The key to good communication…Definitions!

Define Your Beliefs or the world will

Most of us haven’t defined core terms, taken a position and the world and those around us define these core positions/terms and concepts. We are settling on unconscious assumptions and devolving responsibility for our own mindset and so defaulting to a certain attitude in any situation.

In the military, nothing is new, the nature of war is constant with subtle changes in the character, therefore in planning and communication everything is defined. Specifically, when you are doing planning and briefing, you need to describe to the team, and the team might be hundreds of people, what we need to achieve in clear, well understood terms. To enable this the military uses effect verbs, these are verbs that have defined definitions in doctrine. 

For example, if I say to you go destroy that enemy position and go defeat the enemy position you are perhaps going to take the same action… but aha … in the military they mean subtly but different things which might change how I tackle the problem. There are definitions of dozens and dozens of verbs. Some of these verbs: Understanding, Fix, Suppress, isolate etc. These definitions build common understanding but also set a standard. 

So this got me thinking now that I’m a civi, [or rather a veteran behind enemy lines] where are the effect verbs in a civilian world. What are the definitions or common standards we expect from say… hard work… dating…love… good driving, etc 

There aren’t commonly accepted standards or definitions, as I’ve found everyone in civi street [read…everyone] is literally running around with their own definitions and most of us haven’t actually thought through our definitions. An interesting one to consider is, what do you define leadership as… this one definition could help you and your team move into a much better space.

Without a definition of how do you know if you’ve hit the standard, we shy away from definitions because they promote failure as much as they do success. If we have an objectively agreed definition for leadership, we can then claim people are poor leaders…more on leadership in future pods/blogs.

Definitions set the standard we expect, so they require effort and that effort is likely to prevent you/us/people from actually defining stuff. So we need to stop being lazy and engaging with some core concepts… what do you think?

If you defined what hard work actually meant to you, would you be able to do more hard work? Or would the hard work you do be more fruitful…

Our standards in life, our movement through life and clarity all matters. One step I’ve taken is to define things, concepts and relationships. A key technique I use as a coach is to define the emotional space between me and my clients. We tackle 2 questions: Who do you need to be to get the most from this relationship? and Who do you need me to be? This process is moving subconscious assumptions and definitions into the conscious space, a conscious effort to define the parameters of a relationship.. That exercise is really powerful, perhaps give it a go in your team, with your boss or even your partner.