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Want to be a good communicator? Learn to know yourself.

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Communicating effectively with those around you requires empathy and sympathy. Does this mean that you, as an effective communicator, must be a touchy-feely person or ascribe to new age values? Not at all (unless you want to, of course!). Rather, empathy and sympathy can be learned. But before you can be empathic and sympathetic, you need to know yourself. Self knowledge is like a muscle – with practice it gets stronger, leaner and more toned. It is your mind’s reality-muscle.

What is it that troubles most people in the world today? Surprisingly, it isn’t really a lack of material things, beyond a certain point.

We all want to have a comfortable life. We seek the little things that make us feel safe and that are familiar to us. For some, this means the enjoying a short daily ritual around a cup of coffee, listening to it brew, smelling its tell-tale aroma, watching the steam rise from your cup in a beam of clear morning sunlight, the stillness of the morning around you. For others it is walking through a park that brings back a cherished memory of a happy moment. Perhaps it was a moment of companionship with friends, a soccer or frisbee game. For others it could be a look through a picture album that brings back memories of times when we felt loved, included, valued and secure.

We live in such a lonely world. It is a world of fantasies played on glowing screens that draw our eyes with flickering images of possibility. The visions of freedom offered by the screens that surround us are in contradiction with our structured and super-busy lives. Our days our structured and boxed. Even our socialising is becoming conventionalised -  we date through sites which are a sort of catalogue of features and benefits which are display, a performance, a branding exercise and then a purchase that culminates in communication between the dater profiles… not between the people! Another place we socialise is at night clubs where we put up with obnoxious, aggressive behaviour and displays of machismo or hyper-sexualised femininity. Vulgarity and loneliness. Everyone in the club is alone, separated by the invisible wall of the throbbing music and the gender display they are seeing around them, and putting on themselves. The night club is really just people living out the experience of the dating site. Social media reality has switched with physical reality. The people aren’t attracting one another, it’s their profiles… the performance of themselves that is attracted to another person’s performance of himself/herself. It’s very lonely and thin.

While performing stereotypical self-images and behaviours may seem to be the pop culture ideal – many people find trying to conform to stereotypes dehumanising and exhausting. So we seek respite. We seek a more human connection – we go to the neighbourhood pub and seek a real conversation. We try to make real friends. But even there, we are often mislead – it doesn’t feel real. People are never what they seem. They continually let us down or manipulate us. We go home and don’t feel like we have really connected with others. We feel that the connection was superficial.

People seek to get a hold of reality to make sense of this confusing storm of representations, images and information.

We wander through our lives, dazed and confused, convinced that somehow, an understanding of the world, its order and some personal comfort is just around the corner. It never seems to arrive.  What is going on? Why do we feel like we’re floating? Because deep-down, we know that none of it feels real.

Reality is something that we build in our minds. We build it through our experiences, our principles, our understandings of the world. We seek opinions of trusted people and then we use those opinions as anchor points. We adopt principles and then we try to understand them and apply them in our lives.  So what has gone wrong?

A big part of the problem is that learning is really hard.  Learning takes a lot of context and background and repetition and trial and error to get something right. Just think about when you tried to learn a new language or how ot play a musical instrument. It seems overwhelmingly complicated. It’s daunting. It take a long time and a lot of practice. We often give up or only get marginally better at it after tons of practice.

The good life takes practice. It takes reflection on what you are doing every day. At the end of each day, you can take 10 minutes, breathe deeply, clear your mind and then go through his day, going over what you did. Think about the meaning of your actions. You can ask yourself three questions:

  • Did they fit into to what you wanted to accomplish?
  • Were your actions good actions?
  • How did your actions impact the lives of others?

A good communicator needs to be honest with herself or himself. If you want to live a real life – a good life – you need to know what is real. But it is hard to discern what is real around you without knowing the truth about yourself.

Know yourself and you’ll know the world. You’ll start to have a grasp of reality and the floating and swirling images and information around you will start to take shape. Reality will look crisp when viewed through the lens of your mastery of self. The unreal will start to look faded, yellowed and two-dimensional. Reality will pop out at you. You’ll feel more alive than ever before.

The nice thing is that once you have a grasp of what is real in your perception, you’ll start to be able to see what’s real for others. Instinct will tell them that you empathise with them. That you are listening to them. Then they will pay attention to you. They will trust rust you. Reality is contagious.

It won’t feel superficial or confusing anymore.

Filed in Communications Theory | | Comments (0)

A beautiful conversation followed by terribly sad news

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Today started off with a funny feeling. I felt off. When I went to do my morning push-ups regimen, I was weaker than normal. Something wasn’t right. I got into Mac very well dressed with a neatly pressed polo and fine woolen black slacks, ready for an important meeting. However, when I checked my messages, I realised that the big meeting I had prepared myself for had happened yesterday! There had been a scheduling error. How annoying. A bad start to the day.

