Communication has always been a fascinating subject to me. While discussing communication, we always tend to focus on languages, dialects etc, but there is so much more than just the spoken word. This may include other forms of communication such as body language, for instance. This post is a discussion focusing on what is *not* being said and trying to decipher the meaning of something; whether the other person has something to obfuscate or simply not a good communicator. As it turns out, what is *not* being said can shed more light on the interaction. I discuss a few personal stories in this post about reading between the lines.
The following tweet from Michael Batnick a few days ago quoting Peter Drucker resonated with me and reminded that as I get more experienced in a certain aspect of life, it becomes more and more important to learn how to read between the lines. What is it that a person is implying by saying something, or more importantly, what is that crucial piece of information that is not being communicated? As it turns out, this can have a big impact on the overall interaction.
"The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said."- Peter Drucker
— Irrelevant Investor (@michaelbatnick) July 17, 2016
Our Recent Car Buying Experience
To illustrate this idea, let me recount a car buying experience we recently went through. My wife’s car broke down earlier this year. We could have spent a lot of money to keep it going, but considering that it was already 15 years old and would cost us more to fix it to keep running, we decided not to sink more money into it. We tried living on one car, but after a trial of a few months, which didn’t work out — we finally decided that we are a two-car family and the mobility provided was worth the saved time and annoyances of taking public transit (we have a terrible public transit system here in our city, which is a disgrace considering its the capital city).
