Broken Telephone

Communication

Do you find that communicating with people causes more problems than it solves? If so, your relationship may be suffering from a lack of communication. Healthy communication patterns include both specific skills and a connection with other people. This includes staying positive, limiting anger and engaging in active listening. An adequate communication style is important for the longevity and quality of any relationship.

“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”
George Bernard Shaw

Broken Telephone

Broken telephone was a game that I remember from my childhood.  Players can either stand in a line or form a circle.  The players must not be to close so they can hear what the other person needs to whisper.  The facilitator gives a phrase and it is whispered to one person to the next till the last person.  The last person would then repeat what he or she thought was whispered.  What the last person says is never the same as the original phrase. 

The main purpose of this game is for the amusement of the players.  It is also fun for the players and helps a group relax.  The game has other benefits and it shows how problems occur because we don’t listen properly.  The game can help people develop their listening skills, and it helps us understand the importance of active listening.  It also teaches us to understand the impact of gossip and rumours. One should never listen or spread gossip or rumours.

Communication is the biggest problems in any kind of relationship, well lack of communication.  Under-communication, lack of communication, miscommunication, whatever you want to call it, is a widespread and a detrimental problem.

Problems with communication

Almost all conflicts involve communication problems, as both a cause and an effect. Misunderstandings, resulting from poor communication, can easily cause a conflict or make it worse. Further, once a conflict has started, communication problems often develop because people in conflict do not communicate with each other as frequently, as openly, and as accurately as they do when relationships are not strained. Thus communication is central to most conflict situations.

Communication involves at least two parties--the speaker and the listener. Sometimes there are third parties: in-between people who carry messages, from one person to another. Problems can develop at all three of these sources.

Speakers often are not clear themselves about what they mean, which almost assures that what they say will be unclear as well. Even when people know what they mean, they often do not say it as clearly as they should. They may hide their true feelings or ideas intentionally or unintentionally. Either way, people often get confused about other people's messages.

This is especially common when people from different cultures try to communicate. Even if their languages are the same, culture acts like a lens through which we see and interpret the world. If their cultures are different, it is easy for the same statement to mean one thing to one person and something different to someone else. Thus intercultural communication is especially prone to errors.

Listeners also are sources of communication problems. People often fail to listen carefully. They may assume they know what the other person is saying or will say (because they have heard it before, or they assume that one person is "just like" another person from the same group). Also, when people are in conflict, they often concentrate more on what they are going to say in response to their opponent's statement, rather than listening to their opponents' words with full attention. The result, again, is misunderstandings, and often unnecessary escalation of a conflict.

Third parties can make communication better, or they can make it worse. Skilled third parties can help speakers clarify what they are saying, and they can help listeners hear what is really meant. They can act as go-betweens, carrying messages between people who cannot or will not meet face-to-face.

Unskilled third parties or third parties with a different agenda can make matters worse. The media's goal, for example, is often not helping people understand each other better, but rather, presenting the story to meet the media's own goals which may be to inflame the readers' anger in order to sell more newspapers, or to support the publisher's or government's own interests and views.

Different types of communication problems

Misinterpretation of Communication

Even in ordinary circumstances, people often say things that are not interpreted in the way the statement was intended. When people are angry with each other, the likelihood of misinterpreting communication is greatly increased--to the point where it is almost inevitable.

Failure to Understand an Opponent's Perspective

People often view conflicts from very different perspectives depending upon such things as cultural background, economic position, and religious beliefs. In order for the parties to communicate effectively, they need to understand (though not necessarily agree with) the perspectives of other parties to a conflict.

Cultural Barriers to Effective Communication

Culture affects both the substance and style of communication. Culture influences how people express themselves, to whom they talk, and how. For example, while some people may feel comfortable talking openly about their feelings with anyone, others will only talk openly and honestly with very close friends, while others may not talk that way at all. Such differences can cause people from different cultures to misinterpret both what is said and what is left unsaid, leading to misunderstandings.

Language Differences

When conflicts involve people who speak different languages (or even different dialects), it is very easy for misunderstandings to arise. Even when skilled translators are used, it is difficult for translators to transmit complex feelings and emotions as clearly as they are originally spoken.

Misinterpreted Motives

Motives can be misinterpreted as easily as statements can be misunderstood. When parties are in conflict, there is a tendency to assume the opponent's motives are malign, even when they are not.