Things brightened considerably after that. I had a wonderful lunch with McMaster communications alumna Emily Morrice and her husband Brad Morrice. What a wonderful thing to see my former student doing so well. Confident, successful and happy. It was a pleasure to speak with them. They work in Christian mission in Montréal, which is a challenging and exciting thing to do given the general apostasy yet feeling of seeking meaning that characerises the lives of many French Canadians. We had a very wide-ranging and stimulating discussion on topics are varied as “how do you talk about love and sin in contemporary life” to how can one have personally liberal and progressive views and still lead a life guided strongly in a set of non-relativistic, loving principles. It was exciting to chat with them and learn of their ministry. They are doing good in the world. They are doing it gently. And that’s beautiful.

After that I got some terrible news. Another of my former students and a good friend suffered a terrible tragedy as his wife gave birth to a stillborn child and she herself was now in critical condition. Life can seem so terribly cruel. A young couple, awaiting their first child – so full of joy and expectation, of the possibility of bringing new life and new love into the world – is brought down by accident. Life is so fragile. My prayers and my thoughts have been with them all day.

We all live steps away from death or injury or disability. We don’t know the amount of time that we have to live and love. I think that is why it is so crucial to lead a good life, a loving life, a life that makes a contribution every day to a better world. Some days that contribution could be creative – a poem, a painting, a new way of solving an engineering or financial problem, whatever. Another day that contribution can be to bring joy or peace to another. On yet another day, your contribution could be to help right a wrong, to stubbornly stick to a higher principle that you believe in, or simply to be an example of upright, reliable and decent behaviour to others.

Today, at lunch I spoke with people who have given their lives to spreading love and faith and order. In the evening I heard of others before whom life had thrown a terrible challenge.

I challenge you, my friends, to make your days count. I challenge you, as I challenge myself – to make each every day a contribution, an offering. You will step more lightly and you will sleep better. When you are not there, others will remember you and sing your name with admiration and gratitude. Each of your contributions to the good, no matter how small, is a step on your road to freedom.

Live a principled life, a good life, and you will have no regrets.

Filed in Human Interest, My Life, Religion | | Comments (1)

Excellent first on-line MCM733 CommTheory Class

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Tonight I led my first on-line tutorial with my class of professional communicators in the Communication Theory course I teach for the Master of Communications Management program (joint between McMaster U’s DeGroote Business School and Syracuse U’s Newhouse School of Public Communication). We had an excellent session.

The students in the class, whom I have listed before, are a very engaged and thoughtful group. They’re well prepared and full of examples, ideas and opinions. I think that creates a really good scenario for on-line learning – student and professor engagement and student-student engagement. As well as good preparation.

We use the Elluminate 9.7 software that McMaster prefers. It worked quite well – a great improvement over the last version of the software. It allows written chat, as well as full-duplex audio conversation among multiple parties. The moderator can also share documents through other applications that are open on the moderator’s desktop. That was really useful.

Today we discussed cultivation theory, framing theory and cognitive dissonance/resonance. It was a great discussion. We discussed the textbook examples, and then got into examples such as how to ethically handle the recent Lindsay Lohan scandal, how an organisation would handle the Virginia Tech shooting and the display of the shooter’s manifesto video, Apple Inc’s famous cultivation of a mainstream audience through their “Rip. Mix. Burn.” campaign, which was a very powerful campaign involving active cultivation of an audience. Here’s the first TV ad for iTunes – amazing how this started a culture of personal album creation that shattered the music labels:

Then we discussed the first two assignments, which are critical reflections on a theory using an example from professional practice as a mini-case study. I am really looking forward to getting the first assignments in and reading them on July 25th

All in all – a great class. Two hours well-spent!

Filed in Communications Theory, Public Relations/Communications Management | | Comments (0)

Chapter 6: Alicia flings a watermelon wedge and finds a friend

Monday, July 12, 2010

Alicia was having the most interesting morning.

It was late August, and the days were already starting to have that slight hint of a chill in the morning that reminded her that the school year was just around the corner. She’d woken up in the little hotel room she was occupying for a week at the Visitor’s Inn, near McMaster University. After a quick breakfast of two croissants, an espresso macchiato and two rather large wedges of watermelon that she cut in many little triangles and arranged on her plate like site on a tourist map. She imagined the streets that she would walk through, as she looked for an apartment in Hamilton today and arranged the watermelon triangles on the plates, which was decorate with rather gaudy images of day-lilies and marigolds, to match the tourist map she’d marked up when looking for apartments on the Internet with her mother the night before she left home. She ate them one by one, in the order that she expected to conduct her search that day.

“Now that’s an odd way of planning your day, isn’t it?” came a voice from right. She was so startled, that jumped and literally flung one of the piece of watermelon across the room – she watched in horror as it arced through the air and landed on an elderly gentleman’s jacket lapel. Alicia wasn’t sure what to do – what does one do when one has inadvertently adorned the lapel of another with a bit of watermelon? Is it proper to alert the person that you’ve visited this indignity upon him? Or is it better to just let him discover it on his own and come to his own conclusions about it? She reflected that this would probably be better for her, saving her embarrassment and possible reproach, but it might also make this elegant elderly gentleman think that he’d lost his marbles, that he was spilling watermelon on himself and not noticing. Alicia was seriously conflicted.

