The power of misunderstanding
In my life I have seen a lot of conflicts born from the misunderstanding. For misunderstanding I mean when two or more people want to achieve a common goal (e.g. an holiday together, a work project…), but in their minds the idea to accomplish it is different.
I will do some examples that happened to me or people close to me in order to explain this problem.
The perfect holiday: during a trip I met some friends that were in holiday too. The idea was to spend a couple of days together in a sea city. We agreed for the days but we did not put on the stake what exactly to do. Therefore in the first day we argued because someone wanted to go to the beach, whereas others wanted to visit some historic sites. In that moment I thought that we have a different idea of holiday, someone likes visiting, someone likes hiking, someone likes going to the beach, but all are under the umbrella word holiday.
Reducing the length of a belt: it is literally what I wrote. My girlfriend had a belt and she asked me to create a new hole in order to tight better her waist. In my head that translated in reducing the length, so I cut the other end of the belt keeping the same number of holes. I made it because in my past I had similar problem and I didn’t want to create a hole that potentially can be visible different from the others. It turned out that I was wrong, the length of the belt was OK, the aesthetic wants the belt a bit longer but for some clothes a hole is useful. In this case I misunderstood the willingness to have a hole thinking the belt was too long.
Changing a house: some months ago a relative of mine left a house to another relative that purchased it. They agreed the price and leaving some furniture. The leaving person took with him a particular furniture of the kitchen whereas the entering person thought was included with the kitchen. This leaded to a row, because it was seen as spike. In this case the problem was they did not share a complete list of furniture. Yeah,it can be overwhelming, but it is better to agree on everything.
Work: I have seen a lot of cases at work, maybe too many to list in this little article. Often they come out from the nature of my work where there are several environments/stages before going in production. It happens that a colleague says he finished a task or he asks for a task in a specific environment, but he forgets to mention it. Obviously it leads to a wrong managing of entire delivering process.
Conclusion
What surprises me is not just a work related problem, indeed I wanted to demonstrate that it happens in the every-day life.
These facts taken from my experience can be helpful in understanding the problem of an incorrect communication. The solution in most cases is to talk, describing what you will do to get the agreed result. During the explanation some divergences may emerge and the two parties can compare their ideas and be happy.
Hope that can be useful for you!
