When does a communication start?

This is a common question I ask during my trainings or talks: When does the process of communication ends? And when does the process of communication starts?

Most people are intelligent enough to know that questions framed this way usually means that the answer is NOT when you stop speaking and when you start speaking respectively. So I will not insult your intelligence by implying that as the baseline answer. 😀

What I will do is to take the speaking phase as the initiating point to discuss where the starting and ending points are. I will not discuss the speaking phase so as to focus on the entirety of the communication process. As with all questions of this nature, the answer really depends on why you are asking the question but the awareness of the entire process better positions you to identify if any part of your communication is missing anything.

Also, I am using speaking as a proxy for all forms of communications, which include electronic means as well as human communication: verbal, tone of voice, body language and otherwise. The nod to a colleague across a crowded meeting table as a signal to initiate a pre-planned action is also a single self-contained communication for the purpose of this article.

This is one of a two part article on communication. When Communication Ends is here.

When communication starts

This one is a little more tricky to discuss. Let's project the process backwards beginning with the last going backwards to the first and you you can decide what else you need to do to enhance your communication:

1. 
   Preparing - You set up the environment for a successful communication. Do you need get someone else's buy-in to pave the way for that of your principal target? I am sometimes accused of having a meeting to have a meeting. Yes, I often do an informal chat with two or three persons to discuss how the meeting is intended to go. That could be because I am such a control freak that I aim to write the minutes before the meeting. Also, have you considered the facial & body language angle, which constitute 70% of our communication? I often prefer glass tables during interviews as what people do with their hands & feet in stress situations are quite a give away. My then boss often spends some time directing who in our team sits where before a meeting with a client starts: so that he is positioned to see a specific person's response when we raise a potentially contentious point. The list of preparation is not exhaustive.
2. 
   Planning - You collect the information required to support the communication and think through the content of what you wish to communicate. This phase is plenty covered by many textbooks and articles. So, I will just contribute some tips I think wouldn't be that easily available: write out your communication in full even if you intend to only speak it - writing helps clarify your thoughts; count how many points you have and just remember that number - count them as you deliver them so you know you are complete; make sure there is a logical sequence to your communication - it also helps you remember; if you have too many points, look for somewhere to write them down - your note pad, on the board before the meeting starts, or even hide them as agenda points.
3. 
   Identifying - You identify the person you want to communicate with and determine the best means to execute a successful communication. Textbooks often tells you to tailor your communication to the audience - how right they are. For this you not only need to know the world of the other person (discussed briefly in point no 5 below) but also the context and objectives of the other person at that point in time, which changes with the work cycle or with the current situation. Are you trying to communicate something of lower priority for the other person even if it is of urgent priority to you (eg, because they have budget submission to do)? Are you asking an action from someone whose hands are tied because their boss has just resigned? You will need to put yourself in the shoes of the other person to make sure the communication will be received in the manner you intended.
4. 
   Objectives - You work out why you wish to communicate what you want to communicate and identify what would make the communication a success. Knowing the objectives often also mean defining the outcome of a successful communication. What do you want your communication to lead to? What is the project goals or strategic intention that provides the context of your communication? With this, you can figure out the factors that will engender success for your particular communication. That could determine the manner of your communication - not just the how, but the when, where and who as well.
5. 
   Knowing the person - You familiarise yourself with the world of the persons you have identified as stakeholders with whom you will eventually be communicating. It may be strange to say that your communication starts well before you even had a need to communicate but let's face it - unless, you only just knew them, you would have no time to analyse your audience. You would build on what you already know about the person well before you need to communicate. It is always a fallacy to assume that if the person is an accountant/lawyer/etc, they would respond in a particular way. But each person is a person, each with their own aspirations, fears, likes and dislikes. Each has their buttons you could press or avoid and you need to know what makes each person tick based on their personal nature and history. Ultimately, always remember you are communicating with a person with a heart and mind, not a job title.
6. 
   Knowing the population - You familiarise yourself with the networks of your potential stakeholders and the individual inter-relationships among them. An organisation is made up of a network of interacting of individual and/or group relationships. Sometimes, the path to a successful communication goes through several persons, each receiving the same or different but related communication, which builds on the previous one. In this scenario, the sequence of your communication may be critical. There is also a need to consider alliances and respect/deferment relationships where obtaining the buy-in of one critical person can have a cascading effect on getting the buy-in of others. Your knowledge of the network, based on your observation of how did who does what with whom, will lay the ground for successful communication when you execute it alter.
7. 
   Knowing the organisation - You familiarise yourself with the culture and ethos of the organisation that you will be communicating in. Often, each formal & informal organisation has official, and more importantly unofficial rules, on how communication is to be effected. More fundamentally, there will always be a mindset that governs thinking, attitudes, context, culture or some similar ethos in any group and you must always be mindful of these when considering your communication. For instance, are you trying to convince a data-rational person in a data-analysis organisation on how to performance manage their secretary undergoing emotional turmoil?

