Why Are You Telling Me This?

Sounds a bit...blunt, stated like that, doesn't it? Attention is precious.

Why Are You Telling Me This? (aka What's In It For Me?) is the question that anyone, reading practically any unsolicited item, asks. Even less politely, Why the **** Should I Read This? When drafting a communication, you need to answer WIIFM very quickly. It's a myth that your staff actively want to read the staff procedures guide, or that your clients want to read any particular advertising puff piece you put out... unless you answer the most burning question.

Why Are You Telling Me? works in conversation too. We've all known people who 'over share' just as we've all been stuck beside the person with voluntary mutism at the conference dinner/wedding reception from hell. It's a truism that women communicate to create intimacy and men communicate to exchange information. If true, it suggests men and women spend much of their lives fundamentally misunderstanding each others' communication (and thus, zoning out as soon as possible). Which explains a lot, really.

So a woman may begin a 'listen to how I handled this really difficult situation' conversation with, "I had a real problem with work colleague X today..." Only to have a man jump in and explain what action she should take. He thinks: question answered, satisfactory conclusion, communication terminates. She thinks: what a prat, he doesn't listen to a word I say AND he thinks I'm an idiot who needs to be told what to do all the time.

I once had a friend whose grandmother would spend most of the phone conversation describing what she was watching on television, as in: "oh goodness, the dow jones has just fallen 22 points... anyway your aunt's surgery went well last week... well I should think that footballer would be suspended after his performance on Saturday - it just came on the news - what was that you said, dear?" I'm assured it was a foretaste of one of the outer circles of hell. Grandma's intention was sharing a snapshot of her experience as a way of building intimacy (I'm guessing), but it left my friend feeling her grandma was more interested in bad television than interacting with her, and plaintively asking: "Why would she think I care about the dow jones? or the football?!"

It's not entirely comfortable to understand that even our nearest and dearest may (or may not) be all that interested in any given snippet of communication. They are interested in us, but sometimes at the macro level, rather than the micro* level.

And so we resort to blogspot, creating a communication cargo cult in which we hope someone out there on the web will be as interested in reading/hearing what we say, as we are in saying it. May the force be with you as you communicate today, whatever your chosen medium.

*unless they've 'friended' us on facebook/twitter.

This is post 72 of 100 posts in 100 days.