A young boy and his stepfather had difficulty communicating with each other. The man was outgoing; the boy was quiet. The elder loved to fish; the youngster loved to read.
The stepfather, wanting to get close to the boy, took him on a fishing trip. The boy hated it but didn’t know how to tell his stepfather directly. So he wrote him a note saying he wanted to go home. The man looked at it and then stuck it in his pocket.
The fishing trip continued for 4 more days. When they finally returned home, the boy shared his frustration with his mother and told her that his father had paid no attention to his note. His mother said to him, “Son, your father can’t read!”
Part of communication is being able to understand what the other person is thinking. The stepson misunderstood his stepfather’s message when he put the note in his pocket as rejection. Have you ever felt rejected or hurt by someone’s actions that may have been a misunderstanding?
Raymond Ricci recalled that when he was General Manager of a Russian-American radio station in Moscow, they sometimes had to record bilingual commercials for advertisers. Once, when Billy Graham brought his crusade to Russia, he had an ad script that included the phrase, “The body is weak, but the spirit is strong.”
Raymond wrote the commercial out in English, and his secretary translated it into Russian. Later he asked his program director, Vasily, to review it. “We have a slight problem,” Vasily said, chuckling when he came to that phrase. “In Russian, it says, ‘He can’t stand up, but he has good vodka.'”
The communication principle here is that we have to communicate in the language of the hearer, but we have to listen in the language of the speaker. How many have innocently hurt another’s feelings by a poor choice of words. Let’s be careful with how we say things.
Mr. & Mrs. Brown had a heated argument. Bitterness set in and they refused to speak to each other. Upon retiring for the night, Mr. Brown handed Mrs. Brown a note which read, “Call me at seven in the morning.”
When Mr. Brown awoke, it was nine o’clock! As he jumped out of bed he saw a note beside his own: “Its seven. Get up, you bum.”
This week and next we’ll take a look at some communication principles. The principle found in the above story is, whatever mode of communication we use, we can expect people to respond using the same mode. If we communicate in writing, we can expect a written communication back. If we email someone, we expect an email response. If we telephone someone, we expect a call back. If we insult someone, we should expect more insults back. If we are caring, we can expect a caring response. We set the mode (and mood).