Note: Most textbooks on communication stops at No 4. This should adequately deal with the 'what' of the communication but the phases following deal with bigger picture relating t the context within which the communication takes place. You may not need to follow through with every single phase above, as it all sounds pretty onerous but with practice, you should be able to complete each of these phases on the fly, with the simpler communications going through a truncated version of the phases, or even skipping some phase altogether.

So, take a look at why your communication was not effective - did you start thinking about your communication too late?

When does a communication end?

This is a common question I ask during my trainings or talks: When does the process of communication ends? And when does the process of communication starts?

Most people are intelligent enough to know that questions framed this way usually means that the answer is NOT when you stop speaking and when you start speaking respectively. So I will not insult your intelligence by implying that as the baseline answer. 😀

What I will do is to take the speaking phase as the initiating point to discuss where the starting and ending points are. I will not discuss the speaking phase so as to focus on the entirety of the communication process. As with all questions of this nature, the answer really depends on why you are asking the question but the awareness of the entire process better positions you to identify if any part of your communication is missing anything.

Also, I am using speaking as a proxy for all forms of communications, which include electronic means as well as human communication: verbal, tone of voice, body language and otherwise. The nod to a colleague across a crowded meeting table as a signal to initiate a pre-planned action is also a single self-contained communication for the purpose of this article.

This is one of a two part article on communication. When Communication Starts is here.

When communication ends

Let's project the process forward and you you can decide what else you need to do to enhance your communication:

1. 
   Acknowledging - The other person acknowledges that they has received your communication. In the digital age, you get a return receipt, a blue tick or something similar. In the Stone Age of our youth, rapt attention and nodding is often the body language signifying acknowledgement. Still, that is all it is - an acknowledgement that the other person has received your communication and nothing more: not that they agree or even that they have understood. So, beware that nod as it sometimes means not what you think it is. Which is why I always look for facial and body language cues as I speak - common question to people I coach: Were you listening to me when you were talking?
2. 
   Understanding - The other person understands what you communicate. In the digital age, this is often a reply 'noted', but if your are not sure, just follow up. Ensuring understanding, especially the intention, requires the communication of the context. In that sense, what is communicated is often supplemented if not supplanted by when, where, by whom and how it is communicated. You can say that these are the metadata of your communication, which sometimes provides more information than the content of the communication itself. For instance, a request for budget details would elicit different levels of details where it was made during an annual budgeting cycle or as during project initiation.
3. 
   Confirming - The other person confirms their understanding of what you communicated and you will have to confirm that what they understood is really what you intended. The responsibility for confirming, as with all phases of the communication you initiated, lies with you. Many people skips this confirming phase on the assumption that their communication is clear. This often overstates our communication capability, which is often very poor, myself included. It may be clear to you because you know the context of the communication. It is easy, and indeed very common, for the other person to start with a slightly different context in mind and end up on a totally different trajectory.
4. 
   Agreeing - The other person agrees to do what you propose (if the communication is an instruction) or your analysis of the situation (if the communication is just a piece of information). One pitfall here is where there are many parts to communication (eg., several instructions or several pieces of information) and the other person signify agreement: very often, the agreement refers to only the most salient part but, sometimes, both of you may not even agree on what the most salient point is. So, multi-part communication is best handled by enumerating (necessary if speaking) or bulleting the separate parts so that the other person can respond to each part individually.
5. 
   Executing - The other person carry out the action agreed (if the communication is an instruction) or internalise your analysis into their own analysis of the situation (if the communication is a piece of information). Agreeing to action without taking action is evidence that the communication did not get through enough into a commitment for action - was it only lip service or was your communication inadequately robust to compete against views from other sources. So, a follow-up to your communication may be required.
6. 
   Modifying - The other person modify your communication to suit the situation at hand. For this, you need to communicate the intention behind your proposed action. Sometimes, we, especially those us rather more task-focussed, communicate only the bare minimum for instructions on what needs to be done with no indication whatsoever of the reason why they wanted it done. We assume that they other person already knows or do not need to know. As a result, the other person end up with no ownership over the action - essentially laying the brick instead of building the cathedral. When an issue is encountered, they are neither equipped nor inclined to figure out a workaround to fulfil an objective that they were neither sold nor elucidated.
7. 
   Achieving - In a way, action is not a discrete on-off response but rather, it reflects a continuous spectrum of how much other person agree with your communication. Ultimately, we all dream of communicating once and everything is resolved without any further input from us (wow, wouldn't this be great when we make customer complaints?). In this case, the other person not only works around issues so as to achieve your objectives but will open up new lines of actions so as to achieve something that is no longer just your objective but theirs as well. To do that, we not only need to communicate the objectives well but also sell the objectives until they are as much the other person's if not more. And that is a whole communication process in itself. Just note that letting someone else to also own the objectives could mean there will be many other persons out there working possibly independently the same thing and it becomes incumbent on you to be the hub of coordination - but if that is your intention and they are all aligned, why not?

