Prodigy

The Promuda Mouthpiece

Issue 1, July 2002

ARTICLE

Communicating In A Brain-Dead World

By Praba Ganesan

Whenever someone says communication skills are just soft skills, I would stand up and shout, “What you mean?  That is plainly untrue!”  But after a few years of doing that, I have resisted saying anything anymore.  

I think the first rule of the communication discipline is to adapt the message to the audience so that they understand what it is you want to say, rather than just you releasing your angst (or as the lingua I am more familiar with would say, ‘just-wanking-off’).  Since I have not been able to make my point succinct enough, I’ve held my breath until divine inspiration fills me….. and now, let me rave in gospel tone…..  

Research shows (I don’t make these figures up) that two thirds of a good sexual encounter is communication. 

Yup, not girth, length, marsupial tendencies, having been to Niagara Falls or long nights sleepovers with an abusive spinster auntie. 

It is about communicating. No, not talking, communicating.  Expressing your thoughts and feelings in a manner understood by the person sharing the sheets with you (mind the pun!), listening to what they have to say in response and also their own personal thoughts and feelings about the issue at hand. 

Obviously then you need to respond to their communicative interpretation as much as you expect them to respond to yours, to keep the dynamics running. And to assume that it is a natural talent of people or something not necessarily vital is really begging for trouble.  

Juxtapose that to the daily humdrum of office life, and the reality would hit you that the office represents communication challenges. Unlike coupledom, the office throws in multilateral relations to further confuse the equation.  

Communications is where the Americans have a winning mentality. By accident or not, they have built a communication culture that is the envy of people around the world. Tales of the charming Americans often underrate the advantage they possess - their desire to communicate well, and highlights that Malaysians are at the opposite end of the spectrum when communicative abilities are compared.  

Malaysians do not promote a communication culture, they just don’t. I have stopped counting the number of times I have seen people who are ignorant and arrogant in the same ratio talk down to people at various functions, and the general public saying at the end of the barracking that that person was a delightful speaker.  

How can one be delightful by being dismissive of the collective intelligence in the room, laughing off sincere queries by the audience, ignoring the need to present a logical rationale for a position and expect the audience to adopt opinions without questions? And how is it that even with all the education the speaker invariably possesses, he or she remains oblivious of all the sins mentioned above? That baffles me in so many ways, and the answers are not as forthcoming as I would prefer them to be.  

You don’t become a great communicator because you have overwhelmed your audience’s ability to respond; you are a great communicator when your ideas have more value in the minds of those people in that room irrespective of whether they agree with you or not. 

To overlook that is to overlook the whole purpose of communication, the higher purpose of providing value.  

How then must one start on this long pale journey to being a communicator?  First tip, respect your audience. The patriarchal society’s days are numbered, and do not be shocked if one day someone from the audience is equally as obnoxious as you, and rants about your upper class snotty ways being unwelcome!  

Second, ask yourself, what is the message that you would like to communicate and find out the present position of the audience on the idea. Perhaps they are ignorant of the idea, or completely sold on the idea, or just fed up with the idea, or are resoundingly indifferent to the idea. It could a plethora of positions, and the cardinal sin a speaker can commit is to think that the opinions of the people they are addressing is unimportant.   

Let us take a step back and ask basic questions.  Why do people listen to a person talking to them?  You would walk down the street and if someone looking distinctly shabby approaches you and wants to talk to you about the Queen’s visit in 1998, you would walk on without listening, unless of course you are me!  

You have chosen not to listen, not to participate in dialogue with that person.  Why?  Because you feel that the person has nothing to offer you, or perhaps you think that you would have nothing really to say to the person, or maybe you are late for an appointment, or it could be that you are afraid of this character.  Whatever the reason, what is proven is the fact that you can choose to listen or not to listen to the person.  Or choose to express your own ideas or not to speak at all to the person.  

When a speaker addresses 500 people in a packed auditorium for half an hour, how much of the audience’s time is the speaker taking?  If the answer is half an hour, you are wrong.  Nothing tricky about the question.  The speaker is taking collectively 250 hours from the audience, or individually more than two percent of their day.  

Everyone has a choice. 

Malaysians usually use the time to sleep. It was amazing to see the number of people sleeping at the UMNO General Assembly.  No worries, the same thing would happen at an Opposition parties assembly too. Condemn me if you like, but the general Malaysian speaker is a boring speaker, it would be nicer to see paint dry in most occasions.  

So what is good about the typical American communicator?  They never fail to understand the basic theory: if people are actually listening to me, I have a higher chance of actually making them accept my views.  

There is a high premium attached to sustaining attention but the average Malaysian speaker is like the typical college professor who has gone sour after years of academic research and has no interest in teaching. The speaker knows they have a stipulated period to talk, and they talk until time is up, no matter how bored the audience is. Nobody stops him or her, because that would not be the Malaysian thing to do, God forbid!  

This piece up to this point must appear as a bitchin’ session gone horribly wrong, but they do say, one must be cruel to be kind.  

The typical Malaysian is defensive about their communicative skills.  There is no problem, since they can tell the vendor at the petrol station how much petrol they need and know how to make an order at the counter of a McDonalds.  That does not cut the mustard so to speak.  Not at all.  

In the next edition, this author would endeavour to be far more constructive, by examining the communication cultures around the world, the need for Malaysia more than most countries to be communication positive, and the step by step development of a speaking style to be a person who communicates and and not only talks.  

I think all this is making me emotional, and I think I better make a phone call to my Auntie. I do not think we have talked in a while.

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Praba Ganesan is a Consultant at Aticus International, Kuala Lumpur