Lessons on Leadership from the Little Things in Life: Sometimes You Don’t Speak the Same Language
Life is full of examples that teach us lessons. That’s why stories and illustrations make learning so much more effective. When a story can be used to illustrate or demonstrate a valuable lesson, the story makes it much more understandable, relatable, and memorable. With that in mind, I want to take some time to do just that – share examples of circumstances and stories experienced in everyday life which illustrate leadership lessons that we can learn and apply. This is one of those examples, and it teaches us about what to do when you don’t speak the same language.
This is another illustration that comes from an experience with my dog. I was sitting down working on my computer, and my dog came over to me and was clearly trying to get my attention. I scratched her on the head, but that didn’t seem to satisfy her. I went to the back door and opened it to let her out to do her business, and she looked at me, but did not go out. So then I went over to her food and water dish, and I could see that her water dish was empty, so I filled it with water, and she immediately started drinking. When she was done, she came back over near me and laid down with a look of contentment.
Clearly, she needed something, and I knew that she needed something, but we don’t speak the same language (and I am not Caesar Romero), so I had to be intentional about trying to understand her so that I could best meet her needs. Based on who she is, what I know about her as my dog, and what she typically needs, I was trying to discern why she was trying to get my attention, and it took effort on my part, but once I understood, she was able to be nurtured.
The same thing happens when we work with, for, and over people. That’s because we – and they – are people. We all have our own uniqueness, which comes from who we are and what we have experienced, and the result is that we tend to easily see, hear, think, talk, and perceive differently. For example, I once used the word “debrief” in a leadership team meeting at a place where I was new, and I received a visceral reaction from others in the room, which I later learned was because a previous leader had used that word in a destructive manner (as an excuse to rip apart other people on the team for their inadequacies). I had to be intentional about communicating the idea of debriefing, but with different words. So, because we think and talk differently, we sometimes misunderstand, misinterpret, or jump to conclusions about what somebody needs or what they are saying, and react based on our perception. In reality they are saying something else or need something else, and we simply need to be able to understand and interpret what they are saying so that we can respond appropriately.
So, the leadership lesson from this little thing in life, from the illustration of my dog, trying to get my attention, is that you have to be intentional about trying to understand the true intent and meaning in what others say. When I would meet with couples for marriage counseling and discuss communication, one of the things that I would talk about was all the places where misunderstanding could happen in the process, from the origination of the thought in one person‘s mind to the interpretation in the mind of the other person of what was heard. Because of our different ways of thinking and our different experiences, you could say that we are often speaking different languages when we communicate. What does that mean for your leadership? It means that you have to be intentional about seeking out and understanding what the other people around you are saying, in both their words and their actions, so that you can respond in a way that helps, heals, and moves people forward.
