Effective communication depends upon many things, and is quite a challenge for most of us.  It is also truly invaluable in business today.  To run a successful company you certainly need your people to be able to express themselves clearly, and to be able to listen effectively to truly hear what others are intending.

Consider that each of us perceive and interpret differently.  Each of us, all 6.8 billion, have different experiences, cultures, sets of morals, religious beliefs, languages, dialects, childhood upbringing, education, and basically just different life experiences every day.  We use all of that life experience to interpret the world in this moment.  That gives us 6.8 billion separate emotional interpretations of every moment that humanity experiences.

Each of us also have different receptors of the world.  No one sees color exactly the same as anyone else with our seven million cones per eye.  No one hears sounds exactly the same as anyone else with the three thousand cochlear hairs cells in our inner ear.  No one tastes, or smells, or feels touch exactly the same with our millions of receptors.  And of course, no one has the exact same “sixth sense” as anyone else either.

So we are all faced with a pretty big challenge here in communicating effectively.  Open yourself up to the idea that each of us perceive differently, and that the only way to understand what someone else perceives from us is to ask, and to listen… carefully and completely.  In summary, the best communicators are probably the best listeners!