Here’s a scenario all too familiar: You text your friend to make plans to meet at your favorite coffee shop at 11. You show up at that time, wait an hour or two, and then you angrily call because they should’ve been there already.
It’s at this point you realize you forgot to specify whether it was 11 a.m. or 11 p.m.
This is a perfect example of the term communication breakdown, which describes a state of two people who aren’t communicating effectively. Ultimately both people should regroup and work toward establishing clear communication.
While such situations are annoying, they are avoidable.
Psychology Today reports the best way to re-establish communication is to: 1. Not blame the other person, 2. Stop assuming what was not explicitly stated and 3. Learn new tools to communicate effectively.
Rather than yell at your friend over the phone for failing to meet you, when you take away the blame, you take some of the responsibility for the loss of communication. In not assuming that they already knew to meet you
When you take away the blame, you take some of the responsibility for the loss of communication and avoiding future misunderstandings.
Ninety-three percent of communication is nonverbal. Included in that 93 percent is body language, tone of voice and facial expression.
Leaving out that 93 percent, texting allows for only a narrow window of expression. One would think that because of this, texting would be an ineffective way of communicating, but it doesn’t have to be.
Because of this, text messaging can be one of the most treacherous mediums of communication since it is mostly nonverbal and allows for instances of communication breakdown like in the anecdote above.
If one takes care to give sufficient and correct information to the text recipient, texting can be a very useful form of communication with the added advantage of allowing both parties to look at past text messages as reminders.
The moral of the story is: if you’re making plans over text, make sure to include all relevant information within one text. That way, you eliminate all possibility of a communication breakdown, and you don’t have to apologize for being unclear. An obvious point, but worth a reminder.