“If you’re wondering what to do, I wouldn’t tell him,” spoke the voice again. “You’ll just freak him out and, you know, it’ll probably be hardly noticeable once it falls off in a minute or two.” Alicia spun around to see who it was that was brazenly offering her unsolicited advice. She found two her left, a fair-haired boy, or young man really, perhaps, who was sitting with one leg folded over the other, wearing faded blue jeans, white sneakers and a grey t-shirt with a McMaster logo in the middle. He had a broad face with very blue eyes and golden locks, there was something impish about him. She trusted him instinctively. “Do you think so?” She asked, her own eyes wide and focused. “Definitely. And if I were you, I stop staring in that direction, because then you may be discovered! That would be embarrassing.”

This seemed reasonable to her and, so focused back on her watermelon. This unusual-looking young man intrigued her and there was something kind and welcoming in his voice. She decided that she trusted him, at least enough to ask him his name. “Lars,” he answered with a purposeful nod, then looked down for a moment at his plate and then asked her, “And yours?” “Oh, it’s Alicia. But most people call me Alli. My mother says its prettier.” She was mortified. What would this young man think of a girl who invokes her mother’s taste on anything? How terribly gauche. She blushed.

“Well, I think she’s right,” Lars said smiling mischievously. “It becomes you.” He let the compliment hang there, in the air, and she was unsure how to respond. “I guess so – I’m used to it, and that’s what most important. Why are you here? Are you a student at Mac too? Are you just starting out?”

“I am a student, Alli.” replied Lars. “But I am not just starting out – I am a grad student.”

Alli wasn’t sure what a grad student was, but she didn’t want to seem ignorant, so she asked, “Oh, I see. A grad student of what?” She was proud of herself. This seemed a very good discursive move. Let’s see how he would move his pieces on the chessboard of their conversation now! But he dropped all pretence and said earnestly, with an open face that showed her that he had pleasantly symmetrical features and that his nose moved slightly up and down as he spoke. She noticed that he articulated his words carefully – maybe the exaggerated use of his oral muscles caused it. Alli often noticed little things about people. In fact, she often noticed many things that others missed.

“I am just starting my Master’s degree in Classics, Alli. I finished my B.A. in history and Classics at the University of Victoria, in B.C. and I am coming here to work with Professor Alaster on his new translation of Plato’s Republic. I am really excited. This is my first day here. In fact, I have my first real meeting with him in… oh no! It’s in twenty minutes. I am sorry, Alli, I have to run! Will you be here for dinner? If so, I will… if you are, well, then, see you then!”

And he got up, hitting his knee rather sharply against table, spending a brief moment rubbing it and then bounding out of the dining room and out of sight. Alli was a little surprised by both his sudden candour and the alacrity of his exit. But she liked him – he was a little odd and seemed completely unthreatening. She decided that if the timing worked, she’d try and get back to the Visitor’s Inn for dinner so that she might have a little company for she really didn’t like eating dinner alone.

She quickly wolfed down the rest of the watermelon and then set out into the bright sun to look for her first flat on her own, or maybe with flat-mates. That would have to be determined – she wasn’t sure about flatmates. She’d read stories about rowdy flatmates who partied late into the night and callously kept studious people, like herself, away from their books. She didn’t want that sort of flatmate – she wasn’t sure what she would do? Assert herself? Or just retreat to a café read there in glorious exile. In any case, rowdy flatmates just wouldn’t do. Quiet, cultured flatmates, however, who enjoyed going out to party now and again – now that could not only be tolerated, but was an exciting prospect. And Alli really didn’t like eating alone.

She gathered her things and stuffed them into her black messenger bag and strode hopefully into brilliant morning sunlight, her blonde hair tucked under her favourite cap and flowing about her shoulders, catching the light.

Her apartment-finding adventure had begun.

CHAPTER 7 COMING SOON!

CLICK ON CREATIVE WRITING TAB TO YOUR RIGHT TO SEE PREVIOUS CHAPTERS.

Filed in Creative Writing | | Comments (0)

Why I am a professor

Sunday, July 11, 2010

A friend of mine challenged me recently to explain why I am a university professor.

“Why did you choose this path?” she asked me, over a glass of pinot grigio and nibblies on the terrace of the Bad Dog Café on trendy Locke Street in Hamilton, Ontario. “You’ve sacrificed a lot of your private life to build this career. Was it all worth it?” It was too heavy a topic for a sunny, breezy day, so I promised I would write her a reply on my blog.

