From your mouth to their ear. You think?

"It is more important to receive than to give."

Wait… I have that the wrong way around don't I? Actually no, because whenever I say this I am talking about how we (mis)communicate with others.

And it's funny how often it comes up and I find myself explaining this simple-seeming concept:

In communication, it doesn't matter a jot what you intended to say, it only matters what your interlocutor understands by what you said.

If that seems unfair, well you may have a point, but there it is. If you accept this as being true and reflect upon it, what emerges is that it is vital to gain an understanding of the perspective of others and to employ as much empathy as we can. I don't imagine you disagree with me…

So it seems like the next question is: if we don't always do this, why is it so hard?

Often, and I've certainly been guilty of this, we live too much in our heads and our thoughts. Those thoughts seem very important to us. And we deeply want others to understand them.

Then again I think we overestimate the degree to which our context is either apparent to, or understandable, by people we are talking to. Our context is, in a way, the sum of all the mental models we have absorbed into ourselves.

For example, most of us take for granted that the world is round. It's axiomatic to us that you don't "fall off the edge" of the world. Imagine talking about taking a long sea-voyage to someone with a different mental model, acting within a very different context. They would not understand and, at a fundamental level, they might even get angry about something that - to you - seemed very innocuous.

Now imagine all the different ways in which we think (elections tend to bring this into sharp relief) and all the differences we may have with others. What we intend to say builds upon our inner-context. Someone who does not share a common context with us will possibly receive something very different.

This is potentially even more of a challenge for entrepreneurs because their context is different in a way that is very important to them. Their mental model includes the effects and outcomes of their innovation, whilst ours does not. But it is so obvious to them that they tend to forget that others are not yet there with them.

Steve Jobs was described as having a "reality distortion field" that made people see things his way, and while few of us can match him in that respect, our need to do challenging things in the face of almost overwhelming odds can lead to a slightly preachy "attempt to convert" mentality. This is a very dangerous place for us to be.

So, what can we do about it?

I would argue that the first thing we can do is find someone who can give us a wider perspective, who can help us to understand how our context is affecting what we say. I find myself in this role a lot.

The second thing is just to remember to ask ourselves, "What are they going to understand by what I say? Is it what I intend?" I don't suggest that you get stuck in editing paralysis and agonise over every word you write, but you should at least try to put yourself into their shoes and, if you can't, think about whether that's something worth working on.

In the end, as Covey says, "Seek first to understand, then to be understood." Now I am wondering, what will you understand by this post?