Communication is imperfect, but people are resilient. These two qualities help explain why human interaction is both frustrating and fulfilling.
COMMUNICATION IS IMPERFECT. Errors, mistakes, slips, confusion, and misunderstandings are inherent to human interaction, and they can’t be completely eliminated. We can improve our communication skills to drive down our overall error rate, but communication’s imperfectability guarantees that some mistakes, misunderstandings, and confusion will remain. You prepare laboriously for a work presentation, only to find that people still don’t completely understand your main point. Your boss infers from a conversation that you don’t want to relocate, even though you’d be happy to move for the right opportunity. Uncle Billy jumps on you for badmouthing the Cowboys when all you were trying to say was that you wish they would win more games. You incorrectly call a client’s parent company “Wilco” instead of “WinnCo,” even though you know the name is wrong.
These are all examples of communication’s fundamental imperfectability. What we say is not always what we mean, and what someone hears is not always what we intended.
PEOPLE ARE RESILIENT. But people bounce back quickly from these mistakes and moments of conversational confusion. Humans have a primordial urge to connect, and most of us are quick to forgive all but the most egregious errors. And since everyone is subject to communication’s imperfectability, people usually have a very healthy appreciation for how frequently mistakes, errors, and slips enter our conversations. People are usually eager to put awkward and confusing interactions behind them.
We may struggle at times to get our point across, we may make mistakes that we really shouldn’t, and some of our inferences might be off the mark, but like a tree sprouting from rocks, the innate human desire to connect pushes us toward the sunlight of our next interaction.
The point is to have balanced expectations about communication. We can improve our communication and drive down our conversational error rate, but it won’t ever go to zero. If we expect flawless interactions, perfect conversations, and to always find just the right words, communication’s fundamental imperfectability will repeatedly disappoint us.
But as long as we don’t remove or isolate ourselves from interactions—even though they are a bit messy, chaotic, and imperfect—the resilient human urge to connect will give us another opportunity to reach out, communicate, and draw closer together.
Let go of your last imperfect conversation. The next one beckons.
Originally posted on mouthpeaceconsulting.com.