I am headed off to Orlando for several reasons: as an adjunct faculty member for Mountain State University, we are offering a three-day three-college-credit course on Aviation Management & Marketing II. This will be held at MSU’s Altamonte Springs campus, just north of Orlando.

I’ll spend some time with my parents, then head off to the Orlando Convention Center. I am offering an NBAA Professional Development Program, ‘Goal Setting and Performance Appraisals’ on Sunday, then attending the convention.

I will be soliciting experiences and examples in communications from all these venues. Please pardon my lack of postings … rest assured I’ll have a lot to blog about when I return!

In the meantime, I challenge you to listen, really listen, to your representatives talk about the bailout, and to the vice-presidential debate. Listen to what they are saying, and to what assumptions you are making from hearing them.

Remember, it’s not what they said, it’s what you think you heard!

I watched the season premiere of Grey’s Anatomy… a very interesting showing of egos under stress. Seattle Grace Hospital had fallen to 12^th place, and as such, are not the top trauma hospital. They had three women in long dresses drive to the hospital because their driver was thrown through the windshield when the limo he was driving slid on the ice.

An Army trauma doctor on leave rescued the three husbands from their accident the men were in different cars than the women]. He used a pen to perform an emergency tracheotomy on one of the men. The Chief of Staff insisted that they would NOT perform a particular surgery, even though the Army trauma surgeon suggested a different surgery to save his life. As the Army trauma surgeon left the room, “McDreamy” made several derogatory comments.

Whose ego was being bruised? And how did this affect their communication?

In the aviation world, this can be known as Captainitis …

It isn’t what you said, it’s what they think they heard.

I found an interesting article on Knowledge@Wharton’s website. It was actually a five-page book review. The book is called “It Starts With One: Changing Individuals Changes Organizations” by J. Stewart Black and Hal B. Gregersen.

The authors asked “why do we fail to see the need for change?” Their research showed “Fundamentally, we fail to see because we are blinded by the light of what we already see.”

We make assumptions on what the other person is going to say … we make assumptions on what we think we’ll see or hear. We become focused on how we will get our point across, how we can sound more creative / intelligent / worldly / any other adjective you want to insert. We don’t hear what the other person is saying. Our focus becomes narrow, until it becomes as small as a pinhole.

In aviation, this is called a mental ’set’. This is defined as being prepared for one set of circumstances, barring other options from being considered. It then becomes an obsession with what you are prepared for. This is one of the survival techniques we have.

One of the most widely-discussed accidents involving set was an Eastern Airlines flight over Florida. The crew became fixated about the landing gear indicator light not lighting up. They aborted a landing; they regained altitude, and then slowly began losing altitude unbeknownst to the crew.

The plane crashed into the Everglades with the crew so focused on the light they were not aware of their descent. The NTSB’s probable cause was “failure of the flightcrew to monitor the flight instrument …. And to detect an unexpected descent soon enough to prevent impact with the ground.”

Title: Eastern Air Lines, Inc., L-1011, N310EA, Miami, Florida, December 29, 1972

NTSB Report Number: AAR-73-14, adopted on 6/14/1973

NTIS Report Number: PB-222359/2

In your communication, what are you so focused on that you can’t hear what is being said?

It’s not what they said, it’s what you think you heard.

This seems appropriate after we’ve been introduced to Hurricane Ike:

A 92-year-old, petite, well-poised and proud man, who is fully dressed each morning by eight o’clock, with his hair fashionably combed and shaved perfectly, even though he is legally blind, moved to a nursing home today.

His wife of 70 years recently passed away, making the move necessary. After many hours of waiting patiently in the lobby of the nursing home, he smiled sweetly when told his room was ready.

As he maneuvered his walker to the elevator, I provided a visual description of his tiny room, including the eyelet sheets that had been hung on his window.

‘I love it,’ he stated with the enthusiasm of an eight-year-old having just been presented with a new puppy.

‘Mr. Jones, you haven’t seen the room; just wait.’

‘That doesn’ t have anything to do with it,’ he replied.

‘Happiness is something you decide on ahead of time. Whether I like my room or not doesn’t depend on how the furniture is arranged .. it’s how I arrange my mind. I already decided to love it. ‘It’s a decision I make every morning when I wake up. I have a choice; I can spend the day in bed recounting the difficulty I have with the parts of my body that no longer work, or get out of bed and be thankful for the ones th at do.

We were part of the lucky crowd that was only 76 hours without power. We always had water. We could have fussed and complained that we had minor house damage, that we had a full freezer and might lose all that food [and money!], and that we could not watch FoxNews or access the internet from our computers.

