Communication Breakdown
A personal favourite and part of the ‘People First Wisdom’ canon.
Don’t we all recognize the boundaries Douglas refers to?
Photo by Pascal Debrunner on Unsplash
There are similar boundary conditions in humanity.
People boundaries like color, accent, language can be obvious and cause a chasm in communication. BUT, the human equivalent of a dammed river dammed or a blocked road can be worked around, because it is clear what is going on.
The less obvious, if not invisible, boundaries are worse. To a passing observer, they might witness a highly animated conversation and assume all is well. Only the participants can see the boundary they won't or maybe can't cross. Those invisible boundaries are problems.
Result?
“What we've got here is failure to communicate. Some men you just can't reach.”
The Captain, Cool Hand Luke, channeling Donn Pearce, 1965
How do we solve this?
Maybe a start is our new People First Network? See you there?
My thanks and appreciation for your continued support, comments and attention. Please like the post, share through your social channels and forward the email to colleagues, friends and family that want to join us on this journey and do comment or email me your thoughts.
The risk, of course, is that boundaries can become barriers, and the danger of barriers is our unwillingness to overcome them. Yet, human history sparkles with moments when the curious-minded transcend a barrier once thought impossible. Perhaps an personal anecdote will suffice.
Many years ago, still a college student, a friend invited me to his family home in Truro – it was summertime, so we went to the beach with our books and sandwiches. I was reading "The Tao of Physics," my early introduction to the more expansive universe in which the distinctions between particles and waves disappears, so that a particle might also be a wave, and waves might also be understood as particles.
The boundary (thank you, D. Adams) defining the ocean and solid land existed right beneath my feet that day, as the waves splashed ashore, blending with the sand, until I no longer viewed them separately, but as particles becoming waves, and waves soaked into the particles.
If we allow ourselves to retreat into rigid, unquestioned boundaries, they become barriers, and we no longer remain open to the surprise of Thinking Differently. Thanks, John, for the cautionary note.