Clarity

We lose too much by a lack of clarity and power.

The key (as I believe any highly paid consultant would tell you) to communication is clarity - not just that you have a message, but that you present that message clearly. That you do it in such a way that whoever was to hear the message understands it completely and well. That they leave with either a decision to make or something to accomplish or a piece of knowledge that they did not previously have.

We prize clarity. We cry for it. Yet somehow, we continuously find ourselves in the position that we feel our communications to be largely ineffective. Why is this?

One is perhaps a lack of confidence in ourselves and our message. We believe that what we have to communicate is important, but maybe we don't really believe it. Any failure, any wavering on that account will result in the message being garbled. We're too often not sure ourselves what we believe or that we are sufficient to bring the message.

Another is our perception of how the message will be received. People like to hear items that are good or praise them; they are much less receptive when the message is bad news or something about themselves which is less than praiseworthy. The more powerful people become, the seemingly less and less they like to hear such items. Why? If I had to hazard a guess, I would say that they have attained their position by trusting in their own abilities and efforts (and they have the results to prove it) and that anything which is in conflict with that view is immediately due to suspiscion as it does not otherwise reinforce their view. We can tend to pre-account for that view by imagining all possibilities (usually bad ones) of how the message will be received which changes how we give the message - before it is even delivered!

A third reason is often fear - fear for ourselves. Being the bearer of news which is not what people want or need often creates fear in ourselves - fear of how people will react, or even fear for the results of the communication. We tend to either try and parse our word for less than a full effect or blurt out the message as quickly as possible and retreat to our own mental burrow, where we fearfully wait for the effects to come as we huddle every time the earth around us quakes.

When people they want clarity of communication and they want the truth, they too often seldom really mean this. What they often mean is that that they want the truth that accords with the "truth" that they already know to be true in their lives. But how often we as communicators oblige this, by shying away from what should be said because we don't believe in the message or we predispose ourselves to how the message will be received or that we fear the results to ourselves.

Clarity in communication should probably seldom involve loud voices and shouting - occassionally they're necessary, but they don't make things more clear. Only by overcoming our own fears and reservations can we do that. We can seldom control how the message is received. We can only do our best to make sure it is as clear as possible.