Do You Suffer From Reverse Logic Communication?
There is a cure …
Humans communicate as a natural part of who we are. I recently heard an @NPR show about how babies change the way they babble based on the language that they hear! How amazing is that? They will adapt their “goo-goo gaga” babble to the patterns of a new language after just a few hours of exposure. We seem primed from birth to be able to communicate and yet, as most of us know, communication can be difficult and frustrating. But why? It starts with what I call “reverse logic communication” where we focus more on what we want to say rather than what we want understood. This is particularly true for business communication, which is the primary focus of today’s post.1
Think about a time at work when you felt you were really productive. Maybe you wrote a few memos, read and replied to a ton of emails, left a few voice messages (because nobody seems to answer their phones anymore), sent a few text messages, and got your desk cleared off. As you walked out the door you felt as “clean” as your desktop.
Image created with DALL-E2. Pretty cool!
Look at all the stuff you got done! Now … take a moment to reflect on what tangibly happened from the emails you sent, or the messages you left, or from your cleared desk? If you can answer with a clear link between your actions and the results, good for you! I have done this exercise with many folks, and most are not sure.
When we discuss their thinking process related to all of that communication activity, we generally find that they communicated thinking about what they wanted to say and not what the person receiving the message needed to hear or how they needed to hear it. They were communicating with reverse logic. I call it reverse logic because they were so focused on themselves and what they wanted to say, that they forgot about the other important party to the communication: the audience – the people receiving the communication. “Sure, I communicated with Jim. I sent him an email.” Sound familiar?
If you think about it, this isn’t really communicating. This is sending an email. Almost like it is now Jim’s responsibility to understand what we wanted him to know. We did our part. Hmmm … Jim may not have gotten the email, or text, or voice message. Yet we start to treat Jim and interpret his subsequent actions as though he MUST have gotten the message and we then make choices, decisions, judgements based on what could be an erroneous assumption - that he understood our message. Most of us have seen this play out and the results are usually unsatisfactory at best and the consequences can be painful. This is all resulting from incomplete communication. For a real world example of how this is playing out with sad results take a look at “Focus on communication, not misinformation” from
where they talk about how medical recommendations from credible sources are not getting into the minds of the general public, but misinformation is spreading like crazy.A FIRST STEP in minimizing the chances of misunderstanding is to learn and apply the “complete communication model” which will be the subject of my next post. Click Subscribe to be notified when it goes live.
True Confession … I am still trying to get my desk cleared off. Almost made it last week. I plan someday to look for a procrastination newsletter like One Productivity.
For more about how to be better understood, take a look at my recently published book “Getting Through: A Systematic Approach To Being Understood” (ISBN: 9798987950807) available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other retailers.
If you liked what you read, please click the Subscribe button so that you will be automatically notified each time I post something new. I would also appreciate it if you would pass my Substack link (http://edpaulson.substack.com) to a friend who would benefit from becoming a better communicator. I am honored to have you stop by and promise to make each post as valuable as possible.
Most trained communicators, such as Substack authors, know that before you start writing it is always best to have a mental picture of your intended audience. The clearer the picture the better you can “tune” your writing. I will talk more about the how and why of that tuning in future posts. It is ironic that many authors don’t apply the same concepts to the business and professional communication related to their book. This post is written primarily for a non-author audience who is most of our subscribers. It is a useful reminder for professionals as well.
Great article!