The Rumour Mill: how and why stories change when they go from person to person

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I tell you a story. You repeat it to someone else, who tells it to someone else and so on. In just a few tellings, the story I narrated has transformed into another story altogether. Try this. You'll see.

This is how rumour works as it spreads from person to person. Stories change completely as they go from ear to mouth to ear. How to they change? Why do they change? In what ways do they change? Read on to find out.

Most obvious to us all is the fact that the story becomes shorter in each telling. The extra, descriptive details are the first to go: whatever the listener's mind perceives as information not integral to the story is pushed aside or neglected and thus lost in the re-telling. This is because the mind discards what it perceives as an unimportant detail.

Of course, if a specific descriptor is of special interest to a particular listener, it will be retained however trivial and insignificant it may be. For instance, an obscure cricket statistic that does not have anything to do with the basic structure of events being recounted may be thrown into the story by the raconteur. This would not generally be included in subsequent reports, but if one of the listeners is an avid cricket fan, the detail would stick in her mind and she would definitely include it in her version of the story.

The shortening of a story also depends on several other factors such as:

• individual skills and experiences of a listener and his reasons for listening (what are you listening for--the broad strokes? the details? Your personal experience of stories like this, your interests, the way your own memory works etc.)
• the purpose of listening (do you have to take an exam based upon this story? are you listening for fun?)
• the compatibility between the vocabulary and language skills of the sender and the receiver (if you don't understand a concept or a word, you are likely to disregard it)
• the cultural connotations in the telling (I call this the unfamiliarity effect. Certain characteristics, events, idioms, expressions, stereotypes, archetypes etc. may not find any special resonance with you if you don't intimately know the socio-cultural foundations of the story)
• more, the speaker's audibility, enunciation, accent, vocal expression etc.

To go back to other changes, however, you must have noticed that some details are also added to the original story. I call this the "if it were so it would be better" syndrome. We are all storytellers. Once we have heard the story, it becomes our story to tell, so we tell it our way, with details we feel would make it a better story. Also, if we don't follow the logic of certain bits or if we feel certain parts of the story contain "faulty" information, our mind fills in the blanks and makes its own logical connections.

While the bare bones of the story mostly remain the same, the story changes in many ways, some subtle, some more obvious. The tone, tenor and mood of the story may change according to the teller. The emphasis on certain events and details may change. The logic of the story may alter. Sometimes, you may also be compensating for the perceived lack of storytelling skills of the person who told the story before you.

Other factors that affect information as it passes from one person to the other would be things like the emotional and mental state of the speaker and the listener (nervousness, anxiety, fear, euphoria, depression); the credibility, to you, of the person from whom you get the information; physical factors like noise, distance, smudges, distractions etc.

A Jack Reacher Lesson to Remember!

 "Look, Don’t See. Listen, Don’t Hear."

I was reminded of this wonderful old adage by Jack Reacher. For those of you who don’t know who Jack Reacher is, go to a bookstore and pick up a Lee Child novel.

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Reacher is this Bruce-Willis-in-Die-Hard kind of character. He’s an ex-US Military MP who lives in the United States of America but in no particular city or apartment. He’s the quintessential wanderer who goes where his feet and heart and some means of transport take him. He has no luggage, no credit cards, no clothes other than the ones he’s wearing at the moment. Whenever necessary, he buys a new set and trashes the old one. The one thing he does carry in his pocket is a tooth brush. Oh, and he seems to find extreme trouble wherever he goes.

But this post is not about Jack Reacher. It is about this communication lesson he reminded me of in one of his latest exploits.

One of the ways to become a good communicator is to always be alert and observe your environment. You can pick up a lot of unintended information from the surroundings (and the people who inhabit those surroundings) if you only “look” and “listen.”

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And looking is not the same as seeing just as listening is not the same as hearing. Seeing and hearing are automatic. If your visual and aural mechanism works, you will have to see and hear. You have no choice in the matter. So as you walk down the street, you see and hear all that is available within the range of your sensory abilities of sight and sound. At the end of your walk, though, if I asked you what you saw, you would only be able to identify those objects and auditory signals that you actually “looked at” or “listened to.”

That’s the trouble policemen have when they investigate a public event that has multiple witnesses. People look at and listen to only certain sights and sounds that are available in their surroundings. The sights and sounds they choose to concentrate on depends on their individual mental filters—their own personalities, their interests, their knowledge-set, their previous experiences, their moods and emotions etc. etc. etc. Policemen investigating a public crime have to sift through almost as many clashing statements as there are witnesses.

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Going down Lansdowne Road, for instance, someone who’s very, very hungry may be drawn to those sights—the farsan being freshly fried in the old Gujarati shop, the puchchkawala, the mishti displays, the roadside kachori seller—and thus would probably miss a huge hoarding advertising a cellphone operator that allow you to make calls at 1 paisa for 2 seconds. Similarly for sounds: at any given moment, you have many layers and types of sound available to you. You can hear all of them but you can only choose to listen to some of them. The sounds you prioritise and give your attention to may vary according to your mental state and your needs of the moment.