I did not begin this path knowing where it would lead me. I remember being an undergraduate student at York University, and terribly impressed on the first day of my first class - The Classical Experience, taught by Dr Paul Swarney. It was a blustery, freezing January day and I was a few days shy of my 17th birthday. I had accelerated through high school because of a gifted program called PACE and, not wanting to waste any time, had enrolled in York’s winter-summer admission program. In some ways it was a back-door entry into the university system, and it meant that I missed out on all the festivities associated with frosh week and the pageantry of the beginning of a new academic year. In fact, I was done my last exam at Sacred Heart Catholic High School in mid-January and by the end of the month I was in my first university lecture. I loved what I heard and experienced. I loved wandering around York’s suburban snow-blanketed campus. I loved going to the Scott Library and reading under one of the skylights or listening to my walkman and drinking a coffee, watching the world go by. Although I was very social, I didn’t make many real friends. That has always been a challenge for me – I am very independent and have always taken a long time to trust others. I did enjoy many conversations though, attended a lot of club meetings, cultural events and the like. It was during my B.A. that I developed a lifelong love for watching dance: modern and ballet, ballroom and freestyle. My first term of university life opened up a world of possibilities for me, possibilities that are still unfolding in my life today.

And that is the central mission of the university for me – opening windows to a new understanding of the world in students’ minds.

I strongly believe that wisdom is born of lovingly applying reason to one’s experiences. Compassion and empathy are born of this practice. So is depth of feeling and caring. Why are these things important? Because they are at the core of the good life. I have met many people in my various travels who have told me that the good life comes of material possessions. This is false. Material possessions are wonderful and can adorn one’s life in the manner of a beautiful watch or bracelet, or make it easier in the manner of a blender or a four-wheel drive car. What they cannot do is bring you closer to the good.

Universities should strive to build in students a yearning for the good life. They should be accessible, open places, and a professor should be both a guide and a companion on that journey. I grow with my students. Sometimes through discussion over coffee or a beer in The Phoenix, our McMaster University pub. Sometimes through in-class interaction – answering questions, fostering discussion, sometimes even through the silent nonverbal feedback I get when I am lecturing. Sometimes during quiet, emotional moments in my office when young people who are faltering at meeting the challenges that life or the university has dealt them, open up to me and relate to me their dreams, their sadnesses, their frustrations and their aspirations.

Take the example of a student who, a few years back, faced great challenges because her father had suffered a heart attack which caused huge financial strain on her household. She was a bright, cheerful young lady who enjoyed socialising with her girlfriends in the student centre, going to football games to cheer on our McMaster Marauders, and studied very hard. Her world was rocked when she was suddenly flung into adulthood – having to take three jobs to pay her tuition – and thereby feeling that she was missing out on her youth and her university experience. Her grades suffered. She was struggling. We spoke for an hour – and she told me the tale of her troubles. She wept openly, and hid her face in her hands several times. We spoke of philosophy, of striving toward a goal, of personal honour and virtue. We talked of heroes of yore and those who have overcome great challenges. We talked of faith – in oneself, in others, in the future. We talked of prayer and meditation. And as our conversation flowed along, her heart was eased. Not by me – but by the connection to the tales of the alternation of light and darkness that are our history, both national and personal. By the firm belief that when one overcomes darkness and steps into the light, the glories of one’s life shine brighter than before. She left consoled.

A few weeks later, she sent me a note saying that it was conversations like the one she had had with me, with other professors and with thoughtful friends that keep her going. That lift her spirit and allow her to break the petty bonds of the sadness of the everyday. To strive, unflinchingly, for a brighter future.

That is the role of the university. To clear a path through the dark and forbidding forest that is fraught with fear and frustration. To give to students the space to develop the questioning spirit and the hopeful will to improve themselves and push forward and clear the path for themselves and then lead others to a better tomorrow.

That is how society progresses. We are all uplifted by a subtle but perceptible measure when a heart is turned from despair to hope. When a destructive influence is thwarted and an easy sunlit path is opened before someone. We all step a little more lightly when someone among us has experienced the freedom to feel joy. We are all enriched when two souls meet and find a sharing, generous love.

We live in a cynical age. In the 19th and 20th centuries, we put our faith in the machine, but the machine has failed us. Materialism has reduced our sensitivity to one another, to nature, and to the future. We have been numbed by the machine. People are not machines. We are far more complex than the most intricate of computers or space stations. The least among us is an astonishing blend of knowledge, and feelings and experiences.

Universities are one of the last bastions resisting against the onslaught of the machine. Although much diminished by materialism, closed mindedness and instrumentalism, they remain places where a citizen may find quiet. Where professors are allowed to exist in monastic autonomy and organize themselves. Where the ideas of the world meet to be debated, examined and pondered. Where people from all social classes, walks of life and backgrounds can gather in safety to discover one another and, in the process, perhaps discover something about themselves.

