When I first started this sporadic blog, I wrote about communicating (see Lesson No. 5 - Huh?, Lesson No. 5 - Continued, Lesson No. 6 - Catching Flies, and Lesson No. 9 -Thinking Before Speaking).
Most of these dealt with not choosing one's words wisely (often during an emotional moment).
But another important angle to clear communications is sharing the same definitions. I've seen this become an issue at my job. I work with brokers putting together proposals for reinsurance. It's a back-and-forth process, requiring a bit of project management skills and a proposed timeline. One of the recent proposals we worked on had the brokers adhering to the timeline - in their eyes, but not in mine. The difficulty came in that I should've clearly defined what a draft is. A draft has most of its parts in place, but faces rewriting ahead. It is not something with many pieces still missing. We learned from this, and will be more specific in the future.
The point about definitions was also driven home once at the hairdresser's. I went in for a cut and asked for two inches to be taken off. The very smart woman asked me to show her two inches "since everyone's is different." Smart, because she wanted to establish a lexicon before working from her definition.
I think I'm dwelling on this now because I've just joined the world of Facebook (what fun!). How do we define a Friend? Someone we were friends with many years ago? I'll accept that. Someone we know/knew in passing? There, I'm not so sure. The "Friendfinder" offers you links to "People You May Know." Yes, I may know them, but is it okay for me to ask to be their friend?
I asked for those I felt confident asking about. But for others, I think I'll wait and see if anyone asks to be my friend.
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