How to Keep Your Cool When Misunderstood By Entire Groups of People
How to Keep Your Cool When Misunderstood By Entire Groups of People
On community communications and stoking respect in your heart!
One of my earliest frustrated memories was hearing my basketball coach shriek “REBOUND! GET THE REBOUND!” to my beloved teammates, all nine years old and thick-necked just like me, as they proceeded to not, in fact, get the rebound.
“Do you think they, ah, you know, know what a rebound is?” I asked him on the sidelines, hoovering a blue Gatorade, breathless and stinky.
“Of course they do,” he insisted like we cared even a little bit about basketball in our real and dopey lives.
But they didn’t know! I didn’t know! And this man, someone’s sweet dad, went on to get more and more frustrated as we just let the ball fall back into the hands of the other team.
We did not, ultimately, get the rebound – which, as a reminder, we didn’t know the literal meaning of.
When I reflect on this origin story of mine, I want to go back in time, fix my weird looking bangs, and say: Hey kid, it’s really sweet of you to have noticed that. Also, get ready to experience this four billion more times in your life.
Because here is the thing: every bit of communication to a group of people is ripe for misunderstanding. But the true delusion exists when we pretend like it isn’t. Even if we have been on the other side of the dynamic many times before, misunderstanding things.
I’ve been that coach, I’ve been that team, I’ve been that coach’s coworker or collaborator or frustrated friend tired of hearing them complain about how nobody wants to rebound in elementary school rec league basketball anymore. We’ve all been all of them!
The communication could be as small as asking volunteers to clean up a space after they’re done using it, or sharing a new process for accessing the building, or something as big as launching a new database or website or way of working that people have been asking about for ages. Maybe people don’t get it.
And maybe this, on some level, however small, infuriates you. It reinforces a few things for you:
You can’t trust [insert person] here to do [insert expectation]
Nobody cares to try what you’re suggesting
Everybody is too busy to engage with the thing you worked so hard on
Or even worse, the thing itself – the new system or behavior change you’re asking for – isn’t working
And one of these beliefs stops you from changing your approach or learning why this might be happening at all.
For some reason, this is my #1 pet peeve. (That’s right! I’m starting this Substack with my #1 of something! Leaving my heart in your hands!) I think it’s because I hope that people in community roles - whether you’re supporting the container for community or a participant in one – can manage enough patience and grace to learn from moments like this instead of jumping to assumptions. Whether we like it or not, to be in a role like this requires some extra well of belief in people. If we can’t muster that, why would we be here?
What would change if you communicate as if they won’t understand the first time?
In ‘All Communication Is Lossy’, Mandy Brown really articulated this idea in such a beautiful way:
The most impactful mitigation strategy is to accept that lossiness exists. Simply adopting the mindset that signal loss is normal shifts your attention in ways that start to reduce it. Most miscommunication happens because we aren’t aware of the potential for it, or because we presume it’s unlikely rather than the default state of affairs. If you are aware of the likelihood that some of what you say is getting lost—and, conversely, that you aren’t hearing or absorbing everything that other people are trying to tell you—you are already three-quarters of the way to reducing the signal loss down to something sustainable, if not inconsequential.
Put another way: it’s lack of awareness to lossiness that dooms most conversations to miscommunication, not the lossiness itself.
The shift is simple: don’t communicate as if misunderstanding is a possibility. Communicate as if misunderstanding is a guarantee.
The rest of the piece does a lovely job getting into the ways you might approach this change and why it matters. I’d like to offer one emotional element to it too:
You have to believe people are doing their best to understand you. Actually believe it. In your actual heart. Or know that if they’re not doing their best, there might be a good reason why. Every time you think that people are careless, or trying to sabotage you by not engaging with an ask, drum up some faith in them. Believe in their dignity. While there is always a chance that somebody is intentionally ignoring you, the chances are much greater that something else more interesting is going on.
As someone holding the incredible honor of crafting experiences for a community of people, it is, after all, our duty to understand.
I find this small heart shift stirs up enough patience and grace that it changes the quality of the things I say, whether it’s to a dear friend or a group of forty people in a learning cohort. It inspires curiosity in the place of blame. It makes me reflect more on my methods instead of railing against others for not trying hard enough.
Is this an opportunity to demonstrate what I mean rather than send one more longform text reminder? Has the thing I’m communicating been designed with others instead of for them in an echo chamber? Do they even know what a rebound is, or were they toddlers just five years ago?
More than anything, it helps me remain in a more relaxed and loving place when creating with groups of people. And isn’t that where we all wanna be?
P.S. Welcome to GROUP HUG!!!! I’m so freaking excited about this and hope to share here regularly, hear from you about what these ideas spark for you, and spelunk forever deeper into the elusive human magic that makes community possible. Did this little essay make you think of somebody? Share it with them via the button below, why dontcha!