Inaccurate and Overly Hostile Stereotypes

Often, communication difficulties arise because people think they know all they need to know about their opponents and that further communication is unnecessary. Yet images of opponents tend to be overly hostile and exaggerated. Opponents are seen to be more extreme and outrageous than they really are.

Lack of Communication Channels/Avoided Communication

Often disputants do not have reliable methods for communicating with opposing parties. This may be because they do not want to communicate, or it may be because they are afraid to contact their opponents or have no way to do so.  Sometimes the parties will break-off communication as a form of protest after a particularly disagreeable incident. However, the lack of communication can significantly increase the risk of future incidents.

Poor Listening Skills

Successful communication requires that the parties listen actively and carefully--asking questions and confirming interpretations to make sure they understand what the other person is meaning. People seldom work this hard at listening, however. Often in conflict situations, they hardly listen at all. Rather, while their opponent is talking, they are busy planning their own response. This frequently leads to misunderstandings.

Secrecy and Deception

Sometimes information which is critical to the accurate understanding of a situation is not available to all parties. This frequently occurs in business conflicts, when companies try to keep details about products and processes secret.  It also occurs in international conflicts when governments keep secrets for "security" reasons. This can happen in interpersonal conflicts as well when people simply choose to keep particular facts to themselves.

Poor communication also can arise when a party attempts to strengthen its position by deliberately providing opponents and other parties with misleading or inaccurate information.

Inflammatory Statements

Sometimes communication can make matters worse rather than better.  When communication is threatening, hostile, or inflammatory it can do more to escalate a conflict than it can to defuse it? 

Inflammatory Media

Negative and inflammatory publicity is a problem in conflicts--before, during, and after negotiations. Before negotiations, the media can intensify a controversy, making it harder to get people to work together, or even talk. In the early stages of negotiation, parties often advance tentative ideas which could easily backfire if publicized. The resulting outcry and complaints could easily undermine an otherwise promising negotiation effort. Even after negotiated solutions have been developed, negative publicity can rekindle conflicts, making implementation of agreements more difficult.

Inadequate Information Gathering/Time Constraints

Gathering the information needed to sensibly deal with conflict situations is time-consuming and expensive. In some cases, misunderstandings will arise because of the failure of the parties to invest the time and resources required to obtain important information.  Sometimes adequate time is simply not available. When direct communication is cut off, it is easy to rely on unreliable third party sources--rumour and media stories especially. These are notoriously error-prone, and can lead to serious misunderstandings.

Crisis Communication

In crisis situations, normal communication channels are likely to be much less effective. They often operate too slowly to keep up with the rapid pace of events, or they may have been cut off entirely.  They may also be unable to resist the increased hostility and distrust which crises are likely to create.

New, Poorly Informed Participants

In protracted conflicts, the people involved continually change. Often those playing leadership roles give up their positions and other individuals take their place. These new leaders frequently have a very limited understanding of the conflict's history and the current situation. This lack of information can cause these people to take actions which they would not have taken, had they been better informed.

Constituent Communication Problems

When dialogue or negotiation occurs among a small group of people, they may develop communication skills and a level of interpersonal understanding that is not shared by others outside the immediate circle. If these small group processes are intended to have a wider effect, it is necessary to transfer the learning that takes place in the small group to the larger constituencies which the group represents. Often, however, communication between the small group members and their constituents is not adequate to expand the learning beyond the immediate circle of participants.

Bad Communication by  SweetTea1000

Flaws: they fill up our insides - they consume us all, 

but we decide if they make us or let us fall.

My past relationships, they all seemed to have failed,

but I put the blame on me; Bad communication... he bailed.

The difficulty level of expressing my feelings - it's an all-time high,

I ruin things for myself and  when it ends, I wonder why I cry.

To properly communicate with him, I think I need a bottle of luck,

maybe if I told him how I really felt, he would have gave a fuck.

I understand now that bad communication doesn't help me grow,

it makes simple things complicated and conflicts with what I truly know.

What I know is that you meant an extremely great deal to me,

I'm sorry I never let you know, I'm sorry you're still everything I see.

If I could change one thing about myself, I would be able to speak my mind,

I would have told you everything I felt for you, even if they were out of line.

If I didn't have such bad communication skills, maybe we would still be together,

I could still call you and express myself - I guess it's truly now or never.