Communication - and presence
“ I know you think you understand what you thought I said but I’m not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant”
– Alan Greenspan, former chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve Board
Thank you for this quotation, Daniel Stane and Nicola Shearer, and the Compassionate Leadership Certification Training that you’re leading with such insight.
Communication goes beyond words
Greenspan was right – and we can become more aware of aspects of our speech, behaviour and the meaning that others make of what we say, and so communicate in a way that might help our intended meaning land more accurately. Inherent meanings can become clearer with an appreciation that communication goes far beyond words alone, including the deep and wide underpinnings of any human interaction, the emotional connection (or its absence), and the impact on both speaker and spoken-to.
I’m thinking, for example, of a time when I asked what I thought was an objective, simple question about an individual’s motivation for a particular choice, and being met with a totally unexpected verbal attack on the fact that I was criticising them (which was not remotely my intention: rather my question came from curiosity).
Author, international speaker and neuroscience educator Sarah Peyton writes on Resonant Language:
‘I had viscerally experienced the gap between what I had meant to say and what had been received….
What I’ve come to understand…. is that the gap is pretty much never about content…. it is the words themselves that matter. Certain words and phrases activate threat responses in the brain and body before we’ve even consciously registered their meaning. Others land softly, opening something rather than closing it.’
The autonomic nervous system
I agree with Sarah Peyton as far as she goes. The impact of language on our autonomic nervous systems is huge, as Stephen Porges’ polyvagal theory, and particularly the neuroception of safety, demonstrates: ‘we naturally, and unconsciously, send signals of safety or danger to each other which either encourage or discourage the reduction of psychological and physical distance’.
Facial expressions in their infinitely rich variety (including smiling), head movements, and vocal intonations, pace, volume and rhythms offer us further illumination.
And the inner state that we bring to any interaction is core to what we convey – and core to how it’s received.
Physical context
Inner state is influenced by the physical context, as well as by the history that we bring with us, which will, in turn, influence our interpretations, assumptions, underlying beliefs, and fears about the words we hear and the words we use. These cognitive factors find expression in our emotions, including what we’re triggered by – instantaneous reactions rooted in our back stories.
Stage of development
The way we make meaning – the lens that we look at the world through – is heavily influenced by the stage of adult development we’re currently in. Through this lens we will see and experience the inevitable complexity of the world in a range of ways: we may see specific situations in terms of how they conform with existing rules and norms, or what they convey to us in terms of excellence, expertise and logic, or what they represent in terms of reaching goals and achievement, or what they enshrine in terms of meaning and purpose, or how they sit in a systemic context and their relationship to personal and organisational transformation, or what they represent in terms of the inherently interdependent nature of the world. The way we ‘hear’ the meaning of Alan Greenspan’s (or anybody’s!) words will depend partly on our – and their – stage of development.
Presence
The most powerful and potentially generative factor in this whole story for me is presence: ‘being with’, being totally there, embracing the moment of experience. As Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh put it ‘Being present helps us touch and look deeply into whatever is there’: we see and accept what is there, without any agenda, interpretation or bias, or interference of our own thinking. Presence helps to close the gap of misunderstanding when I think I’ve heard something you don’t think you’ve said.
As both leaders and led we need to be deeply present to what the other is expressing, so that we actually do hear more of what they say.
I am beyond fortunate to have colleagues who offer, and who embody, this gift of presence, which, in my experience, is intrinsically bound up with compassion and love. Thich Nhat Hanh highlights that you can only love if you are there for the other person, and I believe this applies also to compassion. The impact on me of being deeply heard without judgment means that I feel correspondingly deeply connected and safe enough to be completely honest, and to perceive my embodied experience and my thinking in new and powerful ways, which means I can shape more creative perspectives. I feel totally engaged, I experience heightened vibrancy, I have deep motivation to collaborate and create together – and that, of course, can be a rich path to fertile productivity.
The gift of my colleagues’ presence means that I am more confident at a visceral level that they have indeed heard what I meant. This alone epitomises leadership at its best: imagine a world in which leaders are truly present to those around them. That would indeed be transformational.
