Legal Commentary

What we (usually) have is a failure to communicate

By Ernie Svenson

One thing about being a lawyer is you have plenty of chances to try your hand at communication.  Every aspect of the practice of law involves conveying ideas, arguments, observations.  This is done in writing, and orally (e.g. speaking), but always verbally (e.g. with 'words').

Good communicators know that there is a difference between the word 'orally' and 'verbally.'  

Still, there is a lot more to good communication than knowing usage rules and grammar.  A lot of people get into arguments or misunderstandings because they are trapped in a cycle of poor communication. I'm not about to claim that having a law degree makes you a better communicator, but as I said at the outset, it gives you the opportunity to communicate in a variety of settings.

And I'm not going to claim that my communication skills are finely honed. I don't know how my skills compare to others.  I only know that they can be improved and I keep trying to improve them.

The first step for me to improve my skills is to recognize when I fail to communicate effectively. And this has always been the hardest step. After all, it's not easy to admit that you might have done a less than optimal job of conveying your point. Like most people, I tend to believe that I am always being perfectly clear. And I tend to believe that I've made my point with the proper tone, and with the proper set up.

See, that's the thing: it's not just about being clear in what you say.  You also have take the right approach. If you use an angry tone when you say something perfectly rational it will come across the wrong way and your audience will not understand. I struggle often with this issue, and I know that other people do too.

So, if you want to communicate effectively then you need to listen first. You need to see what folks want to hear, what they're capable of understanding.  Then you need to find a way to appeal to their sensibilities.  And then you need to make your point clearly, and succinctly. If you do all of that you might be understood.

But, if you simply want to unburden yourself of thoughts and emotions as they occur to you, then you will not communicate. If you cannot bring yourself to reflect on how someone else might see things then you will only communicate with people who see the world exactly the way you do.  In other words, you will waste a lot of time going through a fruitless exercise.

Some people walk around and mutter to themselves. We tend to think those people are crazy, and they may well be. But there are a lot of people seemingly rational people who are actually just as hopeless.

If you want to talk you should be ready to listen, and then have a strategy for making your point. Unless you only want to talk to yourself, that is.

Full post as published by Ernie the Attorney on May 11, 2010 (boomark / email).