Closing the Gap Between What You Say and What People Hear

Pen Island

Okay, so you want to start a business selling pens online. Sounds like a good enough idea. So, what’s a good name for your company? How about “Pen Island”? Not sure what pens have to do with islands, but it’s a surprising combination of images that seems to stick in the mind. And since pens are fairly commoditized, a catchy name is a big plus. So, all right then. Pen Island it is! Perfectly good name.

Except, wait, you’re going to be an online business. Right. So, your URL is especially important. Okay, let’s see about that. Hmm. “Pen Island”? Good. penisland.com? Oh dear. Maybe not so good.

When I first heard of that site, well, I laughed. A lot. (It’s for real, by the way. Or for sure at .net.) But after that, I thought, “How is that possible? How did they miss that? Did they not run it past anyone?”

Folks, if all I do in this life is get a few more people to start getting feedback on their important communications, I will die a happy man. Seriously, I don’t know what it is about getting feedback that people resist so much. OK, I probably do: No time; Uncomfortable; Hard to find a good feedback buddy; etc. Also, I’m sure some folks just don’t think they need it. Yes, getting feedback sounds like a good idea, in general. But with this particular item they’re working on, well, you know, they’ve worked it over pretty well. Given it some good consideration. This one’s fine. So they make their big presentation, go into that important meeting, send out that critical email, or pick a URL without running it past anyone first.

Does it always come out as badly as with Pen Island? No. But it could always be better, and frequently a LOT better.

Maybe that’s it. Maybe when what’s in front of us is “good enough”, we can’t imagine the difference “excellent” would make. The problem is, I do know the difference it makes, and it breaks my heart to see good enough when I know it could be so much better.

You’re just going to have to trust me on this: Getting good feedback is the single most powerful thing you can do to improve your communications.

I’m not saying you need to get feedback on every single thing that comes our of your mouth, or your keyboard. My standard is this: If the communication is important enough to plan out, you should also run it past someone first.

The take-home message? Get feedback. Get feedback. Get feedback.

Tags: Communication, communication coach, communication training, david levin

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 8th, 2009 at 12:58 pm and is filed under Communication. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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