What I know about good communication, I learned during the past three years of my life. In 2004, I fell in love with and married an Italian who didn’t speak any English. At the time, I spoke not a lick of Italian. I remember once during our first year of marriage I thought he was bringing home a tub of ice cream, so there I was, literally salivating at the thought of curling up next to him with a pint of Häagen-Dazs pistachio and a movie, and in he walks with a pound of sugar. It was my fault. The words zucchero and gelato didn’t quite roll off my tongue the way they do now.
I tell that story to make this point: that not sharing the same culture or language as my partner forced me to learn the techniques of deep listening, the nuances of body language, and most important, that you should remain silent before you shriek.
I had good reason to celebrate the latter skill recently in my office, after I saw an article based on a press release that my firm had disseminated to a journalist for one of our clients. It was written as if the journalist had conducted an interview and was littered with several quotes attributed to my assistant, who had simply disseminated the release.
I was angry. My rage shook me like a leaf being tossed about in a storm. How could Kristy (the journalist) disregard the basics of good journalism? Did she not know her actions were unethical and had possibly damaged our relationship with our client? I composed a harsh, angry e-mail and was just about to press the send button when I thought about that pint of Häagen-Dazs, and how when I tried to express my desire for something sweet, my husband thought I wanted to make something sweet. (I had been in homemade pudding making mode during our first year of marriage.)
And so instead of sending that e-mail, I picked up the phone and asked Kristy why. I wasn’t hot-headed or self righteously indignant. It was the best call I made. Turns out Kristy had submitted her story to a sub-editorial pool and a young, inexperienced sub-editor liberally attributed the facts as quotes. The flaw remained, but the journalist had not broken my trust.
One retraction letter later, the lessons are clear. How you choose what you say or do is crucial. In business, as in life, things said and done in anger are often visceral and immediate. But if you stop, step back for a moment and ask why something happened, the answer often leads to better understanding.
In the end, I preserved that crucial relationship with the reporter and yes, I did make bread pudding with that pound of white granulated sugar.
