Communication is a strange thing. It can move minds, sway people to action, inspire great change, even create agreement and trust among formerly hostile groups.

Except when it doesn’t.

And that dividing line – the one that lies between acceptance and refusal of a message – that line can sometimes be hard to find, even for the most expert communicators among us.

I had the privilege of seeing that line in action recently. But instead of telling you about it myself, I’d rather let today’s contributing author lay it out for you. Colin Jarvis consults with organizations ranging from tiny to multinational, and trains them to communicate more effectively.

But an expert, too, can have the occasional “off day” when even his considerable skills don’t quite get the job done. Here, he tells about the day he had…

Water On The Brain

By Colin Jarvis

I had lunch with a friend in Chiang Mai a few weeks ago. It happened to be during the Songkran Festival which, for those of you who don’t know, is a festival that celebrates the coming of the rain. Traditionally at this time, people wash their religious statues and gently pour water over the shoulders of their friends in order to bless them. People also pour water over other people’s hands in an attempt to wash away all the bad luck of the previous year for indeed Songkran is also the Thai New Year.

I tried to explain that he was in danger of killing someone.

Lately, people have become more aggressive with their water splashing. High-powered water pistols are very much in evidence. Pick-up trucks carry large drums of iced water ready to throw over unsuspecting pedestrians whilst the pedestrians get their own back by throwing buckets of water over passing cars and motorcycles. It really can get quite aggressive.

The most aggressive people are not native Thais but young male Western tourists. Well-behaved accountants from Manchester or Munich suddenly become Rambo. Years of pent-up aggression are suddenly directed at anyone who comes within range. They carry the biggest and most garishly coloured water guns often sporting high-capacity tanks on their backs. If you watch them you will often find that instead of an expression of innocent enjoyment and fun on their faces there is a real look of violent aggression.

So back to my lunch. Outside the restaurant a group of young men were throwing buckets of water over the passing traffic. The road had become very slick and the way they were throwing the water from their buckets meant that football sized lumps of water would hit a passing motorcyclist full in the face.

By the time we left the restaurant I thought it sensible to point out to these people that at any moment they were likely to knock a motorcyclist onto the ground, potentially causing considerable damage as many motorcyclists in Thailand do not wear helmets.

I approached one of the six young men and, with what I hoped was a winning smile, asked if he spoke English. He indicated that he spoke a little whilst his body language indicated that he was far too busy to talk to me. All his frenetic energy was focused on throwing as much water, as hard as he could, on as many passing vehicles as possible.

Each time he came to fill his bucket from a large water filled drum, kindly provided by the restaurant, I tried to explain to him that he was in danger of killing someone. His body language became more insistent; he had no wish to listen to the likes of me.

However this story is not about tourists and their aggressive behaviour, it is about my own failings.

Faced with this persistent, passive-aggressive behaviour and believing I had a very important and worthwhile message to impart, my brain overloaded and shut down. Suddenly I was reacting rather than thinking. I could feel my hands and arms wanting to grab this person and shake him in order to gain his full attention.

I have always felt that any form of aggression, either physical or verbal, never achieves anything long-lasting. Yet here I was, blood pressure rising, frustration choking me so that I could hardly speak.

I did not succeed. The Rambos continued to hurl their water, six buckets at a time, onto vulnerable motorcyclists.

What could I have done? How could I have handled this better? Now, some four weeks later, I still have no idea. I am reminded of the expression “Never teach a pig to sing, it wastes your time and annoys the pig.”

One thing I did learn from this experience is to recognize that frustration can lead to a freezing of the brain at a time when it is most needed. Oh, one other thing, the next day I was knocked off my motorcycle when a bucket of water hit me! Poetic justice, I wonder? Or self-fulfilling prophecy in action?

Colin Jarvis works with organizations in South-east Asia, the UK and Europe to boost effectiveness through clearer communication. Basically his consultancy encourages people to think for themselves, to have the confidence to do so, and to help them access a good range of values they can live by. But you can’t always come out and tell your clients this, so everything is sold as business efficiency and effectiveness packages.

Back to Charles:
As you may already suspect, I was that luncheon friend, and the aggressive tendencies that Colin mentions were, if anything, more extreme than he has described.

Watching that (non)exchange of information was extremely educational for me (as it apparently was for Colin, too). Several useful points came out of it.

1. Never try to reason with anybody who is in the middle of trance-like activity. Either find a way to interrupt the pattern of the trance they’re in, or walk away and come back at a better (more receptive) time. You’ll never get their attention nor even make sense to them while they’re engaged in their activity, because they’ll be thinking in a different “language” until they wake up.
2. Communication is the responsibility of the initiator, not the intended listener, so don’t blame any “failure” on them for not listening. It’s your baby, so if it dies stillborn, it’s on your hands. You are the one who needs to think, to adjust strategies, and to break through the other person’s preoccupation with other matters.
3. A lapse of communication is not really a failure. It’s more like calling somebody and they don’t pick up at their end. You didn’t fail – you just tried the wrong number. As long as you’re using the wrong strategy to get through, you’re calling the wrong line.
4. Communication is more art than technology. Even at the best of times, and even for the most skilled people, communicating can be an iffy, unpredictable thing. Nobody really talks about this, but do you think that the legendary communicator and hypnotist Milton Erickson always cured 100% of the patients he saw? Of course not. If he had, he’d be in the Guinness Book of World Records, not in psychology journal footnotes.
5. If you have a “failure,” don’t take it personally. And for god’s sake, don’t get angry and sulk. Just do what Colin did – accept the experience and learn all you can from it. Take it apart and think up other scenarios, alternate strategies, new things to try next time.

This is the way we grow, become stronger and gain greater control over our lives. By learning from experience… ours or anybody else’s.

Cheers from warm and smiling Thailand,
Charles