The First Step in Communicating Effectively: Define Terms

The First Step in Communicating Effectively: Define Terms

Do you remember that Barbie incident from the 90’s where the talking Barbie says, “Math class is tough!”? Whenever the topic of inter-departmental communication comes up, her little talking voice chimes in with “communicating is tough!”

It is. I’m here to help you with an ancient process: define terms.

I’m going to walk you through a visual I use to help clients understand what’s happening and why improving your ability to define terms completely transforms organizations from the inside out.

Let’s start with an iceberg. If you’ve seen pictures like this one titled “Hidden Depths”:

It’s used to illustrate the challenge of communication. The tip of the iceberg are the words and actions I use to communicate but underneath the surface are a lifetime of experiences that color my exact meaning. To compound the challenge, the words you hear and gestures you see are run through your own iceberg before you respond.

Add in any distractions from the medium (phone, email, text) or the environment (boardroom, tradeshow, titles) and you begin to wonder how it is we communicate at all? (EBN-OZN anyone?)

Let’s look at my visual:

It all starts on the left with one of my bubble people starting the conversation with “what I mean”. That’s her idea to communicate. It will run through her iceberg of values, friends, experiences, beliefs, and education before coming out as words and gestures. Bubble guy hears, sees and experiences what she said, showed or did and runs them through his own unique set of values, friends, experiences, beliefs and education before “getting it”. That starts the response sequence.

The camera pans back to Barbie: “Communication is hard!”

The closer the two parties are in values, friends, experiences, beliefs and education before the process starts, the easier it is to communicate. We’re tribal beings. No shame in that.

Where the organizational transformation occurs is when departments having issues are exposed to the concept of Defining Terms. Getting on the same page. Making sure we’re all talking about the same thing.

It’s ancient wisdom. Attributed to this guy:

Yep. Socrates. The classical Greek philosopher.

“The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms.”

Get on common ground and make sure you’re talking about the same things your co-communicator thinks you’re talking about. In sales it’s how we structure presentations, in marketing it’s how we plan content and in IT it’s how we make sure we understand the problem to be solved.

Good stuff.