“Telephone…”

 

Shared by Breanne Smedley

Do you remember playing the game “telephone” as a kid?

That game where a group of people sits in a circle.

The first person comes up with a word or phrase, then whisper it to the person sitting next to her.

Then, that person would secretly whisper what she heard to the next person.

And so on, until it came full circle.

At that point, the last person to receive the message would say what she heard out loud.

Most of the time, what the person said was totally different than the original message.

“The phrase was “ice cream cones,” how did it end up “I scream in phones?!’”

Usually the bigger the group, the easier it was for the message to get twisted.

And the longer the phrase to start with, the funnier and more different it comes out on the other end.

I remember thinking it was equally funny and frustrating.

Where did the breakdown happen?

I thought I was clear with what I said. How did it come out like that?

Did someone intentionally mess up the message?

Or was that really what they heard?

I’m learning that the latter is true.

What we say, and what people hear, can be two completely different things.

It can be frustrating.

It can go something like this from my players or students.

“I heard from so-and-so who heard from so-and-so that heard from you that we are switching our uniforms this year.”

“What?” I never said that…

I think to myself, “What did I say that could have led to that? How did that message get distorted?”

Or, after a conversation with someone that seemed like it went well from my perspective, only to find out later that it went quite the opposite.

“You heard that from our conversation?”

Just like the telephone game, I start to wonder what went wrong.

While messages can certainly be distorted when passed through multiple people, I find it the most difficult when my intention doesn’t lead to the impact I desire.

We all have selective attention and confirmation bias. Sometimes, we just hear what we want to hear.

Take bits and pieces of a conversation that sound a certain way, then transform them into something different.

It can happen, consciously or unconsciously.

Sometimes, the people in the telephone game just make up a new phrase to be funny.

Usually though, the message gets mixed up when we think we hear something, try to make sense of it, then pass it off.

“Ice cream cones”
“I scream cones”
“I scream phones”
“I scream in phones”

It can be easy to do.

How do we avoid it? How do we ensure our intention in conversation matches our impact?

I’m still working on it.

I bet that game would be more successful if the phrases were kept short and succinct.

Or if the person listening were to confirm what she just heard before passing her message along.

Just like in the telephone, listening is much different than hearing.

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#CourageouslyListening

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