Universities are places where the classes mix – where we learn one another’s mores and cultures and ways of speaking and interacting. This knowledge is invaluable – without it there can be little success, since such a big part of being successful is knowing how to communicate with others in words that they understand; in appropriate words that make them comfortable. That is why universities must be accessible and professors must have the time to be available. Students must have the time to interact with one another too – in quiet ways, not just in the frenzied and often frantic hot house environment of the night club or the disco, but in the sweet moments of a crisp winter’s day walking from building to building; or on a park bench in the shade with a sandwich and some mineral water, a breeze caressing the skin and not a care in the world.

Our students live with a lot of stress. I see it in their faces. They are surrounded by machines. A laptop in front of them. Ear buds blocking out the world. A smartphone buzzing with always urgent messages. Email. Electronic learning systems that encourage them to communicate with other students online. Televisions flickering ghostly representations of how things ought to be, everywhere they go. Techno music blaring in clubs thumping to the beat of the heart, the beat of sex. Drugs, which are really just biological technologies, for improving their memory, keeping them awake longer, improving their mood, giving them access to a momentary feeling of freedom and bliss.

I find that technologies create a false sense of urgency, of expectatation that you’ll miss something if you log off, even for a moment. They reduce the way we think of our lives to inputs and output. One techonology causes you to feel stressed, so you find another technology to relieve that stress. Inputs and outputs. Machines – both mechanical and digital – impoverish our lives in that way. They distract us from seeking the good life – which is a shared, thoughtful, caring and human experience.

This saddens me. Not because I hate technology – anyone who knows me personally can attest to the fact that I am surrounded by it! But I live my life mostly in my mind, and I stubbornly refuse to allow the machines that I work with and that surround me to determine my actions. I try and grow a garden. I cook for myself a lot. I use a fountain pen and I wear a hand-made mechanical watch. I like the fact that it doesn’t keep absolutely precise time. My research may one day help to build intelligent digital machines, but I am quite happy to sequester myself away from them.

Universities should offer respite from that machine intelligence. They should be peaceful places. They should allow the people in them to move at their own pace – within reason, of course.

I became a professor because I love learning. I love reading and thinking. I love debate. I am addicted to the sweet intoxication of writing a good sentence.

I continue as a professor because I am profoundly moved every time I see a door of possibility open in a student or colleague’s mind. I am filled with joy every time a person around me shifts from confusion to understanding. I feel an upwelling of tears of hope and strength and relief when I hear a tale of someone overcoming personal darkness, insecurity and nihilism to take those blessed strides toward peace and freedom and confidence.

Do all of my colleagues think as I do? Certainly not. Some would call me a pollyanna. Others would promote the reduction and mechanization of the place. Some would take exception to my references to faith or classical heroes. Others may question my vision of the good life, of virtue and honour. But that is part of the richness of the place. It is a place where diverse ideas are put to the test of public controversy.  I would have it no other way.

For me the university means peace. It means freedom. It means inclusion and respect. It means sometimes holding back the curtain of darkness to let someone run through to light.

I firmly believe that these things are good things and I will struggle to protect them. I invite you to join me. For there is much more at stake than my job description, should our universities be transformed into training centres. At stake is one of the last remaining oases of freedom and civility and progress.

That is why I am a professor.

Filed in Academic Life, Academic Politics, What's Wrong With Canadian Universities | | Comments (4)

An odd day – I think the single life has its drawbacks.

Friday, July 9, 2010

I had quite the unusual day today. It made me think a lot about what it like being me right now. Here are a couple of thoughts…

Yesterday, I was recovering from food poisoning, so I thought I would spend today at home. I was Acting Chair of the Department of Communication Studies & Multimedia, but I checked in and asked if it was necessary for me to come into the office for signatures or meetings. Our admin coordinator, Helena Collins – who’s wonderfully efficient and cheerful – told me no, there was nothing to sign, so I stayed at home to rest up.

In the morning I did my final edits of the UHC draft that Janna Green, my copy editor at Oxford University Press in Toronto has worked over. She is so good at what she does – I almost never disagree with her changes. She makes my prose punchier, clearer and brighter. I truly appreciate her work.

After that, I worked on a second of three book proposals I hope to submit by the end of this summer. This one has to do with linking my passion for news analysis and linguistics with public relations and current affairs research. These are uncharted waters for me, and my first single author book proposal, so I felt that odd mix of excitement, uncertainty and insecurity that one feels when embarking on a new adventure in an undiscovered territory. It’s a lonely feeling. One that I have felt several times in my life. Not entirely unpleasant, but unsettling. Like sitting in the forest a very cool breeze rustles its way through the trees and around and by you. You feel a momentary chill, but then the sun is back, shining through a break in the foliage, warming your hands and neck in spots. You feel alive.

I drove home into the sunset. It was serene and beautiful – a pastel sky with watery orange hues weaving through the grey-pink clouds like a swirling celestial dragon, from Chinese or Japanese mythology. It was so beautiful, and the light so engulfing, that I felt as though I was flying through the air, my GLK taking me to a new and beautiful undiscovered place.

