189. FACE-TO-FACE COMMUNICATION — C
Communication connects, heals, empowers, and enables us to grow to our potential. As we all know, there are many means to communicate at our disposal. However, face-to-face communication will always be one of the most important means. My own communication file includes many ways in which to enhance face-to-face communication. The triptych this week presents gleanings from that file. These gleanings are aimed at enhancing face-to-face communication. This kind of communication enables exchange of information, transfer of meaning, and synergistic transactions for creativity, problem solving, and deeper levels of relationships
9. Psychologists Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham created a tool to evaluate our face-to- face communications. It is called the Johari window model. It is a symbolic window in which we are able to give and receive information about ourselves and others. In what is called the arena, we see the results of this exchange. We may have blind spots about information we do not know about ourselves but which others do know. In other words, there is a hidden area or facade in which we hide information about ourselves from others. There is an unknown area about which we may not be conscious and in which information may not be available to ourselves or others.
In an open exchange in communication, including face-to-face communication, we disclose what may be hidden, receive feedback on our blind spots, and in the process, we may even gain insights from what is previously unknown. (There is more about the Johari window model on the Internet.)
To extrapolate from this tool, our face-to-face communications are likely to be more effective when we are caringly and constructively open in our exchanges with the criteria noted in the previous two posts. When we listen seriously to one another and when we give and take information, insights, and concerns, we grow together and position ourselves to help each other in appropriate ways. (Being about 80% open may be an appropriate level of openness in face-to-face communication.)
As an aside, in the booklet The Leader Looks at Personal Communication, Leslie This reminded us that there is always:
What you mean to say
What you actually say
What the other person hears
What the other person thinks he or she hears
What the other person says
What you think the other person says.
10. In his booklet entitled Communications: The Transfer of Meaning, Don Fabun reminds us that even silence is a form of communication. “When someone says ‘Good morning,’ and we fail to respond, we communicate something. When someone asks us a question, and we fail to answer, we also communicate. … The world of silence may be a cold and bitter one; like the deep wastes of the Artic regions, it is fit for neither man nor beast. Holding one’s tongue may be prudent, but it is an act of rejection; silence builds walls — and walls are the symbols of failure.”
Q: How would you evaluate your face-to-face communication?
Check out: https://dialogue4us.com.
