How miscommunication happens(How to avoid it)

Have you ever talked to a friend about a problem only to realize that he just doesn’t
seem to grasp why the issue is so important to you? Have you ever presented an idea
to a group and it's met with utter confusion? Or maybe you ‘be been in an argument
when the other person suddenly accuses you of not listening to what they're saying at
all?
All of that happens because of miscommunication, and sometimes we experienced it.
Miscommunication can lead to confusion, animosity, misunderstanding, or
even crushing a multimillion-dollar probe into the surface of Mars. The fact is even when
face to face with another person, in the very same room, and speaking the same
language; human communication is incredibly complex. But the basic understanding of
what happens when we communicate can help us or event miscommunication. For
decades, Researchers have asked "what happens when we communicate"? One
interpretation, called the transmission model- Views communication as a message that
moves directly from one person to another. Similar to someone tossing a ball and
walking away. But in reality, this simplistic model doesn't account for communication
complexity.
Enter the Transactional Model, which acknowledges the many added challenges
of communicating. With this model, it's more accurate to think of communication
between people as a game of catch. As we communicate our message, we receive
feedback from the other party. Through the transaction, we create meaning together.
But from this exchange further complications arise. It's not like the star Trek a universe,
where some characters can Vulcan mind meld, fully sharing thoughts and feelings. As
humans, we can't help but send and receive messages through our own subjective
lenses. When communicating, one person expresses her interpretation of a message
and the person she’s communicating with hears his own interpretation of that message.
Our perceptual filters continually shift meanings and interpretations. Remember that
game of catch? Imagine it with a lump of clay, as each person touches it, they shape it
to fit their own unique perceptions based on any number of variables, like knowledge or
past experience, age, race, gender ethnicity, or family background. Simultaneously,
every person interprets the message they receive based on their relationship with the
other person and their unique understanding of the semantics and connotations of the
exact words being used. They could also be distracted by other stimuli, such as traffic or
growling stomach.
Even emotion might cloud their understanding and by adding more people into a
conversation each with their own subjectivities, the complexity of communication
grows exponentially. So, as the lump of clay goes back and forth from one person to
another, reworked, reshaped, and always changing. It's no wonder our messages
sometimes turn unto a mush of communication.
However, there are some (4) simple practices that can help us all navigate our daily
interactions for better communication:
1. Recognize that passive hearing and active listening are not the same. Engage
actively with the verbal and nonverbal feedback of others, and adjust your message to
facilitate greater understanding.
2. Listen with your eyes and ears as well as with your gut. Remember that
communication is more than just words.
3. Take time to understand as you try to be understood. In the rush to express
ourselves, it's easy to forget that communication is a two-way street. Be open to what
the other people might say.
4. Beware of your personal perceptual filters. Elements of your experience, including
your culture, community, and family influence how you see the world. Say, "This is how I
see the problem, but how do you see it?" Don't assume that your perception is the
objective truth. That'll help you work toward sharing a dialogue with others to reach a
common understanding together.

The recipe for great Communication

5 recipe ingredients that have to present all the time for great communication:
Recipe for Great Communication
Ingredients:
1. Clarity - Make your point clearly. (How do you make your point clearly; it's got to be
clear.)
2. Brevity - Make your point quicky. (How do you get to the point quickly, how do you
not waste people's time.)
3. Context - Make your message relevant. (How do you help people see, how your point
or hoe your message fits in for them, how does it make sense for them.)
4. Impact - Make your message memorable. (How do you make it stand out, how do
you make it memorable.)
5. Value - Make your message valuable. (Which is fairly self-explanatory. How do you
make your message valuable for the people who are consuming it?)
Those are the ingredients that will go into every communication meal :(Clarity, Brevity,
Context, Impact, Value)
Next, now the question is “How much each ingredient do we need and just like cooking
a great meal,” that's going to depend: different meals are going to need different
ingredients in different proportions. Also, different audiences are going to have different
palettes. They're going to want different things out of their meal.
So, the really savvy communicator is going to look at their row of ingredients:
("We need more clarity", "we need more context"- Audience) and is going to be able to
determine based on the audience that they're preparing their message for.
What ingredients need to be dominant? So how do you figure it out? -When do we need
more?-
When do we need clarity to be an important ingredient?
 when there’s a lot of complexity around the situation or around the issue, you
need to make sure that your message includes plenty of clarity so people
understand what is really about.
When do we need a bit of brevity?
 when time is short, when we think attention spans are short, when your audience
is going to be very senior. You want to make sure you have enough of the brevity
ingredient.
When do we need more context?
 maybe when there's unfamiliarity with the topic or maybe when you're
communicating with people that have a lot on their mind or are walking in to listen
to you, having just come from something very much confusing. You probably
want to make sure that you use plenty of the ingredient context.
When do we need to have a lot of impact? (In our messaging) –
 when there’s a lot of noise, when we really need to work hard to make it
memorable, when we really want it to stand out and we think that's going to be
hard to achieve. We got to make sure we add plenty of impact.
When do we need much value?
 when there's skepticism, when there's a choice, when there's a competition,
when a decision has to be made and there are other choices that could be made.
We have to work hard to make sure that there's plenty of value in the meal we're
creating.
All file of these ingredients is going to be present in every meal that you create in every
communication that you put together. You always want to make sure that you have
some clarity, brevity, context, impact and some value. But depending upon who you're
cooking for. Depending on who you're preparing for. You're going to make choices of
which of those ingredients needs to be most dominant. Think about your communication
like you're preparing a meal for an audience and you want to impress them, you want
them to have a great experience. Every message has ingredients or need: Those 5
ingredients above.
REMEMBER:
DIFFERENT AUDIENCES HAVE DIFFERENT "PALATES", SO BE SURE TO ADJUST
YOUR "INGREDIENTS" TO SUIT THEIR TASTE! (DEPENDENDI G ON THE
SITUATION)

