The American Manager

Introduction to the AM Communication Series of Articles. We have in our queue essential actionable practices for optimizing your daily worklife...and your lifelong professional career. In preparation for this Series, we must take our own medicine, so to speak, because we believe "Communication is what the listener does" (1).

Self Preparation for communication is not script-writing your message, it is examining if we are ready to be communicated with. Simply absorbing facts, be they written, verbal, non-verbal, thematic, pictoral or environmental, and formulating a response is not nearly sufficient. After all we are fallible Humans.

We subject ourselves to a battery of filters, shape shifters and peculiar lenses to take in information. These obstacles can create a different reality than the real reality. Ask yourself the next time someone cuts you off in traffic what your immediate feelings are. Then script a response consistent with that reaction. We must know ourselves and our particular tendencies to color the information we take in with all that we have experienced.

The first easy Step in Preparation is to acknowledge intellectually that we cannot absorb pure information. Its just not possible. Once one can have this self knowledge as a baseline of listening, it is surprising that our intake is measureably clearer than before the acknowledgement. Self Deception is our first obstacle and it is simple to recognize and therefor reduce its power. In other words dont deceive yourself into thinking the information you absorb is free from your attitude and emotions effects. Those filters are information shape shifters. We must practice understanding that we effect our understanding of incoming messages.

Recognizing may appear to be only a partial action at best, but in this case it serves to begin to purify our information from our own influences (read that as contaminants).

Tomorrow, listen to what your mind says to you when someone directs a message. You will be surprised what a useful tool this is in preparing to listen.

(1) Drucker Through Horstmann