Let me start with a confession. I have sat on this post for weeks. The reason is because effective and godly communication is a very complex business, at least it can be. What I want to say, what I think needs to be said here has so many caveats to it that the point could very easily be buried underneath them. Yesterday, I realised that I know what I want to say and that I do not not need to cover every single possible caveat, question or objection in order to say. So, I will say what I want to say, and try to be godly and effective as I communicate this point. So, here are the basic principles of godly and effective communication.
Once upon a time I cam across a diagram. The diagram was about Bible Teaching and replicate that diagram below for you. Whilst this is about teaching, the point behind applies to communication in general. So the diagram:
What the bible passages says -→ What you understand -→ What you intend to teach -→ What you actually teach -→ What the listener hears -→ What the listener understands
In teaching the Bible, the aim is to ensure that each and everyone of these stages is the same, so it could be re-drawn as:
What the bible passages says = What you understand = What you intend to teach = What you actually teach = What the listener hears = What the listener understands
Right now is not the time to get in to a debate about the details of the Bible and Bible teaching. Instead I want to draw a diagram about our communication and then draw out the principles. Here it is.
What you think = what you intend to communicate = what you actually say = what the person hears = what the person understands
Really, whilst there are many principles to draw from this, the ones I want to express are simply these – Say what you mean and mean what you say and consider carefully how you will be heard and understood.
1. Say what you mean and mean what you say
I do not literally mean that you need to say everything that pops into your head. Nor do I mean that you should not apply a filter to your thoughts in order to be loving and kind to people. In the interests of following my own advice, here are some examples of what I mean. You have decided to do something. You want to persuade people that the thing you are doing is a great thing to do. So you make up all kinds of reasons as to why you are doing it that you think the other person will value. You don’t value any of these things and they were not really things that factored into your decision at all but, you think, if you tell someone the real reason why you want to do something, you assume they will think that is a bad reason, so instead, you fabricate a whole other load of reasons.
This is ungodly. This is not acting with integrity. You are not saying what you mean. You are not saying what you think. My first question would be that if we are so concerned that people will not think our reasons are good, maybe we need to consider if our judgement here is askew.
What we are talking about here is transparency. Godly communication is transparent. To often we are tempted to consider the outcome we want and communicate whatever we think is most likely to secure that outcome. Maybe we want people to support us, and so we try to present ourselves as worthy of support, rather than being in need. Maybe we really don’t like something or want to do something, honestly we do not have a good reason, but we try to come up with some anyway to secure the outcome we want.
So, when I say “say what you mean”, I am looking at the first half of the diagram. That as far as is possible, you need to communicate, with honesty, openness and transparency, the truth of the situation and the truth of what you think about it. What you think, what you know to be true needs to be what you intend to communicate and as far as you are able what you actually say.
2. Consider carefully how you will be heard and understood
I could flood the post with caveats here. Of course you cannot be responsible for what happens inside your listeners head. There are so many factors, beyond just what you say that will affect how they understand it. Here is the point though – this does not absolve you of all responsibility. We MUST consider carefully how we will be heard and understood. The reason is that the purpose of all of our communication is to transfer our own understanding and thoughts into the head of another person or persons. The whole point is to create thought and understanding in the mind of someone else. Therefore to take no responsibility for this whatsoever is reckless. Now, we are not clairvoyant and we do not have perfect insight and so our ability to do this is limited. However, whilst we can never be 100% responsible for what a person understands, we are not absolved from responsibility to consider this well before we speak. Especially if the communication is planned in any way.
Those are the two main things I want to say, but before I finish I wanted to flag a few other points.
- There is a difference between facts and truth. Let me give you a silly example and acknowledge my own failure at the same time. The other day I was asked what I had for lunch and I said I bought a sausage roll from Greggs. I did. This is factually accurate. Prior to that I had bought a sausage roll from a different independent bakery. So whilst my answer was factually accurate, it was not true. We have an obligation to speak what is true, not simply what cannot be proved to be factually false.
- Honest and transparent communication requires humility and trust. Trust because in speaking honest truth, you need to express faith in the response, outcome and result. The alternative is to try and manipulate things to secure a specific outcome. It requires humility as well as we must be prepared to face disagreement on the conclusion we have drawn and the reasoning for the decisions we make. We must have the humility to be exposed to the fact that some of our logic may be flawed and some of our reasons may be personal and/or selfish.
- We should strive as far as possible to work so that all our communication is of more benefit to our hearers than it is to ourselves. Obviously there is overlap here but this is a question of motivation.
These are my thoughts on this. This is my opinion. Others may disagree and I am happy to hear this.