Note: Most textbooks on communication stops at No 4. This should adequately deal with the 'what' of the communication but the phases following deal with ensuring the reason behind the communication is achieved - the 'why'. You may not need to follow through with every single phase above, particularly anything after No 4 but consider them all if it fits into your objective.

So, take a look at why your communication was not effective - did you stop too early?

What God is not

In the Western world, we are used to visualising God as someone old with white flowing beard, moustached and hair, looking wise or stern.  Most of us know that this is not how God really looks like but as creatures who relate to the universe around us only through our senses, we are incapable of relating to a non-physical God who is not detectable by our five sense, nay, not even limited by time and space, the defining attribute of all that exist in the universe.

Yes, it is anthropomorphic to imagine a non-human being in a human form but then again, it is said that humans have been creating God in our own image.  Ever since our ancestors have looked up to the skies and attributed the movements of heavenly bodies to beings they can't see but their logic dictates must be the reason behind the movement of the sun and moon and stars.  

Call it intentionality bias, but the human mind cannot help but see another intelligent mind behind every working of nature.  And as the human mind is the only intelligent mind they know, it is only natural for them to model the mind of this higher intelligence on their own, but with capabilities that far outstripping theirs, considering that that mind controls much more than their puny ones could.

When it comes to imagining how these superior beings, again it is only natural for the early religions to model them on the only superior beings they know at that time: themselves.  So, the gods looked like humans but with human virtues and vices amplified, sometimes to illustrate a morality tale, sometimes to explain the workings of nature, sometimes to just tell a good story.  Occasionally, gods look only part-human as people realises that gods with such human-like qualities of an order beyond humans, cannot look identical to humans: they can only look like humans.  So, such gods may incorporate non-human features, almost always of animals, that their human conceivers respect or fear.

Eventually, the more primitive religions evolve into the great religions of today: religions of the Abrahamic tradition and Hinduism and the religions that emanate from them (Mormonism, Sikhism, Bahaism).  This is not to denigrate the more minor religions outside of these traditions like Zoroastrianism, druidism, folk religions etc.  Some religions like Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism, do not focus much on the divinity even if they may have elements of the metaphysical, so they are not part of this discussion too.

Hinduism can be viewed from different angles: for many adherents, it is a folk religion with numerous gods (some say an infinite number) much like in the Western Classical era.  Higher Hinduism, however, understand God (I use the upper case here) as singular, omnipotent, omnipresent, omnitemporal (note: OK, the word doesn't exist but it is nice to coin a word to complete the three omni, much like God in the Abrahamic tradition.  It is this common imagery of God shared by both these traditions that I address here.

Images of God

Here are some common descriptions of God, which while I do recognise they are rather imprecise description of an unknowable imagery, they are rather influential in the way we relate to the divine and moral injunctions that we feel compelled to comply with due to its divine origins.   I feel that of all attributes, the following three are the ones that define God:

We say that God is omnipresent in the sense of being every where, and the omniscience came about from being everywhere to witness everything.  And be it, 100 billions galaxies with 100 billions stars each, God is there: like having an infinite number of CCTV to record everything.

We say that God is omnitemporal as in being in all times - similar to being in all places.  This would be unlike time travel because God experience all events past and present at the same time.  A bit more like all of eternity flashing before unblinking eyes, with every event of past & future accessible and relived instantaneously.  Often, God is depicted as dressed in costumes of antiquity because we understand timelessness as being not being affected by time: frozen in time.  (A Catholic priest friend once told me of how he was bothered by the view of the priest's very modern watch during a video of the mass: maybe we just don't like God to have any modernity?)

We say that God is omnipotent in the sense of not being subject to the laws of physics (or chemistry or biology or any natural laws).  A bit like Marvel's X-men with their science-defying powers, but with even more powers in a single person - because only one person can be omnipotent at any one time.  Is that a little facetious; unintended but I think our views are a bit like that.

But is God like that?  I would like to evaluate each of these one at a time.  While I really have no idea of what not being limited by time and space is, I know what being so constrained is and if God is not so constrained, then I could imagine what God is not.

