We hear it from bosses, parents and teachers, from politicians and spouses, from law enforcement professionals and from medical experts.
I told them, but they wouldn't listen!.
We hear it so often it's a mystery that we are ever surprised. 'Telling' is so easy – but experience reveals that it is such an ineffective way to communicate with another human being. 'Telling' is a 'download' from our mind. What we intend is for the mind we are addressing to 'upload' it – but other people are not computers. Human minds process inputs in a very different way.
Consider what you are assuming when you 'tell' someone:
- That they are listening to you.
- That they understand you.
- That what you are telling them means something to them.
- That it means the same to them as it means to you.
- That they connect what you say to a specific response required of them.
- That the response is what you predict.
- That they will agree with you.
- That what you tell them is as significant to them as it is to you.
- That they bring to this new information the same assumptions that you do.
- That the information is timely for them.
- That they know how to use the information.
- That of all the inputs into their busy life, this is one they can't ignore.
I could go on, but that is probably enough.
Let's do the maths. If the chance of each of the assumptions above being correct is 8 out of 10 (0.8) – which is itself incredibly optimistic– then the chance of all the assumptions being correct is 0.812 or just under 0.07 – 7 chances in 100. Which means that, even on this generous estimate, the chance of anyone doing what they are 'told' is very low.
There must be a better way!
There are many better ways: Ask questions, initiate a conversation, discuss why what you want is important, explore the issue together, ask what they think, find out what they know about it what you want. However, these approaches all have one thing in common – they take longer than telling.
I guess that's why so many of us ignore these complex acts of communication. They take much more time than 'telling'. And if what we say is completely ineffective, so useless that we may as well not have bothered, at least we can say, with the appropriate self-righteous whine:
I told them, but they didn't do as they were told!
Next time that you decide you really want the person you are addressing to absorb what you know: take on some important information; understand the consequences of their proposed actions or maybe just consider other options – try something else. Ask a question or begin a conversation. Do something more useful than telling. It will take time. You have to decide whether you prefer slow and effective or quick and useless!
