What I Said - What You Heard

One of the biggest challenges in relationships is communication or maybe I should say miscommunication. With the onslaught of the reliance on text messaging as the primary form of communication, the issue is only getting worse. I refer to it as, “What I said (typed) versus what you heard (read). Our brains filter, interpret, and auto-correct a message based on our gender and life experiences. That’s just how it works. 

 

There are four basic parts to any communication dialog: sender, receiver, message, and feedback. Most believe the message to be the most important part of the dialog; however, feedback is the most important. It is called mirrored listening and is the process of you telling someone something (sender and the message), and them repeating the message back (receiver and feedback). If the message is received but not in the manner, you felt you were delivering it, then the message is useless. 

 

Think about the times when the receiver later made a comment like: “Oh, I thought you meant insert subject.” When a sentence begins with “Oh I thought,” that is a solid indicator of some miscommunication. When I receive a message and am unsure if I received it correctly, I ask feedback trigger questions like, “To recap the conversation, this is what I think I heard. Did I capture the message correctly?” Feedback helps ensure what I heard is what you meant. 

 

“Mirror Mirror in my head, is what I heard the same as what you said?”