When she was three my niece asked to play with her father’s antique train set; he said no, but that she could play with it when she was older. A couple of days later she asked again and when he again said no she became very put out and informed him that he had said she could play with it when she was older and she was older. (Thirty years later she’s still a literalist.)

I’ve always found this story to be a great illustration of the communications minefield that exists between a literalist and the rest of us. For most managers, whose communications style is a bit more figurative (like me), a literalist is one of the most challenging human interactions they face, because a literalist hears and interprets each word with it’s exact dictionary meaning.

Literalism is part of a person’s MAP and there is no way one person change’s another’s MAP—even when that one is the boss—she can only change her own.

Which takes us back to awareness and the need to be totally conscious of exactly what words are being used along with their “real,” i.e., dictionary, meaning. This isn’t as easy as it sounds. For those of us (me) who love words, and like to play with and on them, the effects of not being aware of our words can run the gamut from annoying to disastrous.

Learning to speak so you’ll be heard is all part of the fun(?) of being a manager; more on that tomorrow.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 5th, 2006 at 12:23 pm and is filed under Business info, Communication, Culture, Motivation, Retention. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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