Recently, a friend told me a wonderful story. A story with more meaning than most of those I’ve read or heard. This is the story of a girl, her father and an old man. In hindsight, the morality of this story could have been the source of the wisdom that saved the world’s largest automaker Toyota when it recently faced the biggest threat to date… sticky accelerator.
Effective communication requires careful listening: storytelling
There was a girl who, like most girls, had a special place in her father’s life. Of course, they spent a lot of time together. Since the girl’s father was a good parent, he always tried to make sure that the time he spent with his daughter was as healthy as possible.
Since the girl was not old enough to be dominated by awkward conversations about her period, her father decided to use the time they spent together to teach her lessons that he thought would have benefited him throughout his life.
The art lesson of communication
The girl’s father preferred, among other things, to emphasize the art of listening to his daughter.
So the girl acquired extraordinary listening skills. Even at a young age, her friends often wondered how distinctly she remembered the conversations of a century ago. The little girl learned so well to listen that she could easily tell past and present conversations with precision, which was both amazing and envious.
What’s the point of listening to all this?
It so happened that next to the girl and her father lived an old man. Every morning, the old man and the girl’s father spent hours discussing the short pole they shared. This ritual was an event that dominated the whole life of a little girl. Because of his routine, it became barely noticeable to the girl. If you asked her, she wouldn’t care about talking. For our little listener it was an ordinary adult speech.
As the girl grew older, she improved thanks to her unique gift, which quickly caught the attention of her teachers, strangers, and inevitably her father. The girl, in turn, did not see better use of her listening skills, except that it was a way to entertain friends and enemies. It was something else for her.
However, my father had other plans. He decided to overload the girl. After telling her how proud she was of him, he asked her to go and listen to what the old man was saying.
The father also made it clear to his daughter that the task would only be accomplished if she knew what those morning conversations were about.
In doing so, he (the father) explained to her (daughter) that he appreciated everything she could remember and then repeated, but he still wanted more from her. To get to that little addition, all she had to do was listen to the old man.
The moral of the story
Time passed, and the girl began a new business. Finally, after a while, her father approached her and asked if she had known what they usually talked about with the old man.
Instead of the usual concert, which is usually performed by a girl, she said the following: “The old man speaks a lot. Many speak of his many regrets in his life.
At that moment the father looked at his daughter and said fewer words: “Now go, my daughter, and listen to the birds, listen to the rocks … listen to the universe.”
The role of communication in business and in the workplace
Communication supports commercial transactions. It helps to assess the needs of the market, to develop, distribute and sell products, and to resolve disputes arising from commercial transactions. The final result of this is that communication is the paper on which business transactions are carried out.
In today’s globalized economy, communication is of particular importance. This is mainly because companies have a growing need to understand new customers and work in a different cultural environment than their home country.
Cultural and linguistic differences often interfere with communication. For example, a common expression, such as a smile, is easy to misinterpret in some parts of the world. While a smile is considered a sign of happiness, in most African cultures a smile can be a sign of shyness. This is especially true if the person who smiles, removes, looks down or sweats in other environmental conditions. When such communication failure occurs in the workplace, the organization in use runs the risk of not achieving its goals.
They say in a clearer tone that in ancient times the exposure of teeth, as with a smile, indicated aggressiveness; a fact that early researchers realized too late when confronted by local tribes.
Another example is eye contact, although eye contact is desirable in American culture; in Japan, insisting on eye contact with an interlocutor can be seen as rudeness and intrusion into personal space.
About communication classes: effective communication is best learned when it is taught and gained experience
The importance of effective corporate communications is emphasized in many auditoriums where future CEOs, CFOs, CEOs, and company presidents are brought up. Communication research is also an integral part of MBA courses and is also offered as a separate course in many business schools, colleges and universities.
On the other hand, it is no secret that business coaching – the phenomenon of the development of small and medium-sized enterprises – is completely dependent on good communication.
The signs could not be more obvious, this apparent “obsession” with business training and communications underscores the importance of communication in any business, even in online business portals.
Now that we have seen the seriousness of this question, I am not going to turn this article into another tirade or try to make it look like a pathetic classroom; but according to how I started, I will profile, expose and contextualize the thoughts of more respected people. Reflections of leaders from all walks of life who at one point wanted to make an effort to talk about this diverse and important topic.
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