I don’t understand. I have a master’s degree in education and a bachelor’s degree in English, yet I have trouble getting my point across, and sometimes understanding other people’s points.
Whenever I try to communicate something, rarely do people pick up on my intended message. Which is strange because I consider myself as straightfoward.
Example, on my first internship I told my supervisor that I had absoulutely no experience. Throughout that semester my supervisor repeatedly got frustrated with me because she had to tell me everything. On the last day, she said “Wow, you really didn’t have any experience!” :smack: Well, I didn’t, what other way could I communicate that?
Then sometimes there’s trouble on the recieving end. I totally misunderstand other people’s messages. In my writing classes, sometimes my papers were sent back saying “I don’t consider your experience as X”. X could mean unsual, scary, interesting or whatever.
Well, obviously we’ve never met, but here’s one guess:
When I started law school I was frustrated with how a particular professor would cut me off and a friend of mine said “H A, it’s just that your prologues have preambles.” In other words, I was giving way too much background, and by the time the important bit rolled around, the listener just wasn’t paying attention.
So in the case of “I have no experience” are you actually saying, “well, as you see from my resume [prologue] my prior experience was in the arena of widget manufacture [irrelevant detail] and although widgets and this penguin-feeding job have some things in common [preamble] particularly in the area of time management [irrelevant detail] the truth is, I have no experience feeding penguins.”
The boss is kind of hearing
resume…blah blah blah… feeding penguins
Nope in that case, one of the first sentences that came out of my mouth was “I have absolutely no experience, I’m going to need a lot of guidance”. Nothing more, I wasn’t being longwinded at all.
One thing I’ve noticed in life is that people rarely take things the way you actually mean them. It seems they’re always looking for some sort of angle – an insult; a disingenuousness; an artificality; to assess the degree to which you know what you’re talking about; etc. – and it can seem that if there’s any possible way to take what you say the wrong way, they will.
Another problem is that people often stop listening before you stop talking and so they only think they know what you said.
And yet another thing is that people have differing degrees in mind when they speak of and/or hear things, so what might be ‘scary’ to you won’t be to someone else. It might not even be what they mean by scary.
Although some people seem to have a greater facility for communicating than others, and at an earlier stage in life, the question of how to become a more effective communicator is often just a matter of gaining enough life experience so that you know how people are likely to take what you say, and then alter what you’re saying in order to convey the right message.
And on preview, what Hello Again says. I often feel I don’t get enough information from other people, so I’m inclined to offer too much myself. This can result in the situation I spoke of above where people stop listening before you’re through talking.
And on further preview, with regard to the confusion over your experience, it could be the degree thing I mentioned. It sounds like you meant no experience literally, where it sounds like the other person took it figuratively. In other words, the person had a different idea of ‘no experience’ than you did.
You have just described my husband’s method of communication. He can’t even handle simple questions like, ‘‘What time will you be there?’’
‘‘Well, I usually wake up around 8am, but often I sleep through my alarm. It will take me between 15-20 minutes to shower and maybe 5 or 10 minutes to eat breakfast… [listener’s eyes glazing over]… so overall, assuming there’s no traffic, I’m going to estimate sometime between 10:35 and 10:39.’’
Oh my god. JUST SAY 10:45!!!*
If he mentioned penguins I might be more forgiving. Those little fellas are cute.
To the OP, it sounds like other people have a listening problem, not that you have a communication problem. Though I don’t completely understand your second example.
Everyone’s perceptions, and that includes their perceptions of you and what you say, are colored by their own world-view lens, whichever color that may be. It doesn’t sound like you have a problem to me.
Most people are not naturally gifted at being good communicators. It takes some work, and some experience to become better. Even for someone who starts off as a middle of the road communicator, some problems of miscommunication are always going to come up.
In my experience, in terms of conveying what YOU want to say, there is a balance between providing too much information and too little. In your example you said “I have no experience.”, and IMHO that is a pretty brief explanation. Even if it is technically true, if you said it with a self-efacing smile, in the context of an interview that was going well, it might just come off as just a polite deprecation of your ability. The interviewer might take it as you being modest.
I used to have the problem of not saying enough, and sometimes it woul lead to similar problems. Even if what I said was all that I thought needed to be said, it often requires more expanation in order to get your point across. In your example, it probably would have been helpful to elaborate a bit by saying, “I have no experience. For example, I’ve never used an before, and I don’t really know how to structure a [Y] report in the proper format, so I’ll need someone to train me from the ground up on those things at first.” That might get the message across more effectively.
You get props for at least acknowledging that there is an issue. Most people whom I consider poor communicators haven’t figured that out yet. Which further makes me think you’re a better communicator than you give yourself credit for.
As a college professor I often have to give directions for assignments and lecture to students with varying facility with English. I’ve found that being direct and as simple as possible is the best way to ensure that all parties get the message loud and clear. I’m also fond of recapping: “So, essentially, X needs to be done by next week, and Y should be done the week after.”
I also think it’s a great habit to check in with the person you’re speaking with to see if they understood what you meant. Regarding your comments on papers, ask the prof to explain his/her comments - I know that my handwriting and reasoning go out the window late in the semester and often times when a student comes to me for clarification, I realize I’m the one who wasn’t very clear…
My ex would have answered: “Well let’s see, I’m feeling like you’re expecting me to answer a precise time, without any knowledge of the immediate circumstances. And if I’m dealing with some sort of emotional distraction at the time, there’s no way to tell how that might impact my arrival. But if my mood is relatively free of turbulence, and my consciousness has at least a semblance of clarity . . .”
My husband’s communication style is not without its merits. When I’m having trouble sleeping, he volunteers to tell me all about his day at work. (It usually involves spreadsheets and coding data.) Works like a charm.
Oh, I was gonna add, I sometimes feel like I’m not a good communicator. Maybe by objective standards I am (I rarely have problems with misunderstandings), but I feel so much more comfortable and competent expressing my thoughts in writing, that sometimes I feel like a positive idiot when I have to actually speak.
I don’t know what kind of vocabulary you use when you talk to people but know you should probably stay away from using “big” words. Most folks don’t have that great of a vocabulary and are too embarrassed to admit when you say or use a word they don’t understand.
The other day I had to explain to an otherwise intelligent friend of mine what obtuse meant.
I see a similar thing all the time. I have a phrase that I use in this situation that seems to really annoy people, but always amuses me. In your case it would go:
So. When I *said *I didn’t have any experience what I *meant *by that was: *I don’t have any experience! *
In my personal experience, I talk too much, too fast, and too loud. Even if I’m not using big words (a tendency which since college graduation has earned me many stares and/or teasing (even though I personally don’t think words like obsequious are really that big), I usually impart way too much information for the average listener. It’s not really anybody’s fault per say, they could bear to be better listeners and I could work on making my speech more elegantly simplistic.
I also tend to ramble. I think my post is a very clear example of the problem I run into when talking, as I tend to post very similarly as to how I talk, unless I’m trying not to. If I didn’t have the blessing of usually being somewhat witty and engaging, I’m sure my conversation style would lead to me being stoned in public.
Upon the edit, ummm… after re-reading the OP blush, it seems that you don’t really have my problem. Assuming you’re being honest to yourself, I didn’t see any problem on your end. Chalk it up to people being idiots, and try repeating yourself more often I guess.
