Reflection 11 of 52: What assumptions have you made lately?
March 17, 2014
As our
global community shrinks, communication assumptions spring up in the most
unusual places. Here are three unrelated but illustrative scenarios that made
me rethink my expectations.
I have
been following a Kickstarter campaign raising funds for a movie called Being George Clooney.
This is a
profile of the men who audio dub for Mr. Clooney around the world. A Brazilian
Emergency Room doctor is just one of 24 gents that bring a Clooney type voice
to the audiences in all corner of the world.
How fascinating that our expectations have evolved to this level and how
much support a movie such as this can generate. I would never even have
imagined there would be jobs like this. I just assumed it would not matter if an actor
sounded different in another language. How wrong was that?
Then, I
was crabbing to a friend about a junk removal service not advising me their
workers are not allowed to walk over snow. My pal reminded me the call taker
was probably somewhere far, far away. That person would have not heard about
our freak snowfall and perhaps had never even experienced the chilly white
stuff. I was not thinking about that as I shoveled away the frozen icy mess
with an audience of two buff young men. Obviously, this company had a good call
centre to give me the feeling they were just down the street. Wrong assumption
number two.
The third
circumstance came while I was doing a training session. We were reenacting a
presentation given to an audience in Romania. The group was telling me how unresponsive
their colleagues are in that country. When the presentation finished we all
just looked at the presenter. Even in a mock situation we had nothing to say.
The group had no call to action; it was purely a “state of the nation” talk. When
the group realized it was not the audience they were completely taken aback.
They had just assumed it was a cultural difference and I bought into that
assumption until we heard the presentation.
Technology
is pushing us along this path toward the global village that has been touted
many times.
I often see examples of the need to bridge our many communities through better
communication and fewer assumptions.
We need
to dump many of our preconceived ideas if we truly want to connect in our brave
new world.
Have you made any unusual assumptions lately?
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1 comments
Great post Della and an excellent reminder of looking deeper and the importance of looking at things from the audience or receiver's perspective.
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