Earlier this week I had an epiphany of sorts about communication. Now to see if I can communicate it clearly.
I was having a conversation where someone was trying to explain something to me. She described the situation; I responded back. Since I didn’t understand the situation, which she determined from my response, she described the situation again, same as before; I responded back differently, trying to figure out what was meant. She described the situation again, same as before. This went on a few more rounds, with my continually trying different adaptations until I could make the trigger connection of understanding, find the context and style to actually come to understanding of what she was explaining to me.
Perhaps this is obvious to other people, but it hadn’t been so obvious to me until I faced it this week. As one with a teacher/trainer mentality, I am always trying to find ways to change and adapt the what and way of what I am trying to communicate in order to create understanding. I hadn’t realized so concretely that there are people out there who think mere repetition of the same thing will generate understanding. (A corollary of this is the person who thinks that saying the same thing over again slower and louder to a foreign language speaker will ensure they understand what you are saying.)
What I realized is another one of the many “there are two types of people in the world” situations. In this case, there are people who adapt their communication style to others to create understanding, and there are people who don’t adapt. The thing the adapter needs to realize is that while he or she now understands the non-adapter, the non-adapter has gained no real understanding of the adapter — despite any belief to the contrary by the non-adapter. A very good adapter can get to understand other people quite well, while being very misunderstood by others.
Now that I know this, I realize a lot of situations where such misunderstanding has skewed situations in my life. It also explains a multitude of situations where I have experienced misunderstanding. For me personally, being an adapter has also meant I have been a greater target of domination attempts by other people. In my experience a lot of non-adapters seem quite adept in getting into positions of rank and influence where they have greater opportunities to require other people to adapt to them. This isn’t done by persuasion to get other people on board, but just by the inability to see anything but what they see, and requiring everyone to see it their way.
Has anyone experienced this adapter vs. non-adapter phenomenon? How has this phenomenon affected you and shaped your life? I am truly interested in understanding (after all I am an adapter — which also means I have this penchant to want to understand).
At The Rainbow 