discussion on Communication Breakdown

As a stranger walked down a quiet residential street, he noticed a man struggling with a washing machine at the doorway of his house. The homeowner was clearly having a hard time, so the passerby, wan...

Communication is something we usually take for granted, it seems simple enough, after all. But one thing I’ve noticed (Stu) over time is that, especially in complex organizations, communication often ...

"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place .” George Bernard Shaw Three-year-old Matthew was chewing on an apple when he asked, “Daddy, why is ...

The last time someone said to you, “I need to talk to you,” how did that strike you? Did you think, Maybe she needs to tell me how much she appreciates me. More likely you thought, I’m in trouble. Whe...

Communicating with people is often easier said than done. Take for instance this apocryphal story of the census taker who had to venture many miles down a country road to reach a cabin. As the man pul...

There's a humorous, apocryphal story about a man standing by a river. On the opposite bank, a woman calls out, "How do I get to the other side of the river?" The man replies, "YOU A...

What if you were sent a message, but you never received it? Or, put another way—what if the most important message of your life was sent to you, but it never reached you? It’s hard for us in the digit...

Our bodies, created in the image of the Triune God, have much to teach us about the virtues of conversation. The human body is a wondrous symphony of diverse parts: 206 bones and over 600 muscles, con...

The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.

I actually want to believe that when it comes to communication, my biggest problem is outside of me, not inside of me. I want to think that it’s my kids, my wife, my neighbors, my boss. I want to thin...

If you’ve ever watched a war movie, or a film that takes place in the military, you’re likely to have encountered a specific scene, in which a subordinate will have something to tell a senior officer ...

Studies of conversation both in laboratory and in natural settings show that when two people are talking, the mere presence of a phone on the table between them or in the periphery of their vision cha...

In the mid-1980s, I helped facilitate a series of conferences between top Soviet and American policy advisers on the question of how to prevent a nuclear war. The times were tense and the accusations ...

The Messy Middle In his classic work Transitions, author and professor William Bridges shares an excellent anecdote about life in crisis: it can happen at any time and in a myriad of ways. It also de...

The key word in our definition of a disagreement (an unacceptable difference between two perspectives), isn’t “difference.” It’s “unacceptable.” Once the clash between perspectives becomes unacceptabl...

In the short term, online communication makes us feel more in charge of our time and self-presentation. If we text rather than talk, we can have each other in amounts we can control. And texting and e...

E-mail is the great scourge of modem communication. It facilitates the passing on of simple information, yet it forces complex matters to be presented In a fashion that makes what is difficult appear ...

I often watch speakers stand before an audience and work to build a case for their ideas. They would be more successful if instead they tried building a relationship with the people in the room. The w...

Most quarrels are due to a misunderstanding, and the misunderstanding is due to our failure to appreciate the other person’s point of view. It is more natural to us to talk than to listen, to argue th...

Whenever there is a separation between values and practice, things break down. In ancient China, the people desired security from the barbaric, invading hordes to the north. To get this protection, th...

Two shipwrecked men in tattered clothes slouch together at one end of a lifeboat. They watch casually as three people at the other end of the boat bail furiously, trying to keep the vessel afloat. One...

Lucy says to Charlie Brown: ‘You know what the whole trouble with you is, Charlie Brown?’ ‘No; and I don’t want to know! Leave me alone!’ ‘The whole trouble with you is you won’t listen to w...

This illustration can work well as communicators demonstrate how God made us to be unique with the purpose of living into our own unique personalities: Rick Burgess and Bill “Bubba” Bussey host the ...

God uses our identity crises to reveal who we are and who he is. Sometimes these crises come out of nowhere. Something devastating happens. Someone close to us dies. We are diagnosed, or someone we kn...

Robert C. McFarlane was a well-known businessman in the Los Angeles area. He had moved to California from Oklahoma in 1970, and within just a few days of his arrival—due to a disastrous misunderstandi...

In an interview with MIT psychologist Sherry Turkle, Megan Garber asks what makes in-person conversation unique, compared to all the other ways we communicate these days: Conversations, as they tend...

When we tell a story, a lot goes without being explained. For example, I might say, “After I finished speaking, I looked at the audience. They were all smiling. Someone in the back shot me a big okay....

A man went in for his annual checkup and received a phone call from his physician a couple of days later. The doctor said, “I’m afraid I have some bad news for you.” “What’s the news?” the man asked...

George MacLeod of the Iona Community related a conversa­tion that he had with a Marxist who had never heard an explana­tion of basic Christianity. The man listened with wonder and sur­prise. Finally, ...

In his book, Scary Close , Donald Miller acknowledges that over time he developed a mask, or a persona that kept even those closest to him from experiencing with him. As he began to peel back layers ...