The 4 Skills of Great Communication

How do we communicate in today’s world? It's not easy and it's never been harder.
The world we’re living today moves fast, attention spans are low, everybody has
enormous information at their fingertips People don't listen very well anymore, it’s hard
to be heard in the 21st century.
-So how do we communicate really in that kind of an (such challenging) environment?
It's not easy, but we can make it easier!
And here’s how...
Think about anybody that does anything at a very high level, think about the singers,
actors, dancers or athletes that you know. If you look closely at the way they have
become. They're very good at what they do they all prepare in the same way; they all
practice their skills in the same way. They break the skill down into smaller pieces. They
improve their performance on each piece ,they put all the pieces back together. Then,
all of a sudden, they're performing at a higher level. That's the way we want you think
about your communication.
- People who perform at the highest levels all practice and prepare the same way. (On
how we communicate and how good communication works)
- Current skill level (they are improving it).
We think communication comes down to four key skills :
1. How well do you asses? ( 'Assess', How you assess situations, how you look at the
world around you, your level of awareness, how well you listen. The better we are able
to assess what's going in around us, the more likely we are to communicate in the way
that's relevant to people.)
2. How well do you build your message ('message', how do we build a message plan
based on what we've learned, how do we put it together, what's most important, what do
we include and leave? -(Message includes : introduction, main point, examples, slide.)
The better we can build a message plan the we will communicate.
3. How well do you document. ('Document', how well do we translate that message
into whatever document we need on that they it can be, email, white paper or memo or
even it can be ppt presentation. but how well do we take that message and then
translated it into a document that actually going to help us in the meeting, in that
conversation.
4. How well do we Deliver? ('Deliver', how well do we deliver, speak and how well can
we command attention with presence when we stand in front of the room or when we
lead the phone call or when we participate in the conversation.
Don't just think about your communication skills as this one big thing, it's actually four
things and your ability to
#1 assess situations, #2 build good message plans, #3 translate that message into a
document that helps and #4 deliver with confidence and presence.
Think about each of those four skills, work on each of one of those skills, put those skills
back together and you're going to make to communicate at a much higher level.

The three (3) levels of Communication success

What is good communication in the 21sr century, how do we define it, what does it
mean?
How do we obtain good communication skills in 21st century? What are good
communication skills? Is it simply good or bad?
Are we either "good" or "bad at communicating? Are there levels of good? Or are there
ways for us to think about our own skill development, so that we can build on our skills
over time and reach higher level of good we think there are.
Three levels of Good Communication skills;
- Three ways for you to think about your own skills and pursue your own skill
development.
Levels:
Level 1 : Professional Level communication
 Clarity
- Removing distraction, and audience will hear the communicator and they would
understand what we are saying easily.
- (Defined by one simple word Clarity. We have eliminated the distraction we have
stripped away anything extra that doesn’t need to be there. And we have made
our message simple and clear so that our audience is likely to hear what we're
 talking about. That's a good level to get a lot of people don't communicate at that
level. It's simple, it's clear wherein people will hear us. )
- That's great but there’s more, there’s more for us to think about because we can
make our message simple and clear but that doesn't necessarily mean that our
audience is going to care about it or interesting, which lead us to our second
level of communication. Which is
Level 2 : Leadership Level communication
- Message is interesting, not just simple and clear. Here audience will care more
(to the message and the communicator.)
- We have to understand our audience much better when communicating at this
level.
- (Now you're doing more than just making your message simple and clear. Here
you're making it interesting(the message). You're creating something that your
audience is likely to cate about. They're connected to it, which means you have
to understand your audience at much higher level. That's a big jump from simply
making it simple and clear. Cause it added interesting, or becoming interesting
and now audience are going to care. You're communicating at a higher level.
Level 3 : Executive Level communication
 Able to Build Consensus
- Audience will act
- Here you have to_ Know your material, anticipate audience questions &
Objections, provide details and examples, and Deliver (message) with
confidence and presence.
- (Here, you're doing more than just getting your audience to care, hence at this
level you're being truly persuasive. Now, you’re causing your audience to act.
You're likely to get them to agree with you. You're able to build consensus to get
approval for your plan or your budget request. Also, to communicate at this level,
you have to have full command of the material ( the facts and the figures). You
have to understand the audience and be able to anticipate the questions and the
objections. Need to be able to give relevant examples easily and you have to
deliver all of it with confidence and presence.)

