In Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP):
The Meaning Of Your Communication is The Response You Get
Ever have a time when you were sure you were being totally clear, but the other person heard something else?
One way to deal with that is to blame: it’s their fault they didn’t get it. But then they didn’t get it, you didn’t get it, nobody got anything.
Another way is to take responsibility: that’s interesting, I wonder how else I can say it so they’ll get it instead.
By adopting the belief that the meaning of your communication was the response you got instead of the communication you delivered regardless of their response, you become more real-world by being responsive to feedback and flexible by adapting to change.
How Do You Use This?
You could recite poetry all day to your spouse, for example, to communicate your love, but if her response is total boredom, you didn’t achieve your intended message.
It would then be a waste to blame her (’she just doesn’t get it’) for you not achieving your intended outcome, because you have a chance to step back and learn something.
What if a simple ‘I love you’ is enough to get her melting in your arms? You’ve learnt a much faster way to get your intended message across than reading poetry all day 
The Meaning of Your Communication is The Response You Wished You Got
The opposite of this belief sounds a bit silly when phrased this way, doesn’t it? Anytime you or I blame someone else for not getting what we wanted to say and don’t take responsibility for it though, and think our communication was perfect and they were dumb-asses for not getting it, it’s as good as saying the meaning of our communication is the response we wished we got.
If The Meaning of Your Communication is The Response You Get, What Would Be Different For You?
Some schools of communication say that both parties in a communication have 50% responsibility each for the communication. In NLP, we shoot a little higher, and take 100%.
If, whenever you don’t get your intended message across, feel misunderstood or unheard, you go ‘it’s them, they just don’t get me’, then you’ve only learnt to communicate in one way: yours.
But if you take the belief that the meaning of your communication is the response you get, to take responsibility and be willing to be more flexible than your audience could be so you can catch them at all and any angles, you learn how to communicate in two ways: yours and theirs.
And eventually, yours, and theirs, theirs, theirs and theirs too.
This is what sets great communicators, teachers, mentors, coaches, counsellors and speakers apart. Instead of labelling their audience as ’slow’, ’stupid’, ‘resistant’, ’sleepy’, and so on, they take responsibility and go, ‘how can I communicate to them in a way that they’d get what I want to say, regardless?’
If you were to believe that the meaning of your communication is the response you get, how would your life be different?
NLP 101 Series:
NLP 101: What is NLP? Part 1
NLP 101: What is NLP Special for The Super NLP Hardcore
NLP 101: What is NLP? Part 2
NLP 101: So Dark The Con Of NLP
NLP 101: How NLP Changed My Life
NLP 101: The Map Is Not The Territory
NLP 101: There Is No Failure Only Learning Experience
NLP 101: Every Behaviour Has A Positive Intention
NLP 101: The Meaning of Your Communication is The Response You Get
NLP 101: You Cannot Not Communicate
NLP 101 Thoughts: You Cannot Not Change The World
NLP 101: People Are Always Making The Best Choices They Have
NLP 101: People Are Not Broken
NLP 101: You Cannot Not Communicate: The Pygmalion Effect
NLP 101: Everyone Already Has All The Resources They Need
NLP 101: There Are No Resistant Listeners, Only Inflexible Speakers
NLP 101: Life Is A Series of Systems
Recommended Reading for NLP Starters
Unlimited Power : The New Science Of Personal Achievement
Great Reads for the NLP Hardcore
June 14th, 2006 at 9:44 pm
Ah yes. The infamous ‘meeting of the minds’. More often than not it doesn’t happen. An interesting book penned in the mid ’30’s, The Tyranny of Words, hits on another reason people don’t get the messages: the words we choose are open to a myriad of different interpretations. Ask 12 people what ‘facist’ means and you’ll get twelve definitions – based on that persons education, social and economic background, etc. That’s why it is crucial that the person speaking finds a way to seek *clarification* from the listener. And not by asking, “did you understand me?”, but by asking open ended questions that require the listener to repeat, in their own words, what they’ve just heard. If you’ve rattled off a short to-do list to your husband a follow up question of “How do you think you will prioritize these today?”, will force him to repeat the list and verify his understanding of what needs to be done.
Interesting article that should peak some introspective thought on an important topic.
June 15th, 2006 at 12:05 am
An interesting comment that should peak some introspective thought!
I like your comment Sam, it’s very informative. In NLP we paraphrase your point through presupposing that the map is not the territory, no matter how much we think we get what someone else is saying, it’s always going to be just a best guess.
Anyone who’s ever been in a relationship will know
I like the way you suggested to seek clarification. Instead of asking for a direct ‘did you get it’, going about it in a subtle way instead.
March 12th, 2009 at 5:13 am
Nice article Alvin, this is one of my favorite concepts and you explained it very succinctly with good examples.
