Dialogue in the Workplace:
It's Happening Whether the Owners are an Active Part of it or Not
How Respect Someone When Perspectives Clash
 

  The way people perceive things is fascinating. There is an astonishing probability that someone will misinterpret the meaning of a spoken or written word from another person. There are just too many semantic and environmental factors involved to consistently communicate a true meaning from one person to another.

   Take a look at some of these simple examples in which people can perceive different things when seeing, feeling, reading, tasting, smelling, or hearing the same set of stimuli.

   If we are so easily fooled by simple examples, how much more are people misguided in a complex business environment? Take a look at the following perception puzzles.
 
1 . Take a look at the picture. What do you see?
Some people will see a woman’s face.
Other people will see the saxophone player. Can you see both? Hint—the sax player is in the silhouette
 
2 . Here is another famous picture.
What do you see in this one?
Some people will see an old lady looking down.
Other people will see a young lady looking away.
 
 
 
3. All of the diagonal lines are parallel to each other.

 
 
4. The Great Wall: Humpty Dumpty is about to take a great fall because he just found out that the two red lines are equal in length. Take a ruler and connect the tops or bottoms of the red lines.
 
5. Rotating Wheels The circles appear to rotate when you move your head closer and further away from the screen while looking at the dot in the center. Our peripheral vision interprets the relative increase or decrease of the image in the retina as rotational motion of the slanted lines.

6.

Word Color Test

In this test DO NOT READ the words, say aloud the COLOR of each word.
 

   This is a type of psycholinguistic test that poses some difficulty because the portion of the brain that handles language has the conflicting tasks of verbalizing the color of the written words while ignoring the meaning of words representing colors.

 

    How well do you know your company's mission statement? Can you recite it verbatim? Do you know what it means to you specifically? If I picked any random 3 people in your company, and I asked everyone to describe the company's mission statement, would you all be on the same page?

    By law, a 35MPH Speed Limit sign means the maximum speed limit is 35MPH. Somehow, this fairly black & white regulation gets interpreted in various ways. Some people may travel 37MPH, some 40MPH and some may even go 45MPH. Unless a person is being followed by a police car, we don't see many people traveling 33MPH. What is it that makes people stretch the tolerance? There are a number of factors, however, I'll state two biggies -- 1) somewhere between the self-gain (how much I can get out of the situation for me?) and the community-gain (what is best for others involved in this situation?); and, 2) how well does the person understand the situation at hand?

   The 35MPH Speed Limit Law example occurs all of the time within your business. For example, a report that is due on the 10th -- some people turn it in on the 10th, some may start on the 10th, some may not start the report until they receive a 2nd inquiry as to when it will be completed.

   If the 3most important rules in real estate are location, location, location, I would state the 3 most important rules in business are communication, communication, communication. The goal of communication is to bring clarity and understanding so the parties at hand will agree on the middle ground between self-gain and community gain.

Immediate FX Consulting, Inc., are experts in building healthy communication.