One evening during dinner when my youngest daughter was 5 years old, I experienced one of the purest examples I have ever heard of how people filter information.
According to research by Google, we are exposed to approximately 11,000,000 bits of data every second. This data enters our conscious and unconscious awareness via our five senses; visual, auditory, kinesthetic, olfactory and gustatory. We only have the capacity to process around 135 +/- 7 bits of data per second, so 99.999% of the data is ignored by a process of deletion, distortion and generalisation. The small remaining batch of data that we process determines our response.
During dinner, my daughter asked for an ice cream treat. I responded that to have a treat of ice cream she has to be a good girl, and then proceeded to explain what being a good girl meant. I explained that she must eat all her main meal, that she should ask nicely using please and thank you and that she had to do her school homework.
After finishing my list of requirements for being a good girl, I asked her if she understood what I had said and she replied “Yes”. I then asked her what I had said to check her understanding and, looking me straight in the eye she replied; “You said I can have an ice cream!”.
My wife and I laughed, it was so funny; all she had heard from the two minutes of carefully crafted messaging I attempted to give her around target behaviour was what she wanted to hear, ie that she could have an ice cream!
This principle however travels from the dinner table to the board room. People naturally filter information in a way that is favourable to them.
In a study conducted by Professor Howard Raiffa at Harvard Busines School, two groups of MBA students were given the same set of company accounts and asked to calculate the business valuation. The only difference was that one group was sold they were selling the company, and the other group were sold they were buying it. The two groups arrived at a valuation variance of 30% from fair market value in favour of their position! They filtered information based on what best suited their purpose.
What does this mean for our communication? Well if we want to increase our chances of influencing the other side, it helps if we know what they want; what’s important to them. This does not mean we need to agree with them, or always give them what they want. It does mean that we need to understand them so that we can phrase our communication in the most acceptable way possible.
Doing this is easier than said and the subject of this blog. In next weeks blog I shall introduce the ‘Agreement Frame’, one small but effective linguistic tool that can be used to help achieve this objective.
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Very true