Written by Communication breakdown is blamed for a multitude of sins in commerce, industry, government and even sporting circles. Using various news items culled from news media to illustrate her case, my colleague Helen Wilkie warns us that the symptoms should never be confused with the disease. Another site contributor, Tom Terez, makes the same point and drives it home with some very funny imaginary conversations.
What applies in business and the workplace applies in other environments, especially within the family unit.
In my last post, I wrote about difficulties some parents have in persuading their children not to smoke. It’s very easy to ascribe such situations, where the older generation feels it just can’t get through to the younger and the younger feels much the same way about the older, to “communication problems”. That’s not entirely wrong, but with every malady, physical or social, you have symptoms, and you have the underlying causes.
And we must be careful not to confuse the two.
I’ve seen a number of news items recently, particularly from Asian countries, about the increasing incidence of suicides by teenagers who believed they had let their parents down by performing poorly in important school examinations. Some reports specifically quoted the bereaved parents as saying that had they only known what their distraught sons or daughters were thinking, they would have taken pains to reassure them. This led local powers-that-be to propose urgent training courses for both teens and their parents in communication skills.
That’s a praiseworthy objective. But are we merely talking about imparting some kind of technical skill? Why are the parties not communicating with each other? Because they don’t know how? Are we sure we’re not confusing cause and result?
I’ll try to throw some light on these questions in my next post, by analyzing a case study relating to an emotion-driven – and sometimes fatal – disease that is sadly becoming far too common among today’s youngsters.
Azriel Winnett is the author of the highly acclaimed, eye-opening book How to Build Relationships That Stick. An enhanced edition is now available as a paperback.