Instead we were thankful that our home didn’t suffer more damage and that all of us [including the 'kids'] were fine.

It’s all in how you frame your thoughts. What do you say to yourself, and what do you hear yourself say?

I have been inundated and mesmerized by the tracking of Hurricane Ike. At this point, roughly 12 hours before landfall, some people on Galveston Island have decided to leave. Mandatory evacuation began nearly 72 hours ago … what part of “this is worse than [Hurricane] Rita, can be more devastating than [Hurricane] Katrina …. it is supposed to hit Galveston Island and head straight through downtown Houston and go north from there … hurricane force winds [74+ mph] will be felt clear on the north side of Houston …”

So help me out … what part of “mandatory evacuation, 25′ storm surge, 115+ mph winds … devastating ….Galveston Island under water …. water going into Galveston Bay and not having anywhere to go but immediately on land” is not being understood?

I expect to continue blogging next Monday ….. we shall see!

I have been avoiding getting a PDA-type phone for years. The time has finally arrived and I am now the proud owner of a Blackjack II. My husband also got a new phone and we had to call AT&T to get us connected. The customer service rep told me he needed several things … the SIM card number and the IMEI number ‘that is on the box the phone came in’.

I got the phone box and relayed the number to the rep. My husband got the brown shipping box and looked for the number. After all, the rep said “the number is on the box the phone came in.”

It isn’t what he said, it’s what he thought he heard.

A recent US Magazine headline: Babies, Lies & Scandals with a photograph of Vice President Nominee Governor Palin and her baby. One would assume that the ‘babies, lies and scandals’ had to do with the Governor and her son. When the publisher was questioned about this … what exactly were the lies … the truth of this was the lies were really blog entries!

Misleading? Or accurate? Or .. was it what the magazine meant to write? Or was it what we think we read?

Now that both the United States Republican and Democratic National Conventions are over, to quote the Olympics “Let the games begin!”

As each candidate gives their speeches, the opposition immediately gets on the ’stump’ and gives their interpretation of the opposition. These are usually groundless. For instance, Senator Obama is announcing that Governor Palin ‘is more like [President] Bush than McCain.’ Nothing to back this claim up – just a statement said very forcefully. No facts, just forcefulness.

I urge you to listen to what the candidates are saying, and what they are not saying, to determine which one is more closely aligned with your own values and beliefs.

Remember, it’s not what they say, it’s what you think you hear.

Posted 9/8/08

I was talking with my financial advisor, Pat, recently, and our conversation steered towards insurance. She asked me if I had term life insurance or whole life. That’s one of those details that simply slips my mind. Knowing me well, she explained the difference:

• Whole life insurance is insurance you pay for your entire life, for your ‘whole life’
• Term life insurance is insurance you pay for for a certain period of time, for a ‘term’ of XX years.

Duh! Now I understand! I don’t think it was ever explained to me in that manner; if it was I certainly didn’t hear those words.

It wasn’t what I was told, it’s what I think I heard!

I’m watching the 1957 movie “12 Angry Men“. The original featured a stellar cast of Henry Fonda, E.G. Marshall, Jack Warden and Martin Balsam. If you have never seen this movie [the original is better than the remake, both are worth seeing], I highly recommend you watch it. It’s only about 90 minutes long and is an excellent lesson in breaking out of the box thinking.

Henry Fonda, Juror #8, does not believe the young man accused of murdering his father is guilty. He is not certain the boy is not guilty, though he is certain there are possibilities that he is not guilty. When the first vote is taken, Henry Fonda is the lone ‘not guilty’ vote. He brings up several good points that gets the other jurors thinking about the various sworn testimonies differently.

For instance, he questions the testimony of a 75-year old man: the man said that he heard the accused shout “I’m going to kill you” then heard a body thump to the ground. The woman across the apartment watched, through the last two cars of the el, the accused run out of the apartment. Juror #8 logically acts this out only to find out that this is could not be possible. Juror #9 brought up reasons why the 75-year old might believe this … for attention. The older man walked with a minor limp and his jacket was torn. Pride and attention.

Another point was that the accused could not remember the name of the movie he saw the night of the murder. Juror #8 asks Juror #4 what he did last night, the night before, and the night before, etc. Juror #4 cannot remember who was in the movie he saw four days prior, and couldn’t remember the exact title of the movie.

Then they discuss the woman who testified … and her glasses.

If you are facing a potentially difficult situation where you need to think objectively or persuade others, I highly recommend you watch this movie beforehand. Even if you don’t have this upcoming event, the movie is a must-see.

Remember, it isn’t what was said, it’s what they think they heard!