August 30, 2010
By Ingrid Zacharias
If you’ve ever been there when two different people experienced the same event, you may have been surprised by how different their perceptions may be of the same situation. This is true of almost any situation that individuals experience simultaneously. Their reality is impacted by their perception. But their perceptions are impacted by their life experiences, knowledge, open-mindedness, thought processes, and social skills.
One of the first things that I was taught when I started doing community development was that perception was reality, to that person anyway. For example, we surveyed a community only to discover that they perceived their community as being unsafe and violent. The statistical reality of it was that their community had fewer car thefts and house break-ins than many other areas. There had been a murder in the community close to that time, and while that was a very unique happening, it affected people’s perception of the safety in their community.
That’s why communication is such an important element in the non-profit world. To make sure that people perceive what you say the way you mean it, there are a few tips to follow:
- Request a summary – After telling a person something, have them verbally summarize what you just said in their own words. That way you can clear up any misconceptions in the very beginning rather than having to do clean up at a later date.
- Adapt language to the Listener – Use language the person is familiar with, stay away from jargon if the person is not in your sector, and if you are uncertain of a person’s understanding of language, then start out using plain language. If it becomes evident that the person has a good grasp of vocabulary and comprehension, you can always kick up a notch or two.
- Get to the point – Don’t spend a lot of time with a lengthy introduction to a topic, and don’t go off on a tangent that confuses the listener so they are no longer sure what the point is that you are trying to make.
- Send out notes of the meeting – Sometimes to protect yourself and ensure that you and the other person were on the same page in a meeting you had, you may want to make it a habit to jot down notes during the meeting and then send them out to the person via email after, asking if the other person came away from the meeting with the same conclusions that you did.
Question of the Day: What communication strategies do you use in your NGO to ensure that you and people you interact with come away with a common understanding?
