Lamps speak one<\/strong> language. Go ahead…stomp your feet, scream at the top of your lungs, turn your back on it. It won\u2019t come on. Wouldn\u2019t it be great if we could just look at it and it would read our minds? Turn on. Turn off. Yes, that would be great.<\/p>\n But that\u2019s not the way it works. Lamps speak one language \u2013 electricity. Even though we may wish there were other ways to get our instruction across, the lamp has decided how it will understand. It\u2019s not our choice. It\u2019s the lamp\u2019s.<\/p>\n The lamp is a useful metaphor for us as communicators. If we have a message to get across, frankly, it doesn\u2019t matter how WE would like to communicate it. What matters is how the other<\/em> party is most likely to be able to hear and interpret our message. In other words, if you want the light to come on at the other end, you need to find the other person\u2019s electricity. Sounds simple, right?<\/p>\n It\u2019s actually more complicated than that. We often need to communicate with many people at once. Some people may prefer email, some face-to-face, some Twitter. Some may speak English, some Spanish, and some Swahili. Some may prefer auditory communication, some written…you get the idea. Never has there been a greater burden on communicators to deploy a variety of methods for getting their message across.<\/p>\n So, what should you do? First of all, be aware of the methods of communication you are choosing -and make sure it matches recipients\u2019 preferences. Second, test to see if your message is getting across. Ask recipients to demonstrate that they have listened and test the alignment of their interpretation of the message to your intention.<\/p>\n Turning a lamp on is definitely easier than making the light come on in other people. But lamps are far less productive. Besides that, who wants to lead lamps?! People are a much more formidable challenge!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Lamps speak one language. Go ahead…stomp your feet, scream at the top of your lungs, turn your back on it. It won\u2019t come on. Wouldn\u2019t it be great if we could just look at it and it would read our minds? Turn on. Turn off. Yes, that would be great. But that\u2019s not the way …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1082,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9],"tags":[16,186,127,187,10],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepeopleadvantage.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1080"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepeopleadvantage.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepeopleadvantage.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepeopleadvantage.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepeopleadvantage.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1080"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepeopleadvantage.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1080\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1083,"href":"https:\/\/thepeopleadvantage.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1080\/revisions\/1083"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepeopleadvantage.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepeopleadvantage.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepeopleadvantage.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepeopleadvantage.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The Metaphor of the Lamp<\/h3>\n
Turning the Lights On…<\/h3>\n