Message of the Day - Communication Breakdown

Good Morning,

 

My current read is Mark Sanborn’s “You Don’t Need a Title to be a Leader” (http://www.youdontneedatitle.com/). This past weekend I spent in Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg, Tennessee with my wife Karen to see some friends. During the trip, we stopped at a discount bookstore Karen and I have come to love. They had a special where you could fill a basket full of stuff from their basement stock for $10. So, an hour later we filled 2 baskets. Then we went about shopping on the first floor and I came across, among others, this book by Mark Sanborn.

 

I ended my reading this morning on a section covering communication problems, where Mark Sanborn uses an example of a man driving a jeep sees a woman driving the other way down a dusty road and she looks at him and says ‘PIG’. He then gets all upset at being called a pig until his jeep slams into a large pig that was standing in the middle of the road. The man did not understand the woman and the woman did not have time to give a clear message to the man.

 

So Monday morning we left the hotel after not getting our wake up call and heading out one hour later than planned and stopped by a McDonalds for breakfast (I had hoped for a pancake house, but we had to make up time). As we pull up to order I was told to wait. A few minutes later I was asked for my order. Halfway through the order I was asked to wait again. Several more minutes pass and they finished up my order (a McGriddle meal and a Bacon Biscuit meal with coffees) having to go through it all again because they lost track or something.

 

As we pulled up to the window to get our order, they handed us an orange juice and a single biscuit. I advised we did not order orange juice and we had two meals. The staff member at the window then said to the rest of the crew the orders were all messed up (which is what seemed to be what caused our waiting when ordering). Then they handed me another bag and I asked: “are their two biscuits in here?”

 

He says no, so I tell him that our order was for two.

 

He tells me we only ordered biscuit, and so I showed him my receipt, which showed one biscuit and one McGriddle and he confirmed that this order was exactly what was on my receipt, which was one biscuit.

 

I am thinking two biscuits, meaning two meals because of the first order being handed to me having one biscuit and nothing else. The employee was seeing the items as what they are themselves.

 

The system ‘glitch’ made me not trust the order even though they were being double-checked after the mistake was found.

 

If either of us had stated the individual items that were in the bag, we would have been fine. The problem stemmed from each of us having a different image of what was in the bag and then communicating with that image only.

 

It could have been lack of sleep, although I had plenty of sleep the night before. It could have been my blood sugar being low, or it could have been me just not paying attention to what I was saying.

 

The communication breakdown was sorted through when we finally realized that we were both saying the same thing, with different words.

 

Enjoy!

 

Sanford Berenberg

Sanford@berenberg.net

http://www.berenberg.net   

http://learnandgrowdaily.com ß Click here to order: “Learn And Grow Daily!”

http://sanfordberenberg.blogspot.com/

502-533-9336

 

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