As I’m sure you’ve noticed, there is a lot of resistance to this idea and very useful belief. A significant part of it
* Distinctions need to be made between our idea not being communicated well and our idea not being agreed with. They are not the same thing but believing “if they don’t agree with me, then that must mean I am not communicating it well” is not communicating well to ourselves. While in many cases it’s certainly true that if we calibrated to the individual and communicated better (let alone learning their native language)they would agree with us, it’s also very true that they may fully “get” what we are saying but simply disagree (not to mention the humbling fact that we have more to learn then they do about the topic).
* It is easy to see how the 100% belief that “it’s their problem, not my communication” is a form of arrogance. However, the other extreme of believing that it’s 100% always your communication that needs to be fixed can hide another kind of arrogance. When we assume that the problem someone doesn’t understand is ALWAYS mainly due to the way we are communicating it, we “benefit” by eliminating the possibility that we could be wrong or very ignorant about the very core idea that we are trying to communicate. For example, in a sales context, we might truly believe that if we persuade someone to buy a new car, we are doing them a favor and it’s a sound and wise decision for them (despite being aware of their financial problems) – when the reality is that it would be the tipping point that drives them into bankruptcy and leading to divorce etc. We could improve our persuasion and communication skills all day long but it doesn’t change the fact that the reason why they don’t seem to truly “understand” our reasoning well enough to be persuaded, has little to do with our ability to communicate the idea. Assuming we have sincere good intentions (sometimes a big assumption to make), we are not allowing for the fact that the other person might just be smarter and/or more experienced than us. So in this case, it would be a form of arrogance because we are not allowing for the possibility that we could either be wrong about the facts, or wrong about what those facts mean.
* I overstand that this belief is within the context of “it’s less important how true a belief is than how useful a belief is.” With that in mind, it’s rarely useful to believe something like this 100% of the time. I doubt that anyone involved in NLP truly believes this 100% of the time anyway. After all, if someone is intentionally withholding information from their physician and intentionally responding to the physician in a way that makes the physician believe that the patient is hiding nothing, it’s simply not credible for an observer to argue that the main reason for the patient’s lack of accurate understanding about thee condition the doctor is telling them about is primarily the doctor’s fault. In this case, the doctor is not provided the necessary facts to communicate something well and they are in no position to even be aware this is happening. There are people who will hide things or not WANT to understand regardless of how much rapport there is. So in this case with the doctor, he is lying to himself, a bit arrogant, and not serving his patients well if he does not leave open the possibility that the PATIENT is not communicating well.
* If you are a teacher and there is a student who secretly listens to music on their headphones in every class etc., and they repeatedly fail exams and refuse to talk with the teacher about it, is it more about the teacher’s lack of flexibility in communication or more about the student’s not paying attention to the results they are getting? This relates to the other party refusing, not wanting, or not interested in understanding – let alone being convinced.
* Often there are other factors out of our control – we could look and sound just like their ex-wife and not even know it…they will unconsciously or consciously go out of their way to never by a car from us. Another salesperson however could just walk up and say “want to buy this car?” and their response will be “yes”.
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I realize that such examples could easily be misused as excuses to not even try to improve our flexibility in communication in our own language, let alone learning another language. It’s just important to recognize the facts first and THEN as the second step, adopt the most useful belief. So for instance since I am not near as flexible in my communication as I want to be, believing that “My communication is equal to the response I get – it is not about my intention” 100% of the time, that belief might be what is needed to take responsibility often enough to get the best possible results from my communication.
On some level though, it’s important not to be brainwashed into truly thinking it is ALWAYS the case – that will have diminishing returns and results we are not wanting.
Just my 5 cents of rambling…thanks for tolerating and thanks again for the great post. If I talked about all the things I agree with about your post, my reply would be 10x longer.
These are some of the reasons that trying to convince someone that it will help them in life to ignore all feedback adopt this belief 100% of the time will be a hard sell – because they KNOW from real world results that belief simply is not always true. So for me, this is a belief that has been VERY useful to continually adopt more often than I did yesterday. So really the only issue I have with the article is the “100%” aspect. I am SO on board with the idea of teaching others (and having to remind myself daily) to take MUCH more responsibility for our own communication than we do. Because as you’ve indicated, the default behavior is to assume the opposite – Why? Because it’s less painful than realizing that we could get better results in most cases
This is the variation of the belief that I am able to adopt of the time – “If what I am communicating is sound, I will always be able to communicate a concept to someone if I’m flexible enough and there is enough time.” After all, it’s not unreasonable to believe that if we had 5,000 years to help someone understand what we’re trying to say, we could do it.
Just as their is an advantageous to increasing the flexibility in our communication, there is also an advantage to increasing the flexibility of our beliefs about communication. If we don’t believe on some level that such truisms are not actually useful 100% of the time, that’s a sign of inflexibility.
March 12th, 2009 at 5:17 am
Sorry for the typos – I was interrupted a few times and should have been flexible enough to look things over before submitting, among other things.