Communication

I've been thinking a lot lately about communication and some of the extreme cases where the more said, the worse it becomes.

Mostly on the heals of the world wide phenomenon of Tiger Woods' spectacular fall from grace. I'm no 'Criminal Minds' profiling expert for the BAU but I think I understand enough about communication to know something that is scripted beyond belief. People know the simple act of body language crossed arms is a closing off action, conscious or not, you are blocking the open flow of communication between those who are trying to communicate with you.

Tiger's whole conference was a closed off event. Specific media were invited. One pen and one piece of paper placed carefully in the room for the media, indicating to me that (and it may be obvious) this was to be done under strict control. Tiger not taking any questions and none were to be asked. Didn't he have confidence in his ability to respond to them? For Tiger, I thought the time would have come to be open and honest if he really wanted to start a fresh and put it all out there. In that way he at least would have regained some respect.

Personally, I thought the out-cry that came to him was because of his persona of being a clean living, fun loving family guy who respected the institution he was fortunate to become a part of. He was an icon for the good way of life for millions of people and while I respected his achievements and his ability of course, something was just telling me that this guy had skeletons. Hie facial expressions and body language at the conference were far to controlled for someone who was genuinely contrite. The fact his wife wasnt there...speaks volumes. She has no doubt given him the hard word and I'm sure he knows, a divorce would cost him MILLIONS now and to come. (Ask Mel Gibson). Tell you what though, when they showed his mother, she looked PISSED OFF!!!

Professor Albert Mehrabian in 1967 said that words account for only 7% of the communication experience. Therefore, in my mind, Tiger should have paid more attention to the 93% of things he didn't verbally say.

More locally the recent Telecom XT debacle only reinforces why I left them in the first place. All bark, no bang. Staying with the communicating theme the more the words "I'm sorry" are said, the less they mean, especially if they are not backed up with action. Again and again the failure of the XT network is not making Telecom smell any better. Regardless if it was only Taupo down, and you live in Auckland, you can't call anyone there and makes business hard to do if you are stuck down there with no way to call anyone...even and most especially emergency services.

I left Telecom because I was paying a truck load and not getting a hell of a lot for my money. My broadband was iffy at times and just to have a landline even if you didn't make any calls you were paying through the nose. Mobiles also were dodgy at times. I'm a lot happier now. But I try to imagine myself in the shoes of those customers south of the boarder. I had troubles with Orcon in October last year but one problem for a period of now two years is tolerable. XT, four or five times int he past two months, and significant outages too? That's contractual breach in my books and "I'm sorry" is not going to cut it anymore.

I was thinking about other often used words, such as the most romantic three words "I love you" can be over done, especially if there is nothing in 'action' to show you mean it. In some cases, it dosent even mean flowers, but helping out with things around the house, that listening ear or the nice cuddle when its needed, more than a dozen roses.

By our nature we make communication different ways and receive it in different ways. Its how we communicate and how we interpret those messages that ultimately define how good at communicating we are. You say tomaytoe I say tomato, (had to spell it like that to get the result) is really true.