Thanks to Communicators

This entry falls on Thanksgiving Day, so Happy Thanksgiving everyone - at least everyone and anyone who might stumble across this blog either today or sometime in the future. This day and this time of year is one of giving thanks. I, too, give many thanks to many things that are important in my life. This blog is rapidly becoming one of them. So, it is in keeping with that I choose to give a message of hope when it comes to the exercise of communication. We are all good and effective communicators. How about that!

One theme I have tried to touch on in my entries these past months has been how challenging communication is. Make no mistake, successfully sustained communication is very difficult for all of us. Despite that, I can honestly say - once again - we are good and effective communicators. That is the good news. The not-so-good news is that we are not good and effective communicators all the time. The trick is to assess those times and moments when we do connect with another person or public, identify the elements that contributed to that connection, and then simply keep doing it. But even that formula comes with a cautionary warning: no two circumstances are exactly alike. As a result, the specific elements or ingredients that helped make the communication at that one time successful, will need to be tweaked or adjusted in order to fit a new circumstance.

Communication, much like the circumstances that fill our days and, ultimately, our lives, is fluid. But, then, so are we in many ways. Though unique, each circumstance also contains elements that are common to circumstances that came before it. The trick is to identify those commonalities and make them the basis for developing a successful communication strategy - much like what a baseball hitter does. Each pitch thrown at the batter is unique, but it also contains similar elements of previous pitches. The batter's challenge is to identify those like-elements and then hit the ball. The best hitters are able to do that successfully between three and four times out of ever ten pitches thrown.

I will stop for now since today, after all, is a holiday. To all who have enjoyed even one successful communication experience, I wish you well and urge you to keep doing what you did that one time: acting with thought, flexibility, sensitivity, and courage. Happy Thanksgiving.