riding a bike–once you know how you can always do it. What I mean is that communication is like driving a car because:

EVERYONE thinks they are good at it BUT a lot of people are NOT. In fact, in a nationwide survey of U.S. American adults conducted by the National Communication Association, fully 91% of participants rated their communication skills as above average.

Think about it. Do you think you are a good driver? Most people do. Do you think you are a good communicator? Most people do. Now think about this: Do you think most people are good drivers? Probably not. How about communicators? Probably you think many people have room to improve.

Most of the time we give ourselves more credit than we deserve on both our abilities to drive and communicate.

I think that we especially have room to improve when it comes to listening. Listening is hard!!!

Recently, I asked my students about listening. They all agreed that they are generally good at it. So to illustrate the point, I had a student come to the front of the class and she explained to the other students that she had a problem that she needed to resolve.

I told the students that in order to help her they could only ask useful questions and acknowledge her feelings. The questions had to be useful and productive (i.e., exploratory questions that generate helpful options). If a student asked an ineffective question, I called them out on it. Soon, the students started to struggle. They were so used to being “bad listeners” (interrupting, talking about themselves, asking leading questions, etc.,) that soon, there were no more questions. But since they were all required to ask 2 questions each, things got interesting. I started to notice them straining to come up with questions that met the criteria of being an effective question.

Then, I reminded them that they had just told me that “listening is easy” and that they believe that they are “good communicators.” So, I asked them, “What happened?” I got lots of smiles and acknowledgment that it is often harder than we think.

Lesson learned: it is much harder to be an effective communicator when you actually have to be effective!

 I shared a picture book with the class called Hello, Hello! It is a good one on listening and communicating. Once Lydia was done playing with all of her gadgets, she looked around for someone in which to communicate. She starts saying Hello to everyone but everyone is too busy with their gadgets to respond. So she goes outside and starts communicating with the world. It is magical because the world communicates back to her. She shows her family and says goodbye to gadgets and hello to the world.

This is a great example of paying attention, listening effectively, and being engaged in life.