There must have been instances in your life where you were supposed to say something and then thought against it because of its possible repercussions or your personal inhibitions. One can never be sure about what he/she must do in situations like this which leads to creation of false impressions and relationships where one has to behave against the original way. What we have here is failure to communicate tactfully and effectively which can save us a lot of misery.

Hide It Or Assume It!
Whenever someone gets trapped in situations like the above one, the most commonly adopted route to escape is that of hiding our original opinions. But by doing this, you are only getting yourself into a social mishap. A person who is good at communicating difficult things with grace and ease is usually more respected as compared to someone who avoids it altogether. Neglecting your own mistake, you start thinking that certain things are not to be spoken and they are naturally understood by the receiver. When this doesn’t happen, you start cursing them for not listening up or simply not understanding your instructions.

The Problem
James is the sales manager of a leading business firm. He comes with a new idea of generating new accounts for the purpose of boosting sales. The instruction given by him to his staff during a sales meeting was: Everyone should bring in more business for the company by the end of this month. The sales improved but no new accounts were generated. When queried by James for the reason behind this, the staff said that they did not understand that business was to be augmented through new accounts. What we have here is failure to communicate.

The Solution
The above misunderstanding happened because of improper communication on James’ side. Clarity, preciseness and feedback were missing from his instructions. Things which could have been done for taking care of this are:
• Instructions could have been provided in written form to avoid any kind of confusion regarding expectations.
• Feedback could have been collected from his staff through a role play act for verifying whether they understood properly.
• The staff could have been queried during the meeting for explaining the manner in which they were thinking of accomplishing the goal.
• Regular updates could have been collected from the staff regarding their progress.

The Lesson
What we have here is failure to communicate clearly and effectively and as can be seen, the effects can be rather disastrous and totally against expectations. Communication does not only comprise of thinking and telling about something, making sure that the message has been received and interpreted correctly is also a part of it. Considering the time spent on communication as futile and consequently neglecting the finer aspects of it can lead to a lot of misery while trying to cover up the mistakes.
There is a vivid difference between simply telling or listening to someone and communicating with someone, very much like the difference between data and information.