Journey v’s Destination Thinkers

Have you ever wondered why men & women have such problems communicating & understanding each other? Well it’s very simple, once you know that we all have a preferred communication style.  I like to think of the main styles as journey and destination & we primarily all fall into one of these, most of the time. Let me explain.

A journey communicator uses loads of words, tells stories with paragraphs, chapters & tombs.  If you ask a journey person if they’re hungry they would say something like “oh, I’m OK for now, I had something before I got here, but it was only light so I’ll probably be hungry in an hour or 2.”

A destination communicator chooses not to use all the words available to them, they instead speak in bullet points.  If you ask a destination person if they’re hungry that would say something like “no” or “I’m OK for now.”

Does this sound familiar?  I am sure you can see your teenage son, husband, daughter, wife, mother, father etc etc.

When you’re speaking to a destination person you have to remember they are wired to use few words so traditionally only listen to few words.  I like to think of it as the funnel that feeds information into the brain has a wide mouth but small & narrow neck.  It’s like they can receive all the words we send them & as they move down the funnel, the channel gets smaller & smaller allowing less & less words to get through, until in the end all they hear is white noise.  This is not an excuse guys, it’s a fact, but don’t abuse it.

So what do you do about it?  If you have something important to tell your destination communicator try to cut your words down, think of a Power Point presentation, make your points short & succinct, tell them exactly what you want, without any justification.  That way they have no excuses not to listen as you are tailoring your communication to their style.

Conversely when you are speaking with a journey person they look at words as love & if you don’t use lots of words then you mustn’t love them or care about them & they tend to take it personally.

So what do you do about this? Try to use a few more words, it doesn’t have to be a heap, instead of saying no, say thanks but I’m OK for now. They will feel like you care & are treating them with respect.

Also, take into consideration how the person processes problems (September 2013 newsletter).

We all know how to talk, how good would it be if we actually communicated & tailored out talk to suit the receiver, what a gift we are giving not only to them but to ourselves too.

 

The quote I would like to leave you with this month is:-

A life without dreams, is like a garden without flowers.