COMMUNICATION 1.3: INTERFERENCES
DECODING (2nd part)
(For
those who visit this blog for the first time, let me refer you to the beginning of this article to put you in a better context.)
In the case
when the sender is unknown, the
following factors that are influencing the operation of decoding can be found:
•
The education level of the receiver
When we talk
about education most of us automatically think at the academic or familial
levels and, of course, these have their significant weight in the balance. However,
they only represent a circle in which experience is restricted. It does not really
matter the number of books that you have read or any of the values that you were
taught since birth if you cannot put them to the test, experiment them outside
that definite circle; out there, “in the field”. Otherwise everything is
static, if not simply stagnant.
Of course,
these levels represent the cornerstone on which everything rests because it is
at this « phase » that we need to awake and stimulate the
intellectual mind, « the scientific curiosity’ like they used to call
it in my youth. It is what will help us, I think, to go beyond the inclusive
sphere represented by family and theory and reach the next level of
self-learning, with hands-on experience. It is the life education and experience that we
acquire through our ambitions, people we meet, our travels, and so on.
Actually, it is easy to notice people who have travelled a lot and or have a vast
social network (not only a virtual one) are also excellent communicators (most of them, there are very few exceptions!)
If this
level of education is weak, the receiver may have certain difficulties to appropriately decode what is addressed to him/her. In a word, the higher the
level of social education a person may have, the more this person has ideas,
means and diversified opportunities. Therefore the easer it will be for the
person to grasp the full weight of a message, to extract all possibilities and be able to choose which represents the best the situation at hand.
•
Beliefs
and presumptions
Obviously,
are included here beliefs, prejudice, preconceived ideas, religion, and
superstitions because all this is already an integral part of how
we tend to see life; our paradigms. Without wanting to get into a
debate about human behavior, and even less about religion, it is however
possible to notice specific gestures or habits from people all around us. Which
is actually as normal as it can get because our daily life is influenced by
them. Beliefs, prejudice, preconceived ideas model our day-to-day behavior.
Let’s take a
few very trivial but real examples that boldly illustrate this statement. Have
you ever been around a table where someone suddenly takes some salt and throws
some over his/her left shoulder, to “ward off the evil spirit” ? Has someone
ever said to you “Knock on wood” wanting to wish you good luck? Did you do it? J Or, on the
other hand, has someone ever said to you that they will not wish you luck
because it “brings bad luck”?
But let’s
take a little more serious example here. Today, as I am writing these lines, we are Thursday, the 12th.
Tomorrow is going to be Friday the 13th. You can
already see where I am going with this.
For a very
superstitious person, tomorrow is going to be a day where he/she will have to
be very careful in every activity. Some people have already started to
apprehend it at the same moment as my fingers are typing on the keyboard. For most of those people, starting with the first ray of
daylight, anything that happens will be perceived and analyzed as a potential
bearer of misfortune.
On their way
to work, if they come across a cat that is slightly on the dark side, that is
it! The day is
going to be a disaster! (Mind you, today or Saturday, they
would probably not notice the cat!) They
are careless for an instant and walk under a ladder; they are doomed! They will
spill their coffee either on their desk or on their clothes, or even on you! Someone
opens an umbrella inside a building and Armageddon is coming! There will be a general blackout in the city
and they will lose a huge part of some project they were working.
At the light
of this, it is easy to realize that our beliefs influence our behavior and,
therefore, have a definite impact on how we interpret things around us.
•
General
perception
Just like the sender has to think
about his audience while delivering his message, the RECEIVER must rather think
about the sender of the message. He must try to conceptualize the
intention of someone he does not know from Adam and so, has no benchmarks to guide
his/her reasoning.
Right from
the start, if the person tries to decode the message with his/her own reference
system, meaning his/her own paradigms, perceptions, generally he/she will be
barking up the wrong tree.
The problem
then is how to properly decode the message? The solution is not simple and may almost
appear to be some kind of detective game of logical deductions. To try to
understand the true meaning of a message when we do not know anything about the sender, the only lead we have is the message itself.
Of course,
the first thing to look at or to realize is the source of the message. Who sent
it? What is his/her name? The name can already give us clues on the sender; it
can let us perceive a culture, a mentality or a distinct way of thinking. Then,
what I personally do is look at the content of the message; the words used to formulate
the ideas. What are those words? What is their linguistic level? Is it
literary? Common? Spoken or vulgar? How is the spelling? Is it adequate?
