MISCOMMUNICATION

This incident struct my mind a few days ago in college as we were discussing about "miscommunications." I am sure many of us have miscommunicated with others many times. I have also experienced the same problem with my maid a couple of times too. Initially, when my maid had come down from her country, I had a lot of problems talking to her. This was because she could not understand what I used to say to her and vice versa. As a result, she would end up doing a different thing instead of doing what she was told to many times. But as time passed, I realised that I had to adjust and accomodate to her way of talking by trying to understand her signals. Although, we spoke the same language, Malay, but she comes from a different culture. So, our way of communicating was totally different. It took me quite awhile to get used to her way of communicating. Now, there are no longer any miscommunications between the both us.





Based on the situation above, miscommunication can be defined as an interaction between two parties in which information was not communicated as desired. there are actually three main reasons why miscommunications occur :

• Expectations (When we communicate, we always expect and hope as well as we always look forward only to certain responses. when we do not get what we are expecting for, this is when a miscommunication occurs).
  
  
• The channels of message delivery (Although there are other ways of communicating such as using body language and others, it does not fully describe our experiences and images. Hence, what we say are truly only a portion of what we really want to communicate. Therefore, a degree in which you can pass on your experience is completely dependant on your way of communicating as well as your capabilities).
  
  
• Our internal filters ( We often intepret a message based on what we hear and what we see and from there, we tend to make assumptions. Whether our interpretation is true or false, we always take it as a different question completely. Now, this is where we make a mistake. If our assumptions are false, miscommunications would definitely occur.

The comic strip above shows an example of a situation that involves miscommunications between two parties.

posted by : MITHRAH KURHANDRAN