Real Power is in the Transfer of Meaning

COMMUNITY Real Power is in the Transfer of Meaning

By Noel Pinnock Contributing Writer

Communication is at the core of our existence. Think about the number of times you communicated today, as you got ready for work, ate, shopped or went about your other daily activities. Most people spend between 80-90 percent of their waking hours communicating with others. It is through these interactions with others that we develop relationships. There are three modalities of communications and each one has been bulleted below.

• Impersonal communication - process that occurs when we treat others as objects or respond to their roles rather than to who they are as unique individuals. • Interpersonal Communication - a distinctive, transactional form of human communication involving mutual influence, usually for the purposes of maintaining and managing relationships. • Intrapersonal Communication – communication with self; thinking or self-talking

Regardless of the modality, communication is an integral part of our daily lives. We are creatures of communication and as the age-old adage suggests, we can’t live with it or live without it. Most people don’t understand that 90% of communication is predicated on one’s tone of voice and body language with only 10% being predicated on the message. This means that we have to embrace the power that we exude when we project with our voices and move with our bodies. The actual message is also super important because we must invest the time to properly arrange our words that form sentences and sentences that describe our thoughts that will be disseminated vis-à-vis verbal or non-verbal communications. Have you ever had someone shout ‘I love you’ with a frown on his/her face with folded arms in a condescending voice? I am sure you have, but when you really examine the communication more forensically, the message of ‘I love you’ has become distorted by the nonverbal noise the folded arms projected and the verbal noise that is projected through voice. In other words, the message albeit three words is effectively lost in the translation. We process communication not only with our ears but also our eyes and both are influenced by our mind or mental filters. It is also important to note that elevating your voice doesn’t raise your message but elevating your message will raise your voice!

Additionally, have you ever received an email and silently heard the person in your mind? That’s because we assign voice to non-verbal messages based on our relationship with that person and we shape our responses based on our previous engagements. Misusing punctuation, formatting (e.g. using all caps), and font colors can have your receiver (decoder) climbing the wall or singing the music your message brings. It is quintessential that we are incredibly careful when reading and/or processing intent behind emails. So many people have misconstrued a sender’s email because of misinterpretation, and contrary to popular opinion, perception is not reality until it enters my world. The most effective delivery communication channel known to mankind is face-to-face communication because it allows for real-time decoder feedback, which is critical in ensuring your meaning is successfully transferred.

The convenience of email, text/instant messages, facsimile and other channels offer the ability to transfer a

message, but they don’t guarantee the transfer of meaning. Thank God for Facetime, Zoom, WebEx, etc., because these technologies enable sender and receiver to communicate virtually in a face-to-face manner. I didn’t omit the telephone because it is an suitable delivery channel to transfer a message but too often that meaning can be lost in the translation, and to make matters worse, you can’t really see the other part’s facial and body reactions.

The process of effective and powerful communication involves both a sender (decoder) and receiver (decoder) as well as the delivery channel and message. As previously stated, the message represents 10% of the communication process. As a sender, you must know and understand your content to craft a viable message and know your receiver to select the most appropriate delivery channel. In our technologically-driven society, it is so easy for us to leverage impersonal delivery channels such as texting, instant messenger, email, etc. to share our thoughts, but these channels do NOT guarantee that your carefully crafted message will be processed as you intended by the receiver.

The three-word definition of communication is the “transfer of meaning.” Of course, there are professionally trained linguistic connoisseurs that can provide you a more technical definition, but at the rudimentary level, you have not effectively communicated if your meaning isn’t transferred successfully by the receiver. It is both a science and art, and those who learn how to master the process of meaning-transfer can move people to action or inspire them to pause and think more deeply about a situation.

As a licensed REALTOR® and professional speaker, it is critical that I be an effective listener to be an impactful communicator. Listening for nonverbal cues such as body language, eye movement, etc., as well as the audibles reactions to my message, assist me to gage my audience and more effectively transfer my meaning. Again, this is an art as much as it is a science. Pastors, preachers, politicians, and others who spend a great deal of time perfecting this craft can monitor the temperature in a room of 10,000 people or just one by mastering this art. Think about it this way, God created the heavens and earth not using nails and a hammer or shovel and dirt. No, he did not. God spoke our entire universe into existence through speaking it. If you were to ask me, impersonal communication is probably the most important because it describes what we tell ourselves. In the Bible from the Book of Proverbs, chapter 23, verse 7, King David writes, as a man thinketh, so is he! Fundamentally, all creatures on earth have developed means in which to convey their emotions and thoughts to one another. However, it is the ability of humans to use words and language to transfer specific meanings that sets them apart from the animal kingdom. In short, parrots do not communicate, they just repeat sounds. Conversely, words have power, presence, and prophetic implications with no regards of geographical limitations; therefore, once the words are released with through voice, email, or text, they can’t be retracted by the receiver. Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words cannot only break someone but kill them. I am not what I think I am, I am not what you think I am, but I am what I think you say I am. I was told that I will be one of the top producers in the real estate market, and I have repeated it every day in the mirror and on the road. So, when I check back in with you by the end of the year, I will confirm the same. Check me out at noelpinnockrealty.com. Did you get my meaning transfer? There I say…words have power, presence, and prophetic implications with no regards to geographical limitations when the meaning is successfully transferred.

Signed. Sealed. Delivered…It’s YO URS! #getatit!