In summary, 3 levels of communication.

 Professional level where it's simple and clear and your audience will hear (you).
 Leadership level where now/here you're connecting it to your audience and
more likely audience will care (about you and the message you share).
 Executive level where you have such a command of the situation that Audience
will act, (you're much more likely to persuade them to act.
Three levels of communication for you to think about and a way for you to think about
your own skill development over time.
Clarity-causing your audience to care then being truly persuasive .

Is social media Hurting Your Mental health

Internal monologue of a typical social media scroll. A monologue that so many of us
have every day but we don't think about it, we don’t' talk about it. Many of us can't
recognize what's happening.
The Unintended Consequences of social media on your Mental Health:
Top 3 Diagnoses on University Campuses
1. Anxiety
2. Depression
3. Stress
4 Common Stressors on social media
1. Highlight Reel
- Just like on sports, the highlight reel is a collection of the best and
brightest moments. Social Media is our personal highlight reel, it's where
we put up our wins or when we look great. "We struggle insecurities
because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else's highlight
reel.
2. Social Currency
- Just like a dollar, a currency is literally something we use to attribute value
to a good or service. In social media, these likes, the comments, shares
they've become this form of social currency by which we attribute value to
something. In marketing, it's called "Economy of Attention", everything is
competing for your attention. And when you give something a like or piece
of that finite attention. It becomes a recorded transaction attributing value.
Which is great if you’re selling a goods or item. The problem is "In social
media, we are the product". We are letting others attribute value to us.
Example: taking a lot of pictures for social media and we have to get that
selfie very well or have a lot of take to make sure and then will wait the
perfect time to post. We took our product off the shelf because it wasn't
selling fast enough. This is changing our sense of Identity. We are trying
our self-worth of what others think about us and then we are quantifying it
for everyone to see. We're so obsessed. We have biological responses
when we can't participate.
3. Fear of Missing Out ( F.O.M.O)
 - an actual social anxiety from the fear that you are missing a potential
connection, event or opportunity. -7/10 student would get rid of their social
networking accounts were it not for fear of being left "out of the loop".
Those 3 are result of a relatively 'normal'* social media experience.
4. Online Harassment
- You're not just question your self-worth ,but you question your safety in
social media. The worst stressor on social media. 40% of online adult
have experienced online harassment. 73% witness online harassment.
100% of the time, it is worst if you are female, LGBTQ, a person of color,
Muslim and etc. Those online harassments like posting your friends funny
photos, posting videos that are not appropriate which can damage a
person’s life.
Those micro moments over time because a macro problem. If you experienced feel
distracted and bothered if you didn’t check your notification on social media and stuff
like that, it’s always happening and we’ve experienced it. It can distract us and that is a
need. That Need become 'Addiction', regarding social media, we are already
experiencing impairment to substance dependencies. (With every like, you get a shot of
that feel-good chemical, dopamine, we got to feel more that social currency) So, we
check likes, posts and we are anxious if we do not have access. When that grows,
when your social media use goes uncomforted overtime, that's when we see the rising
levels of anxiety and depression, and the 4 stressors.
“Abstinence is not an option, but you can 'practice safe social”.
Everything that been said has nothing to do with social media. Meaning,
 Social media is neither good nor bad. It's just the most recent tool we use to do
what we have always done; tell stories and communicate with each other.
Example, twitter doesn't make people write hateful posts. So, when we talk about
this dark side of social media, what we really talk about is the dark side of people.
That dark side that makes harassers harass, that insecurity that makes you take
down a photo you were excited to shares the jealousy when you see other post
that you don’t have and etc. This dark side is what we need to focus on. We need
Preventive Strategies and Coping Strategies. So that when you have your low
days because you will, that’s when you're questioning your self-worth.

4 Steps to Social Media Wellness

1. Recognize the problem. awareness is critical, an advice from someone is helpful,
now if you will be at least be better able to recognize these effects if and when they
happen to you.
2. Audit your social media diet. Monitor whatever goes into your heart and head. Ask
yourself: Did that Facebook scroll make me feel better or worse off? 'How many times
do I actually check likes?' Then ask yourself if you are happy with the results. If you're
mot, move on to step 3.
3. Create a better online experience. Find what suits you, what can social media
makes you a good person or feel better choose what you follow and see.
4. Model good behavior. Social media is a toll, and a toll that can be used for good, for
more positive groups, for revolutions, do use social media and be a good user.

Is social media hurting your mental health?

It doesn't have to. Social can tear you down(yes), or it can lift you up, where you leave
feeling better off, or can make you happy and laugh. If you spend two hours on social
media then, choose your experience or make your experience to be full of inspiration,
laughs, and motivation.