Looking and listening are choices you make; seeing and hearing are not. When you really look at or listen to something you can see and hear, you process the information received not only with your audio-visual mechanism but also your mind and all its components.

Of course, you may engage your mind in various degrees according to your needs and desires. But that is another post.

Meetings Defined: Productive or Waste of Time?

 What are meetings?

Here's a popular meeting definition:

"A meeting is an event at which minutes are kept and hours are lost!"

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On a more serious note, however, the most basic definition of a meeting is "an assembly of two or more people for a particular purpose." This coming together of people for a common purpose may be formal or informal, regular or irregular, statutory or at will.

With the all-pervasive power of technology that ensures 24X7 availability of personnel, meetings no longer have to take place in person, face-to-face, in any one physical location. We can assemble our teams and work-forces in virtual space at disparate locations through webinars, conference calls, video-conferencing, document sharing etc.

Most managers rue the fact that they have to spend endless hours of their work life in the act of participating in or conducting meetings. Common wisdom estimates that about half the time spent in a meeting is wasted in non-operational discussions.

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This leads to human resources in organisations becoming frustrated because of the feeling that instead of adding productivity to their day or adding value to the work they perform, meetings take away from their effective time on the job.

So if they're so unproductive and account for such a waste of one of the most precious, non-renewable resources of a business enterprise, why do we have so many meetings? 

What do meetings do?

Notwithstanding the bad press, a meeting--or live, inter-active communication among members of a group--is still the most effective way for people to brainstorm ideas, exchange notes, share information, set the course for a period of time, plan actions, organise events, solve problems, decide important issues, get feedback and so on.

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A meeting develops the social mind of a group of people who have come together for a specific purpose or agenda. It is a great way for a group of co-workers to bond. Time that seems wasted in informal communication and eating and drinking is actually necessary to creating the common ground that will ultimately increase productivity. Meetings play a major part in increasing comfort and familiarity in work relationships among people who must work together in long hours of proximity to achieve a common organisational goal.

Thus, quite apart from fulfilling short-term organisational agenda, meetings also act as bonding mechanisms that help define the team and clarify the collective aim. 

In doing their bit to turn loose groups of disparate individuals into close-knit, inter-dependent teams and task forces that become more than the aggregate of the individual members, meetings create commitment and also serve to boost collective confidence in the team's ability to complete difficult tasks within given deadlines.

With the right hands at the helm, meetings can bring visibility to and give greater authority and sense of accomplishment to junior employees or new entrants as they are encouraged to share their opinions and ideas and add their skills and competencies to those of the established group. In the ideal situation, different organisational strata can interact on an even plane and align their individual activities around the organisation's priorities and objectives.

Effective Tool for Management

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I'm a great believer in the power of regular informal meetings with my co-workers. Even if we get together for just a few minutes every week, meeting with my subordinates and colleagues allows me to touch base with them and gain better insight into their lives and priorities, 

During those short meetings, I can catch up with them on the week that went and plan the week to come with the benefit of their agreement and insight, I see it as an opportunity to make sure my team has equal access to relevant information and ensure that we are all on the same page.

I feel that the time we spend during the meeting re-creates our commitment to each other and to the team as a whole and thus energises us to work better for the collective cause for the rest of the work week.

More, the quick cup of coffee and informal conversation we share after the meeting agenda is exhausted helps realign our comfort levels and de-stresses us as we are get out of our individual boxes of problems and deadlines and try to help others with their issues and problems instead.

A-Z of Soft Skills: A is for Attitude

 

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Attitude. The dictionaries define it as a settled way of thinking or feeling about something.Let's talk about what it is and how it affects what we say and do.

Attitude, basically, is my general inclination or my tendency to react happily or unhappily, positively or negatively, My attitude affects my acts and behaviour and also impacts how I react to to something or someone or to an idea or event.

My attitude is formed through the generalities or stereotypes I hold consciously--this is the cognitive component. For instance, I may think all teenagers are lazy or all babies are cute or dogs are ferocious or women are nurturing.

This general cognitive component affects the affective component, that is, my feelings or emotions towards eenagers, babies, dogs or women as a group even before I get to know them individually. For instance, I distrust teenagers, feel warm and fuzzy about babies, am afraid of dogs and think women are wonderful.

This affective component in turn governs the connative component of attitude or my expressed behaviour when I am confronted by people or situations. I am stand-offish to teenagers, I smile at babies, I avoid dogs and befriend women.

Thus it is that my attitudes determine how I relate to the world. They form my perspectives and orient me. They are the unseen and unknown parts of me that fuel and direct my expressed behaviour. My attitudes give me my individuality and they aggregate to form my personality.

In the specific way my attitudes combine to make me who I am, they also make me unique, like snowflakes and grains of sand.