It’s during these moments of creativity and serenity that I miss the companionship of life partner most. I have never lived with anyone, other than my parents when I was a kid, obviously – and have never really suffered for it. There is a great pleasure to determining the shape and colour of your day, your evening – being able to choose the rhythms of your life yourself. I am feeling more and more that I miss sharing those beautiful moments with another.

I guess I am tired of being single, in a way. Ah well – I have long abandoned the thought of chasing down love. This is one area of my life where I stumble around in the dark. Others do seem so very good at meeting and charming people. I often feel awkward and gawky around women I am interested in, strangely enough. Perhaps it is the fruit of a geeky childhood spent playing sports on sunkissed fields and reading on balconies and under shady trees.

I thought I had met a kindred spirit at the beginning of the year, but it didn’t work out. I miss emailing and sharing observations about the world with someone. I guess what I am trying to say is that I miss the poetry of telling one another stories, quiet and happy in each other’s company – not seeing the hours roll by, until it is dark and time has slipped like quicksilver through your fingers. Yes, I do miss the poetry of those moments of shared thoughts and feelings and experiences.

Filed in My Life | | Comments (1)

For communicators, listening is key. A few tips to improve your skills.

Friday, July 9, 2010

There is very little that is natural about communication. Word associations. Metaphors. Our vision of the world is like a kaleidoscope of moving bits of glass, settling in a slightly different configuration every time we pause to ponder.

In fact, most of concepts, symbols and metaphors that we process as we communicate are of a conventional nature. This means that, for example, the word “cat” is not intrinsically linked to what it represents – the furry, meowing creature that sleeps 18 hours per day. Rather, the string of sounds, “k a t” is a symbol that we have arrived at arbitrarily: as a speech community of anglophones, we agreed conventionally that it should be understood to mean what it means. In fact, if we all decided tomorrow to change our interpretation, we could call cats by another name – fripples, or sniggles or whatever.

So words are pretty arbitrary. Famous Swiss professor and founder of the field of modern linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure, called this the arbitrary nature of the sign. This concept has huge implications for the field of communications.

Let’s think about this for a second.

If all signs (words) are arbitrary, then there are very few natural readings of what we are saying. Hmmm. The implications of this are powerful. This means that to truly understand what others mean, we have to be very conscious of several things:

  • Our co-communicator’s personal history and experiences;
  • The dialect or variety of English that she uses;
  • The person’s socio-economic station;
  • The person’s experiences with people who look and feel like us.

Think of how complicated this process is. We all have a wealth of experiences that we had stockpiled. Some of them are simple, like what our favourite foods are or the colours that make us feel happy and cheerful. Others are very deep and complicated – the mixed feelings we have about failed relationships, the sadness we have experienced at the loss of a loved one, the conflicted feelings of guilt at things we have done that we now regret.

These deep feelings and ideas are very difficult to communicate to others. Often we do not have enough of a grasp of our own perspective on them to put them into words. Nonetheless, these deeply-seated thoughts shape and colour our interpretations of the world. They influence our reactions to other people. They trigger fear or trust responses in us.

Now imagine how challenging it would be to take that kaleidoscope of tumbling and rolling personal experiences in your mind and fit it onto the jigsaw puzzle of language and language and words. It’s tough – it requires many many words to paint an adequate picture. Honesty is key, because once you introduce a lie into that stormy ocean of words, it has to be true forever and that can become exhausting and very, very complicated.

So what does this mean for effective communicators? Several big points:

  • Honesty is the best policy. It will make you feel solid and authentic to others, if your language is always consistent.
  • Self-knowledge and self-reflection is key. Tell yourself the story of yourself. Evaluate your many experiences and how they fit in with one another.
  • Listen carefully to what others are saying. Keep the big picture of what they are saying your mind – it will allow you to understand communication that may seem unusual.
  • Be a compassionate listener - remember that everyone says everything for a reason. That reason may come from their experiences, from their state of mind, from how they feel that day.
  • Remember that words are arbitrary and reductive. Even in the mouth of an expert communicator, they are an impoverished representation of the complexity of what is going on in that person’s mind.

Keep these things in mind as you develop your skills as a communicator. They will deepen your understanding of others and enrich your life and practice.

Filed in Communications Theory, Discourse Analysis | | Comments (1)

The study of how we understand one another.

Thursday, July 8, 2010

I have always been fascinated by hermeneutics, which is the study of meaning and understanding. What does it mean to mean something? More importantly, how what does it mean to understand something that someone else is communicating?

In my PhD thesis, I explored whether it was possible to use the structures in a text (syntax, mostly) to help decipher its meaning. I wanted to understand how we understand the writing of others – not necessarily from a neuroscientific perspective, but more from an interpretive, subjective one.

Why? Because when an average person understands what another person has said or written, they don’t achieve that understanding by consciously knowing the brain processes that are functioning under the hood. Rather, the person feels more or less confident that they understand. Sometimes, they even know that they have understood – but that is actually quite rare. Think back to the times you have heard or read what others have said or written to you.  Be truthful – did you feel 100% confident that you fully understood what the person really meant?

