Axim: You cannot NOT communicate

1. Three teenage siblings are watching television together. When the phone rings, neither of the two boys closest to the phone make any movement to answer the phone. They don't even acknowledge that the phone is ringing. After several rings, the girl asks if they are going to answer. The boys don't respond. She gets more frustrated, and repeats her question more loudly. There is still no response. Finally, as the phone rings for the eighth time, she gets up, walks past the boys, and answers the phone.

In this example, the boys will claim that they have not been involved in any communication about the phone. The girl will claim that they communicated loudly and clearly through their actions and inaction that they do not care. As a result, she starts to presume they don’t care, and her feelings about that shape her communication style toward them.

2. In a meeting, an individual shares a new idea. One of their co-workers listens attentively, nodding in interest and giving great eye contact. Inwardly the person listening to the speaker agrees with most of the aspects of the idea, but has significant reservations about a particular point. However, that person is reluctant to give any feedback at the current time, and chooses "not to communicate" about it now. As the person with the idea leaves the meeting, they tell a third co-worker how pleased they are that everyone in the room was supportive of the new idea. By inaction, their co-worker has communicated approval.

In this example, the person with the idea may have the mistaken perception that they have support from others when they don’t. This can be politically ruinous in a business organization.

3. A manager in a large company is busy putting out fires and trying to be sure clients' needs are met. Over time, due to this busyness, the manager neglects informing his staff about what's going on with the company.

The manager thinks, "I’m in charge and I know what I'm doing," but the employees feel a wall of silence, which they interpret as a lack of concern. Not communicating says one doesn’t care, even if care is really there.

4. A project manager and an employee agree on a set of action steps, which includes an agreed upon time frame: 10 days. The employee completes the task in 20. This is a recurring pattern for this employee. The project manager tells the employee “When we agree upon action steps, you are usually slow in executing them. This makes it difficult to rely on you and forces me to question your commitment.”

Implication: Beyond the looks, words, and non-verbal signals that communicate, so do our actions. In longer term relationships, the overall pattern of actions builds a communicative message that transcends our verbal and non-verbal speech.

5. “What we have here is a failure to communicate.” The nameless Captain at Prison Road 36 in "Cool Hand Luke" says this when certain prisoners are not doing what he want them to do. He mistakenly equates conformity with communication.

“What we've got here is failure to communicate. Some men you just can't reach, so you get what we had here last week which is the way he wants it. Well, he gets it. And I don't like it any more than you men. “

In reality, he has communicated – the character, Luke, is even aware of his intent - but the captain has not achieved his behavioral goal. People often assume that if their messages are mechanically received, that their meaning is understood in the way they intended – and that their audience will then respond behaviorally in the manner they intend. Without an understanding of the difference between lack of communication and ineffective communication, people will continue to try the same things over and over again, resulting in some sort of frustration and perhaps aggression as they continue to fail. This also illustrates the proposition that communication is learned: an understanding of communication effectiveness implies communication improvements through learning.