How Important is “EFFECTIVE” COMMUNICATION
Author :
Shishir Gupta
Blog :TREATISE
Date: 11/21/2011 9:58:58 AM
These days communication is an important aspect of life. It was always a very important aspect of professional life but it does play a huge role in personal life as well. Not only communication, but effective communication is something that is very important, as bad communication or no communication can be disastrous at times.
I have a good example to explain this situation, when a bad communication and later no communication led up to a very embarrassing situation, for both me and my friends. This made me realize that one cannot and should take things for granted unless they are being explicitly conveyed.
I happened on a Sunday a couple of weeks back. Two of my friends (Tejsweeta and Tejaswini) wanted to visit the army shop to buy a few things. I had to accompany them so that they would be allowed to enter the Army shopping premises. So they had informed me about this well in advance. An evening before this they even confirmed with me of this, and I too fixed up the meeting time (it was for 10 o’ clock in the morning if I remember), and asked them to give me a call once before leaving from their place.
Unfortunately, a got an urgent call late in night and I had to rush to my friends place in the wee hours of the morning. A lot of time went by at my friends place getting things in order; I did not realize that the shopping time was approaching. In the meanwhile due to all the stress since morning I almost forgot about this shopping plan. I realized that only around when it was around 10:30 that day. I thought of informing my friends to delay this shopping idea for a couple of hours as I would get late as I was engaged in some high priority work. But it is at that time I realized that run out of my mobile battery. My phone was not working, which meant that I could not communicate my situation to them anyway. I was in a little disarray, but then I felt that even they cannot contact me anyhow, and in such a situation they would not have left their place. That thought did relax me a little, and after sometime I headed back home. I reached home around 12 o’clock, and it is at that time a saw many missed calls from Tejsweeta on my other number.
Even after looking that I was not really disturbed as I believed that probably she has been trying to contact me since morning to confirm about this trip. But it is only when I contacted her I feel into a state of shock when she informed me that she along with Tejaswini were waiting for me at the decided place for the more than two hours. Not that really disturbed me a lot, and I was not in a state to respond at all, as anyways it was late to go out for shopping (as the army shops generally close by noon on Sundays). I probably had no words to speak at that time, as to some extent I had goofed up this plan. But as time has passed by since then, there has not really been much to worry about that day except a little embarrassment I got into because of that miscommunication or rather no communication.
To be honest, I been particularly thinking about this incident for the past two weeks and even analyzing it, and I almost every time I come up to a conclusion that whatever happened that day was hardly my fault. To a major extent it was the miscommunication and wrong assumptions made more from my friends rather than me.
To speak a few of them firstly, I believe they should have called me up before leaving. I believe they tried to, but since I did not respond to any of their calls they should have left at the first place. My not picking up their call should have been an obvious indication that I am stuck up somewhere and should have waited for me to respond, I think they should have been intelligent enough to understand this sign or lapse of communication. As it is always better to wait at home rather than wait at some unknown place in scorching heat.
Secondly, what was the point in waiting at the place for over two hours is something I don’t understand. I can still somehow agree (contrary to my first point), they felt that something must have gone wrong and wanted to stick to the plan. But in that too, I really don’t see a point in waiting for 2-3 hours. It think it makes sense to probably wait for someone for only half an hour, definitely not more than that unless you have some sought of communication going on. I don’t know what exactly was going through their minds which made them wait for so long, get more and more frustrated as time passed by and then probably take out all of that on me the next day. I am very precise with my timings, I hardly get 5-10 minutes late, so probably even 30 minutes was a lot of time taking me into consideration (and they being my good friends and knowing me well should have taken this point into consideration).
All in the end I can say that probably it was a day when quite a few things went wrong. What I am actually sad about that it kind of effected my image and probably even a caused a small dent for no mistake of mine (at least I believe so). That is why I planned to write this here as maybe I might be able to get my point clear to people and also this will help me get some feedback as well. Maybe I must have gone wrong somewhere, something that I have still not considered.
And the most crucial part is that this, a very simple incident of a common day life can explain the disastrous outcomes of a bad or no communication or as we call it “MISCOMMUNICATION”. Also, this does explain in a way how important it is to interpret the communication correctly as well.