I have always be fascinated by the subjective process of arriving at understanding. Is it measurable? I think it is. How is it measurable? Now that is a great question!

If you think about it, this process of arriving at knowledge of how we understand one another is central to theory of communication and public relations.

In a series of blog posts to come in the next few weeks, I will be exploring this idea.

Stay tuned and click on the “Discourse Analysis” link to your right to keep track.

Filed in Communications Theory, Discourse Analysis | | Comments (0)

Chapter 5 – Dr Chang’s furtive visitor

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Today had started peculiarly for Dr. Chang – he had arisen from his bed at the usual time, about 5:45 – a time he liked because it often allowed him to stand on the porch and sip his steaming tea as he caught the glimmering lights of dawn as it rose over the ravine lot in front of his house.

Dr. Chang usually slept on his back and he turned in bed, as he liked to do in the morning, to fold his arm over his sleeping wife Petra’s right shoulder, as she liked to sleep on her side, and rest his hand under her chin. This way he would not disturb her sleep, but could still feel the moist warmth of her deep breaths as she exhaled. He liked how she’s hunch her shoulders a little and pull him an inch or two closer, without waking. That was his favourite moment of the day – wordless, unconscious, but so intimate.

Today, he reached over and didn’t feel Petra’s shoulder. Rather, he felt what he thought was a fluffy pillow, or perhaps a stuffed toy. For a second, he felt a wave of nostalgia wash over him as he was reminded of the fateful day of Petra’s leaving, but his reverie was quickly cancelled by a searing pain in his hand and the strangest spitting sound he had ever heard! In terror, Dr. Chang pulled himself so that he was sitting up and flung his arm upwards, only to see a frantic ball of flying fur attached to it. He heard yeowling and crying and spitting and felt little claws dig deep into his forearm just tiny fangs bit deeper into his hand.

It was then that Dr Chang realised that he was under attack. But by what? What creature could have crawled into bed beside him and slept so peacefully, only to go on a terrible offensive the moment Dr. Chang moved! What conspiracy was this?

After taking a second or two to regain his composure, he pushed his arm down on the bed and confronted a terrifying sight: two glowering yellow and green-flecked eyes staring up at him in defiance and indignation. The eyes were part of a tiny triangular grey furry face whose expression, upon closer inspection betrayed more fear and alarm than angry and reprieve. Dr. Chang’s fear subsided when he realised that he was locked in mortal combat with a cat – barely out of adolescence, and not so sure of itself.

He relaxed his hand gently, and as he did so, his grey-black tabby aggressor relinquished her grip – first with her hind paws, then her forepaws and finally loosened her jaws, letting him pull his hand away as she slowly sidled to the baseboard of his sleigh bed. They stared at each other in a silent face-off of mutual distrust and bemusement.

Dr. Chang then, in a quick movement, slid out of bed and bounded across the room, slamming the double-doors behind him, imprisoning his feline foe in the master bedroom. He heard scratching at the door and alarmed yeowling as he hurried to the middle upstairs bathroom and vigourously washed his hands and arms with soap and water several times – concentrating on the bite and scratch marks that were already swelling up. Satisfied he had removed most of the poison, he went back to the now quiet bedroom and opened the door, hoping that his interloper had settled down and was ready for civil intercourse, but when he open the door, he saw that the room was empty. No cat. He looked under the bed and behind the night-table. Dr Chang even opened his closet doors, which he knew that the errant kitty could not have entered as they were sealed closed.

It was then that he noticed the window. The lacey drapes fluttered gently in the window that he had opened the night before, seeking relief from the terrible humidity and heat. He walked over to the drapes, and, pulling them aside saw that the screen had a gaping cat-sized hole in it. He had found both the point of entry and egress. He peered out of the window for a spell, trying to see if the mysterious invader was hanging about, perhaps walking the length of the fence along its top. That was something that cats liked to do, wasn’t it? But no – the grey and black tabby was gone.

A little disappointed, Dr Chang went about his morning ablutions, then had breakfast as the day broke, listening to the news on CBC Radio 1 and thought about his angry, frightened visitor. After breakfast, and still a little bemused, he set off into town for the clinic, looking forward to talking to his patients and hearing of the goings-on in the village.

CHAPTER 6 COMING SOON!

CLICK ON CREATIVE WRITING TAB TO YOUR RIGHT TO SEE PREVIOUS CHAPTERS.

Filed in Creative Writing | | Comments (0)

The end of men? No – it’s just time to for men to change.

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

It looks like men have had it. According to Hanna Rosin, in her article The End of Men, from The Atlantic Monthly, it’s women rule the roost and bring home the bacon. What’s a man to do?

Many excuses are put forth about men’s failure to compete in school, in the marketplace and in the professions. Experts are trotted out who claim that boys have trouble sitting still, concentrating and doing repetitive tasks.

