Clear Communication

Last week I was working with a corporate client on transition issues within their firm. The company president, “Ted,” was lamenting to me that his staff was far too lax on quality control. They had prepared material both for internal review and for external distribution that was not correct and had errors. Ted was expressing his concern that each individual in his firm didn’t have a sense of pride for what they do, but rather seemed to do the minimum to get by. He felt their behavior reflected badly on his firm.

I was in a restaurant the other day and a little boy, around 6 years old, was giving his mother a very hard time. She was getting more and more frustrated. He said something to her that she obviously didn’t like, and she responded in a loud voice, “Watch your mouth!” She peppered her statements with a few choice words that I cannot repeat here in my blog, but suffice to say that she probably wasn’t watching her own mouth very well at that point!

I love mysteries. Right now I’m reading a great one by Harlan Coben called “Caught.” I won’t give away much of the book, because it’s such a good read, but I do want to talk about something that happens in the book: There’s a series of people who are having their reputations besmirched because of online, anonymous postings about them. The postings accuse them of doing terrible things and talk about them in a very negative manner.

Let’s talk about one of my favorite songs by Helen Reddy, again “I Can’t Hear You No More.” Grammatical error aside, this song was a great summary of what often happens between two people who are trying to communicate.

One of the nice things about doing this blog every week is having the chance to stay tuned to the different events, relationships and situations I encounter throughout my week. I’m always thinking “Should I write about this one?” as I go through my day.

The other day I was having a conversation with my son about his grades. His report card was excellent and he had lower grades in only two classes – Math and Health. I was curious about the health grade – it seems like an easy class, so I wondered out loud to him why he was not doing better. He said, “Mom, all they teach us in health is what you tell us all the time anyway. I call it the ‘Mom class’ because it is just your words over and over about taking care of ourselves.