Communication can be so difficult. I just found out yesterday (Thursday) that my email account hasn’t been working properly for the entire week. Apparently, every email I’ve sent to folks with a GCCNH.COM email address hasn’t been delivered. Oh, it shows as sent in my ‘sent’ folder but the folks here never got the emails.
For most of the week, I wondered if people were just ignoring me. I have great co-workers who have never ignored me before, but those kinds of questions do go through your mind when you’re assuming technology is working properly. I would send them notes and not get replies or ask them questions and not get answers. Finally, Louise asked me to reply to an email she sent on Tuesday. Well, I had replied to it on Tuesday and she had never received it. I re-sent it and she still didn’t receive it.
It proves the point that, regardless of the medium, sometimes we send very clear and concise messages that just aren’t received by the other person. This can happen with spoken words, with email, with snail-mail, or in any way we communicate. It pays to make sure messages are received and understood in the way we tried to deliver them.
Sometimes, the message we want to send gets convoluted in the space between our lips and the other person’s ears; or even between our keyboard and the other person’s eyes. Sometimes the ‘tone’ of an email when we read it can be directly opposite of what was intended by the sender. I’ve found that it’s best to assume the best when reading emails from those we know and love; knowing that they love us and that they always speak to us respectfully.
So for me, I will do my best to communicate clearly and hope the message gets delivered properly, despite technological glitches that hinder me.
