A comment from my colleague, Les Courtney, on my most recent Quick Communique: Points to Ponder:

So many people come from a position of certainty.. when it’s really personal opinion, their perception of what they saw or heard. They can be sure.. but without accuracy or evidence..

A lot of conflict comes from unbending certainty – especially when one of the people know the logic is flawed or facts indicate something else.

When was the last time you looked past the words and thought through, for yourself, the accuracy of someone’s statement?  We can speak with authority on what we believe strongly in ….. and others may believe it is fact.  You may think “Well they were positively absolutely sure about what they were talking about.”

There are certain personality types that will always come across as strong and certain.  There are other types that come across as meek and flexible.  With the above logic, those people that are not forceful in their words are not accurate in their statements? Personality types play a major factor in the intensity of certainty and accuracy.

Contact Shari for more information on this topic; she offers seminars to help you understand this topic more thoroughly.

It’s not what you said, it’s how you said it

There is a new study out stating that those employees that survive layoffs are now considered ‘victims’.  They are victims because they are still employed and they have to do more work than they had to do before  —- to make up for the work that has to be done by those that were let go. 

Nothing was said about the mental state of those unfortunate people that were laid off.  The study was on how bad those that survived the layoffs had it.

It certainly is a different perspective than what I had ….

It isn’t what was said, it’s how they explained it.

Line of sight …. what an interesting visual that provides.

It is used in a variety of industries. “Line of sight” applies to radio frequency identification tag [RFID] technology. This means that the reader, the ‘laser eye’ line, has to have an unimpeded path to the code that it is reading.

In aviation it is a calculation: 1.25 X √Ht1+√Ht2 = NM (Ht=height in feet)
Line of sight range (nm)=Square root of [1.5*height(feet)]

To one of my clients, it is used in the context of setting goals and managing performance.  The  employees’ goals must fit in the ‘line of sight’ with their manager’s goals, the business unit’s goals, the department’s goals and the top corporate’s goals. 

This is an instance where your background and your perspective plays a major role in your understanding.

It wasn’t what was said, it’s what you think you heard.