The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place. — George Bernard Shaw
Communication is such an all-encompassing word; it’s hard to know what it really means? It is derived from Latins communicare meaning to share. At its core, that is what it is; sharing information, feelings through art or gestures, words written, spoken or not said, the list goes on and on.
So, the importance of communication and how we do it has become our Baader-Meinhof phenomenon.
The Baader–Meinhof phenomenon is the illusion where something that has recently come to one’s attention suddenly seems to appear with improbable frequency shortly afterwards. — Wikipedia
This week has been about how we communicate within the group. We are all very different people with a wide variety of backgrounds, making it not so easy to see eye to eye all the time. We learnt about personality types that prefer different approaches for messages, ranging from direct to the point and filled with reasons to appeal to your feelings.
This has then emphasised what the school has been telling us since we started. Something we think quite a few of us knew before we started, and the reason why we came to this school. It so happens that is it also one of the fundamental theories of the school. Everyone learns differently, translation: everyone understands communication differently. Weeks ago, we all found out our preferred method of learning, be it visual, aural, read/write or kinesthetic — another angle of communication we need to take into account.
This leads us to one of our insights. Everyone communicates differently. So simple and maybe even obvious yet we feel it necessary to bring it attention. It is particularly insightful when you are trying to produce a chain reaction for Circular Economy starting with a digital summit.
We are trying to communicate the message of Circular Economy. To teach as many as possible the facts, why this needs to be done and if possible, how this can be done. That is an enormous amount of information, not easily shared to a wide variety of people. We haven’t even started talking about cultural differences in communication yet.
To top it all off we are doing this digitally, something which has proven to make the communication barrier slightly more challenging.
How then do we get the message across that this is what we need and then turn everyones understanding into action?
We may not have all the answers now, and we never may. However, challenge accepted!
