Community Challenge – Repeating Myself
Nothing quite tries my patience as much as having to repeat myself. Whether it’s someone who’s not happy with the first answer I gave them, or they didn’t actually read the answer they were given, I find myself repeating and rephrasing answers so much so that I almost used all caps today! That’s what really gave me pause to consider – what is it about my communications that people aren’t understanding?
One of my favorite quotes is “I can explain it to you, but I cannot understand it for you.”
So my challenge of the week is to ask myself a few questions that will hopefully lesson the amount that I have to repeat myself:
- What is the real question they are asking? (it’s often not as clear as it appears at first glance)
- How can I communicate the answer succinctly and clearly?
- How can I answer the question in such a way that indicates ‘end of discussion’ ?
- How can I explain it to them in a way that they understand it, since I cannot understand it for them?
So I’ll close with yet another of my favorite quotes, this one from good ole Albert Einstein himself: “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”
But then, that’s a whole other Challenge of the Week…