A-Z of Soft Skills: B is for Balance

 

Balance is difficult for most of us.
Work takes too much time, too much energy, too much going to and fro and "life" suffers the consequences. Most of us want a good career because we want to provide ourselves and our families with a healthy and happy lifestyle. Yet, somewhere along the way, work takes over and our families have to be satisfied with the leftover dregs of our time, energy and selves.
Rhythm. Order. Harmony. Peace. Happiness. Fulfilment. Those of us who find it know that each of our three primary commitments--to ourselves, to those we love, and to the work that earns us our daily bread--require equal attention.
However, the daily push and pull of all the long ropes that tether us prove too much. We stumble. The ball drops. 
Say your life is out of balance and that you and your loved ones are suffering the stresses of the dis-balances in your life. What can you do to at least try to achieve a modicum of balance in your day?
Here's my list of things that work for me and may work for you:

1. Prioritize the tasks that take your time every day and be aware of what is urgent and important. Do those first. This way, you feel in control and on top of things. Your mood improves. Your stress levels go down. 
2. Work smart--not hard. Take some time. Think about what's important to you. Sit down and create efficient and effective systems for the specifics of your life.
3. Delegate what you can. Most of us think no one else can do certain things the way we do them. That's probably true, but are those things really important for us to do or are they merely habit? If it's not really imperative that you do it and if you have the authority to pass it on to someone else who is willing and able to do it without making a total mess of it, delegate it!
4. Eliminate the unnecessary. A lot of the things we do during any particular work day are unnecessary. Make a list. Be ruthless. Eliminate those things.
5. Set boundaries and switch off. Do this especially when your emotional presence is important to those you love
6. Live in the moment. Stay in the here and now--be present and give your full attention to this moment and the people in it
7. Say "no" without guilt. I'm not even going to expand on that.
8. Do your best, but don't seek perfection in everything you do

Remember that your work is one-third of your life. Respect it, but don't live for it.
Keep those balls in the air!

A-Z of Soft Skills: C is for Communication

 Communication is the mother of all soft skills!

We all communicate 24X7, both consciously and involuntarily, in a million different ways every day. In fact, we never stop communicating. Your appearance, your voice, your facial expressions, your gestures, the way you use space, your relationship with time, the gaps between your words—these communicate more than your conscious verbal interactions.



The quality of your communication decides how others perceive you, how they react to your ideas and opinions and how they evaluate your worth. People with highly developed communication abilities articulate their ideas with conviction and self-assurance. Those who can articulate their thoughts and emotions with confidence are more successful and more satisfied with life, both personally and professionally.

Communication is the only way we can survive, develop and evolve.

Without communication, without the sharing of information and pooling of ideas; without the storing and learning of past knowledge; there would be no fire, no wheel, no pyramid, no light bulb, no space travel.

Without communication, there would be no conceiving of imaginary worlds that would later translate into scientific inventions.

Sharing information—communication—is the only way for us to know more than what we can actually see and feel: by reading, talking to others about their experiences; viewing television; listening to the radio etc.

In short, communication is the only way we can know anything about anything.

A-Z of Soft Skills: D is for Dedication

 Dedication is the quality of being committed to a task or purpose. When I dedicate myself to something, I make it understood that I am willing to put in a lot of my time and energy to it. When I dedicate myself to someone, I express my strong support for or loyalty to that person.

The quality or state of being dedicated conveys my single-minded application, faithfulness, sincerity and diligence to a thing or person or cause. 

Why is dedication such a desired soft skill? Kenneth Blanchard, management guru and author of The One Minute Manager talks about commitment thus:

"There's a difference between interest and commitment. When you're interested in doing something, you do it only when it's convenient. When you're committed to something, you accept no excuses; only results."

Dedication is commitment, only more. It is the highest degree of commitment you can have to something. It is doing something in the most focused way you can, giving it your best effort, your most time, without any let up and without any expectations of returns.

Dedication brings discipline. It makes you work harder. It won't let you quit.

We often look at artists, musicians, sportspeople, actors and iconic entrepreneurs and marvel at their talents. We envy them their fans and the fantastic personal heights and economic successes they achieve. 

What we fail to acknowledge is the mental strength, the never-give-up attitude, the fortitude, the sacrifices, the discipline and total dedication required in addition to talent for any measure of success in any field.

Sunil Gavaskar and Sachin Tendulkar may have been gifted, but without their undying dedication, they would not be legends. Today, Virat Kohli's name would not be spoken in the same breath as that of his hero Sachin Tendulkar if, as a 19 year old, he had not shown the dedication of coming in to bat on the morning after his father died.

The story goes that Virat Kohli got the news that his father had passed away at three in the morning before the 3rd day of the 2006 Ranji Trophy match between Karnataka and Delhi. Delhi were 14 for 3 in answer to Karnataka's massive 446 when Virat went into bat on Day 2. Virat was just playing his 4th match for Delhi. He was on 40 runs by the end of the day with Delhi 59 for 5. 

Virat was not expected to come in to bat that morning, but he did. He played 238 balls and made a score of 90 runs before he went home for his father's cremation. 

That dedication is why Virat Kohli is the next Sachin Tendulkar and why Sachin Tendulkar was the next Sunil Gavaskar.