Flawless? Riddled with mistakes? What about the tone? Is it familiar ? Formal? Friendly?
All these
questions can help us establish some kind of profile of the sender. By
answering them, we can already have a basic draft of the person at the other end.
Once this is done, we should take another look at the message.
For example;
Speedy Gonzalez, Texas, USA sends me an email inviting me personally to participate in an
event where he would like to meet with and discuss about future opportunities.
What can I analyze following he reception of this message?
If the
invitation is written in a high level of language and there are no spelling
mistakes, no wrong use of current and local expressions (which is impossible to
achieve with any electronic translator), I can already start thinking that this
person masters three languages, English, French and Spanish. On top of
things, the language is elevated which generally indicates a superior
education. This gives better credibility to the sending. The tone is formal but
friendly at the same time which tells me that the person is probably a
professional who likes to cultivate good business relations. After some
research, I realize that Mr. Gonzalez works for a big and important American
firm. The invitation becomes even more interesting and I am seriously starting
to think about attending the event.
We can
clearly see here that when we put aside our first impressions or perceptions we
can realize a great many things that would have otherwise remained unnoticed. I
could have said to myself “Bah, another one of those offers that will sound too
good to be true but will end up costing me a lot of money. And I don’t
even speak Spanish! We will have difficulties understanding each other. And so on!
To be able
to put aside our own personal vision of things,
and even sometimes, our own interests, is an essential step that allows us at any
time to have a better reading on things and therefore a better decoding.
•
Personality
and sex
We certainly find here some of the
factors that create communication difficulties. Without starting an in-depth
study on the different types of personality one can find, let’s just specify
here for the purpose of the article, that we can at least identify the followings:
extroverts and introverts, intuitive or perceptive and rational and emotional. All
these elements and the different combinations that can result from them, can
influence the proceedings of a good communication. We can also understand even more the
importance of point #3 stating that we should “put ourselves aside” in order to
decode as efficiently as possible the message sent to us.
Let’s take an example : Mr.
Cold (rational) receives a message from Mrs. Hot (emotional) who explains to
him a really sad situation. If Mr. Cold remains himself, he will only decode
the situation and ignore all the sentimentality or sensationalism and will judge of the urgency of the situation. If Mr. Cold « forgets
himself » for a few moments and puts himself in Mrs Hot’s shoes, he may
then decide to act differently. But my money is on the fact that Mr. Cold will
remain himself and only appraise the situation, because, according to
his personality, it is his way to look at life.
By knowing well the different types
of personality it is possible to draw general impressions or lines on the
sender through the message itself.
And, better say it once and for all,
if the decoder of the message is a man, or a woman, the decoding process will
be done differently. It is just a natural fact. Maybe both will arrive at the
same conclusions but will have taken different paths to get there. The
paths are not better or worse from one another, they are simply different. Men
do not think like women and vice-versa. So, if the thinking itself is at the
basis different, the writing, the way to say (or see) things, the approach, the
understanding and the perception will also be different. Same things go for
decoding.
•
Social
Status
One day, a
lecturer from Montreal University coldly told me : « You should not
always believe what a teacher tells you. » (when I had recopied faithfully
each and every word she ever pronounced in her classes!) The worst of it all is
that she was perfectly right. It is not because we are a teacher, a doctor, a
lawyer, or other that we know it all. We know our field of expertise but beyond
that it is up to each and every one. But, when a member of a high “liberal”
profession speaks up about thigs that are outside his field of competence, many
tend to respect more their opinion, even at the expense of their own. The best
example I could give here is when a Supreme Court Judge, who should know the
law, the people, the society and its ways of living very well, dares comparing a
woman and a rule, saying that both are made to be violated (Ex-Justice Denys
Dionne, January 27th, 1989). Actually, here in this case, it does not mean that
because we have the title of Justice with our name on it that we cannot be stupid at
times. But the example strikes violently the reality of what preceded. When someone gives his/her opinion outside
his/her field of competence, it does not mean because you have a high-ranking
position in society that your opinion is founded and/or intelligent.
In short, to
be able to decode things better, better leave our impressions and perceptions
aside and try to keep an open mind to see things in their foremost generality. The
content of the message will get more precise with the exchanges that will eventually follow. But at
the basis one needs to know how to “put yourself aside” because otherwise it
can alter our interpretation and give way to misunderstandings or undesirable
situations.
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Louis Carle
Executive President
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