If I understood you, would I have this look on my face?

Pretty much everybody misunderstands everybody else.

Until I saw the tone of his letter, I hadn’t even thought of suing (and I never did [sue]) —but if he wanted to avoid a suit, he was going about it in exactly the wrong way.

Frequently in life, we have brief encounters that threaten a relationship’s delicate tissue.

Poor communication is caused by disengagement from the person we hope will understand us. That disengagement can stand in the way of all kinds of happiness and success, from the world of business to the business of love.

We all relate to one another by developing empathy and the ability to be aware of what happens in in the mind of another person. Both essential and fundamental, empathy and recognition of others’ thoughts are the ingredients of good communication.

I Relating is Everything

Listening with eyes, ears, and feelings.

Alan was interviewing a scientist. “My first blunder was assuming that I knew more than I did."

"I saw the anxiety in his face, but I didn’t respond to it. I experienced a little anxiety of my own, but I ignored both his and mine."

"’Please don’t touch [that]… You could ruin it.’ The distress in his face was now very clear to me… I hadn’t been listening with my eyes."

"Just as I hadn’t been relating to him in not responding to the look on his face, none of my responses grew out of what he was telling me. I wasn’t really listening to him when he answered my questions.”

Improvising

”It was true relating and responsive listening, which, I’ve come to realize, is necessary on the stage and in life as well."

"You kids think relating is the icing on the cake. It isn’t. It’s the cake.” - Mike Nichols while directing Alan Alda and Barabara Harris in a rehearsal for a Broadway musical.

”[Relating] is being so aware of the other person that, even if you have your back to them, you’re observing them. It’s letting everything about them affect you; not just their words but also their tone of voice, their body language, even subtle things like where they’re standing in the room ro how they occupy a chair. Relating is letting all that seep into you and have an effect on how you respond to the other person.”

II Getting Better at Reading Others

Update in June: I’m already a third of the way through this book (If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face?) on communication and I’m finding it compelling but a bit repetitive.

Top-down and bottom-up communication

Top-down communication is the BLUF (bottom line up front) style of communicating. A top-down approach is more effective in consulting and business settings because it focuses directly on the key results and findings that a C-level executive would be interested in.

Bottom-up communication is when you explain more of the details about the process that leads to a result rather than the result itself.