Men have been in a position of power for a long time. But power can lead to laziness and sloth. Just as an empire loses steam and implodes, so too are “men” losing steam and imploding. Why? Let’s think about this for a second…

In the past, men had to compete to achieve basic things like: a measure of wealth, family stability and the faith and admiration of a woman life-partner. They had to earn it. The ensuing reward was access to sexual gratification, genetic reproduction, economic stability and socio-cultural prestige. The thing is, that this vision of success was based on a “male concept” that included the following metaphors: “Powerful men are competitors” and “Rewards (sexual, economic, etc) are the fruit of winning a competition”. With the advent of two things in 1960s, this all changed: the sexual revolution and the growth of the entry of women into the labour market.

The sexual revolution took away the “honour, hard work and fidelity” barrier to sexual gratification. That’s a no-brainer. Why fight to demonstrate your valour and honour to a much-admired woman when you can get drunk and find an equally drunken partner for sex, or preen like a peacock fresh from the gym and find a sexual partner based on the image you are projecting – nothing to do with your honour or your valour. Why bother marrying or committing when you can party and move-in with someone and then lead the good life, knowing that your half-commitment secures for you a sort of comfortable limbo in which you can lead a boy’s life late into your twenties and early thirties – playing video games obsessively, partying late, not saving money: in a word building nothing. So, in a sad inversion, just as the women in Aristophanes’ Lysistrata took away access to sex to end a war, perhaps today’s women do the same to encourage a little achievement from their sorry male companions.

The examples of the workplace and classroom are telling as well. When women entered both of these arenas en masse they changed the rules of the game. Norms shifted and institutional cultures morphed. This is natural. Whenever a new, striving, organized group enter a political arena – they will change things! What is sad is that rather than strive to compete with women honourably, to speak up and admit the equality of women as co-citizens, co-workers and co-classmates, most men whine and complain. They carp about the “feminization” of the workplace and the classroom as though it were being imposed on them by God or Government. They roll over and die – creeping into a grey void of vicarious victories over women in the sordid worlds of porn, mysogyny, UFC, reactionary “conservativism” (which the true conservatives of the past would snarl and spit at for its whiny narcissicism and sense of entitlement). This anger is accompanied by underachievement and profound sense of personal failure.

And so we see representations of jackass men behaving like giant 15-year olds on TV, or broadly grinning morons in tv commercials – all waiting to be rescued and then given food, sexual satisfaction and money by their over-achieving female partners.

This doesn’t have to be so. Men do not need to roll over and die like the many empires in the past have done. Ottomans, Romans and Soviets all foundered under the weight of their bloated sense of history and entitlement. Why? Because they were too lazy redefine themselves when the ground shifted beneath them.

Men don’t need to follow this path. What men have to do is give up on the stupid notion that they are entitled to anything or that any system should cater to them. Men have to realise, as the striving girls beside them have done, through decades of self-empowerment, that they are individuals. Men must make their own destiny. Men must adapt.

Part of the adaptation means finally recognizing that women are not there to serve them anymore. Rather, men must take care of themselves. Build their own future. Be complete people the way the overachieving women around them are complete people. The most successful women I know are amazing people: they go to the gym, take care of their often whiny lazy partners, feed their children, go to work and volunteer or play sports in the evening. They do it all with planning, strategy and, above all – realism. The women who achieve around me know their limits and honour them.

Many of the men that I know who underachieve have a grand vision of their destiny in their minds. They want to achieve something big. But in the meanwhile they fester in rooms blasting orcs and watching  porn (although few would admit it). Men need to get with the program. There is a world of opportunity out there – much of it created by women. There is no longer an automatic  male privilege except in places where men have managed to keep women subservient or structurally exclude them.

Together, men and women can set the world right again. But right now it’s women who are doing the heavy lifting while men sit on the couch or the chair and peer at glowing rectangles, bemoaning their fate and growing resentful.

We used to have the image of the “strong man.” Muscles and brawn, silent strength, etc. We see a trend toward hyper-masculinity in the media right now, with the tattooed monsters of UFC and pro-sports. What a pile of hooey. Look at the tattooed muscly guys around you today when you go to do your shopping – what are they doing? They work as bouncers in clubs, they dig ditches, they are not listened to. They are ignored. “Manly men” have almost no political influence and failing economic prospects. The tattooed muscly man-guy is sweating in the sun, shoveling the ditch for minimum wage, while the the fit, toned, elegant, egalitarian and adaptable metrosexual is standing side by side with his female colleagues, running our schools, banks, governments and media. These men are succeeding and doing well.

There is a new man to be built for this new age of equality – he is the modern version of the hero of antiquity: a good communicator, adaptable, clever, fit, and driven. To take the first step, men must collectively cast off the rotting mantle of “traditional manhood.” It’s gone. Forget it. Embrace the new reality. Get with the program, step in beside your sisters and get to work. Collaborate.

And modern men shouldn’t complain that this is a betrayal of the manly heroes of old – Alexander the Great was closer to a metrosexual than a UFC fighter.

Filed in Cultural Adventures, Human Interest | | Comments (9)
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