Knowing What You Want Out of a Conversation
Learning from past errors and adding a step before we communicate
There are times, retrospectively, when we can come to realize that our communication missed the mark and we didn’t elicit the response that we intended.
The emotions that accompany that understanding can be disappointment, discouragement, frustration or anger. Sometimes though, it’s embarrassment.
This goes for our professional and personal interactions.
Recently, a comedian — Nate Bargatze — talked about a situation where he was with a friend, said something that he thought was clever and quickly learned, from the response, that what he communicated, wasn’t as intelligent or funny as he had confidently assumed.
That illumination led him to say in his act, "I don't know what I wanted out of that."
That particular question could become an effective one before we speak in interactions and deeper conversations that we deem important to us professionally and personally.
To paraphrase: “What do I want out of what I am about to communicate?”
That may inspire the deep-enough thinking to arrive at valuable or invaluable clarity.
We hopefully will then craft our communication in a manner that increases the probability of a more desirable exchange and outcome.
We don’t always do this though — I know I don’t — and I regularly witness other people not doing it either, whether they be the subject of news reports or otherwise interacting on television, radio, podcasts or around us in business, at work, in our families, among our friends or in public in social situations.
When we make errors however, it can prove helpful to reverse engineer and ask, “What did I want out of that (communication of mine)?”
We might learn, whether immediately or soon thereafter with further thought, that we could have phrased what we wanted to say differently and yes, more effectively.
We don’t have to beat ourselves up about it. We can learn, make corrections and be successful or more successful the next time.
Thank you for reading this issue of Communication Intelligence.
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