The Joys of Communication

I was conducting a Vision and Mission session a few weeks ago with a few highly intelligent, dedicated, fabulous people who are working hard to create a foundation for the hospital they serve. About 5 minutes into the session I looked around to see 8 confused faces staring back at me. I had to stop and laugh for a minute. "What is it?" I asked. The chair of the Board of Trustees looked at me and said, "Tucker, what are you talking about? You have it all mixed up!" Huh, well, this is a good way to start of this type of a session. I mean, this process is amazing, but agonizing much of the time, so if they don't even know what a Vision statement is, we are in serious trouble!

So I asked them to explain to me what it is that I was confused about... what was I mixing up? They stated that I had the Vision and Mission statement confused with each other. To them, the Mission comes first and it is the grand dream for why the organization even exists. Then the vision statement is next telling how we will accomplish our Mission. Interesting.

This is not a blog about what a Vision is or what a Mission is, although, perhaps we should all have a discussion about that - later, but it is about communication. How can we communicate if our understanding of words, concepts, theories, tools, etc are different? We can't, at least not effectively anyway.

How often do we stop and ask, "are we on the same page here?" Is your definition the same as mine when we are talking about simple or complex concepts? Perhaps it isn't that we aren't being heard or we aren't listening, but that we aren't talking about the same thing while using the same words.

Next time, before I start this process, I will ask them what they define as a Mission and  Vision.  I should have been doing this all along instead of assuming that the way I see it is the way everyone sees it. After all, to assume makes an ass out of you and me!