on talking to each other
If you’re a geopolitical news junkie like me, you’d have been following closely the submarine fiasco involving the US/Australia/UK and France. Those who know, know, those who aren’t interested, I don’t want to bore you with it. But a key takeaway is that so much drama and conflict can be traced back to people being really bad at communication and cooperation.
You know how the plot of so many Hollywood movies depends on people not saying what they should. (It drives me crazy.) Our hero just stands there, not articulating what they should and then all hell breaks loose. Real life can feel like that at times. It is baffling.
At times people don’t communicate because of some mistaken strategy, thinking it will give them an advantage. (Sometimes it does, often it doesn’t.) Sometimes they want to avoid direct confrontation. Understandable in some instances, and absolutely crazy in others. Like those relationships that last way past their sell-by date because no one wanted to have ‘the conversation’.
There are situations though when the damage done by not communicating important things to people close to you is significantly greater than what would have been caused by delivering the difficult message in the first place. For example, leaving your allies and partners completely in the dark for months, then pretending you don’t understand the issue (hello submarine scandal) is going to have long term reverberations, obviously. Trying to mend fences, the US and France have now agreed that the submarine “situation would have benefitted from open consultations among allies”. Mhm. The other two countries involved in this are looking more and more like mean girls in high school who wanted to exclude the nerdy brunette from the gang.
I trust you
Why is this an issue? Why, because of trust. Trust is one of the most underappreciated commodities in our lives. Everyone pays lip service to it but often breach it then shrug. The world is a much nicer place when people can trust those they are supposed to be able to trust. Family, close friends, allies, partners, policemen, doctors. If important things go uncommunicated, unacknowledged, or dismissed amongst people who should be able to trust each other, navigating life becomes that much more difficult.
In companies, there are high trust and low trust cultures. You know which one is nicer to work at. I can tell you that low trust businesses are often very toxic.
In the wider world, low trust societies based on the importance of kinship contrast with high trust ones built on a kind of moral consensus. Take your pick. In this context you also need to know who you can trust and that they won’t betray you – it can literally be a question of life and death. Whichever culture you live in, not being able to trust those close to you makes for a very hard life. Just ask anyone who lived in East Germany under the Stasi.
There are always ways to justify not telling someone what you should. But be prepared for that relationship to be damaged, sometimes beyond repair. Perhaps you are more transactional than relationship-driven and think you don’t need relationships to last and happily move from one to the next. Up to you but you can’t have it both ways. And if you are transactional but want to do business with those who value relationships – breaching their trust won’t be forgotten soon.
Keep talking
Beyond building trust, talking to each other is an art. An art that needs practising. Perhaps many of us became a bit rusty over the past eighteen months when it comes to the art of talking. But no one is a mind reader – you have to talk and listen to understand what’s in their heads.
Talking is powerful. You can have fun conversations, important ones, critical ones and pointless ones. You can change someone’s life with a conversation. You can ignite curiosity and passion with it. You can mobilise people, get things done, or turn people to dark things and cause lasting damage.
“
The limits of my language mean the limits of my world
.” Ludwig Wittgenstein
Talking can create or destroy bonds. You can convince people. You can hurt people. You can lift people up or tear them down. You can also sit outside, under the moonlight, with a friend, a glass of something in hand, and talk about absolutely nothing at all and feel good about it.
You can talk about problems to find solutions. Or you can not talk about them and not find solutions. On the other side of the same coin is listening. For we talk for nothing if others don’t listen.
You can cooperate or you can agitate. You can reassure or betray. You can talk things into existence or you can destroy them. Talking to each other is a superpower.
Yes, talking can be a responsibility. So can not talking. Choose your path wisely.
In the spirit of talking to each other and talking the future into existence, we’ll have a salon on 7 October about the Future of Cities - from Blade Runner to vertical gardens. It’s going to be online and you can grab your place at the link here. See you there!
Judit