Baby Blabs in "Mature" Communication.

I got on my laptop to send a mail to my boss on a very difficult topic, especially since I couldn't broach it to him when I called earlier in the day; and as I typed in the last sentence, "I hope you understand".. my mind raced back to some 15 years ago in my home back in Lagos. I was barely 10 and I had a private lesson teacher who came around the house every other day of the week to teach me and my siblings mathematics, english and one other subject we never really liked; this private lesson teacher was also a head teacher in my youngest brother's school. Let's just call him Mr A.


Mr A. came to the house one evening and before I said a word to him, he asked me to go on my knees. I then had to go through some form of interrogation... why? I had gone through my youngest brother's note the previous day and noticed many grammatical and spelling errors, I made corrections with my pen and wrote at the bottom of two different pages "aunty you understand". what in my opinion was supposed to be a nice assistance rendered turned out to be a pointless criticism by a 7 year old to an adult, teaching her a job she's been doing for years...

It could happen anywhere; in our daily interactions with people, while you are at the supermart chatting up a new friend, writing a report to your boss, drafting a letter to your loved ones or colleague, in your relationship with people; we sometimes convey the wrong messages.

Communication is a two-way street, there's always a receiver and a sender. To convey the right message at each point in time, you have to go outside yourself or at the very least, way over into the next person. If it takes you hours to draft that letter, do it. Just make sure you are reading through the mind of the receiver. Read up that report once more before it gets to your boss' desk, listen and pay attention more than you talk; to truly communicate the right things, you have to care a little bit more about the other person.

I paraphrased that sentence many times over to be sure I was passing the right message to my boss, Mr A. never believed I wasn't being rude to my brother's class teacher and the rest remains history.