Omnipresence

One consequence of not being within time and space is that you do not move.  God doesn't walk to the door and open it because that involves space.  But then, neither is God a large immovable object extending everywhere, as that too involves existing in a particular point in space.  God also doesn't just appear because you appear in a certain time & space and God has no time & space.

God is not like something gigantic to fill all of the universe because that would still be existing within space.  God exists outside of time and space.  I guess it is a bit like what astronomers tell us existed before the Big Bang - before time and space existed.  But we can't imagine that as well.

No, God is not like a ghost because even ghosts exist in time and space, at least they do if they want to talk to us.  But if God were to communicate with humans, it may be in the form of a ghost/spirit, vision, etc that is detectable by any of our five senses.  But that communication is not God any more the vibrations in the air when we speak or the image on the screen during a video call is us.

Omnitemporal

One consequence of not being limited by time is that God does not plan.  Because planning involves time: one day you have a plan, the next day you have updated it.  By the same token, God doesn't think: one minute you think one thought the next minute, your thoughts have progressed on.  This does not in any way preclude God from having a plan: Plans can probably exist outside of time as God does, but the act of planning can only exist within time.  (I have used the present continuous tense throughout for God because it feels the least inappropriate words used to describe something outside of time)

It also mean that God doesn't change minds because changing one's mind involves time: one minute you have decided one thing and the next minute, you decided on something else.  It's not that God is decisive on everything (although God could have been), but it is because changing minds can only happen within time.

We sometimes imagine God popping in and out of time like a time traveller to intervene in human affairs.  That couldn't happen, too because that involves time.  And God doesn't experience and see every event in history in an instant because an instant is again time, albeit a. very short time.  Also, events and experiencing/seeing involves time, so God doesn't experience/see events.

Omnipotent

One consequence of being outside of time and space is that the laws of physics doesn't apply.  Note that in the statements above, I did not say "God couldn't" but rather than "God doesn't" because it is not about abilities (as in a lion couldn't climb trees) but more that it isn't something God does (as in your handphone doesn't climb trees).

Still, if God intervenes in human history, as in a miracle, it can only be effected in the physical world to be observed by humans through our five senses.  In that sense, miracles can only work through the laws of physics.  Even if the laws of physics were changed for divine purposes by God, there must still be a mechanism by which it will be observable by our senses.  What was the mechanism by which the molecules that we taste as wine got mixed into the water - if those molecules were created at that moment, how did it displace the existing molecules already existing in that space-time?.

The fact that scientist observers to a miracle are unable to understand that mechanism does not mean God bypasses the mechanics of the physical world - God cannot but use the mechanics of the physical world for us to observe a miracle.  Of course, one way of bypassing the physical world is that the observation of the miracle is implanted directly into our mental perceptions, but that would just make the miracle an illusion, and I do not think anyone would like to accuse God himself to be a fraud.

In a way, one can say that while God may not be subject to the laws of physics, we and our five senses are and God still need to work within or to work some laws of physics for us to observe divine works.  I am not saying miracles do not happen - just that it would be intriguing and helpful for us to understand the mechanics by which they happen, even if probably not mandatory.

So, where does that leave us

It seems like all our attempts to describe the workings of God are nothing more than seemingly pathetic attempts to describe something not possible for any human to imagine.  God is probably looking at our attempts to perceive an existence outside of time and space much like the same way we view an ant walking over a piece of paper we turn over and over with little or no understanding of movement in the third dimension.

Having said that, it is understandable for humans to impute anthropomorphic qualities to God, to whom we need to relate but we can only relate as a being limited by time and space like us.  In that sense, there really is nothing wrong in being unable to understand being outside of time and space any more than a creature outside of time and space is not able to appreciate time and space.  It is just a nature we all have.  Probably, only the possession of omniscience enables God to transcend that understanding.

While almost anything any scripture has written about God probably no where hit the mark, that is likely no harm as most of these are more akin to analogous description than factual.  I guess as with all analogies, it is fine as long as we do not stretch the analogy beyond the message it was intended to convey.

Such inaccurate images of God is nothing more like statues which represents the person rather than the person themselves.  As long as we are always conscious of that differentiation.  Conscious that the sound waves and the video image are not the person themselves.

The ultimate objective of religion is to inform our relationship with the universe & ourselves and guide our actions within society.  We all hope that that agenda for action is at least not detrimental if not be beneficial to society as a whole.  I would expect the overwhelming majority of any anthropomorphic views of God not to be damaging to society and so we should be free to have our anthropomorphic views, inaccurate as they are.

And oh yes, I am expecting some sweet old nun telling me, as they always do, "Jim, just have humility and accept whatever the Church teachings are".  I have no problem with Church having teachings as they are and thank you, Sister.