Nobel Prize winner George Bernard Shaw said that “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”
One thing that I’ve been fascinated with for quite some time now is how people communicate and how communication relates to leadership, marketing and entrepreneurship.
Since I’m always looking for ways to continue to improve my understanding of communication, I recently started reading a book called “Sleight of Mouth” by Robert Dilts.
It’s a very fascinating book which primarily focuses on the topic of belief change through conversation.
The book is like an encyclopedia of language patterns and goes into a lot of depth in terms of how language and conversation relates to people’s beliefs.
It’s one of those books that you really have to study, over a period of time, and go back to over and over again as a reference for various things.
In this blog post I’m going to give an example of just ONE concept that I learned from this book that I found rather fascinating and enlightening.
The One Word That Sabotages What You’re Trying to Say
There is one word in the English language that is responsible for sabotaging a lot of conversations.
No, it is not some swear word that starts with the letter “f”.
It’s actually a much more common word, and it has probably done a lot more damage in terms of causing miscommunication in conversations than the “f” word ever did.
The word I’m referring to is the word “but”.
It’s very commonly used in conversations even though most people don’t understand how it affects the mind.
See, most of us – including myself – use the word “but” all the time, when trying to communicate something to someone, and we’re largely unaware of the actual effect that this word has on how our mind processes the specific words that it hears before and after this word.
Let me use an example to illustrate my point.
Imagine a parent having a conversation with a child about their report card.
Imagine a child coming home from school, with a report card showing a big improvement in their grades.
The child is excited because most of their grades have gone up, except for one subject – let’s say it’s science.
So the child comes home, shows the report card to their parents and the parents say something like this:
“Wow, this is great, you have improved so much in almost all of your subjects and we’re very proud of you and very happy that you’re taking school seriously now so we just want to say great job, but now you just have to get your science marks up.”
From the perspective of the parents, they believe that the key points that they communicated with their child are:
- this is great
- you have improved so much
- we’re very proud of you
- we’re very happy
- we want to say great job
- now you just have to get your science marks up
In other words, the parents believe that what they communicated to the child are these points listed above.
Do you know what the child’s mind – and especially their subconscious mind actually heard?
This is ALL that the mind actually processes and retains from that conversation:
“You just have to get your science marks up.”
That is ALL that the child thinks the parents said, five seconds after hearing what they said.
Because the way that the human brain processes information that surrounds the word “BUT” is essentially the word is a NULLIFIER of any information that precedes the word.
Meaning, anytime you say something to someone and in the middle of your sentence you use the word “BUT”, essentially EVERYTHING you said before that word is virtually erased from the mind and the ONLY thing that the mind remembers a few seconds later is anything that was said AFTER the word “BUT” was inserted into the sentence.
So for example if I say “Your outfit looks wonderful, but we have to hurry because we’re going to be late.”
ALL that the person hears is “We have to hurry because we’re going to be late.”
If I say “You played really well in today’s soccer game, but I know next time you’ll do even better.”
ALL that the person hears is “I know next time you’ll do even better.”
If I say “You were acting like an idiot, but I love you.”
ALL that the person hears is “I love you.”
Now I’m not saying that the EARS of the person don’t hear any words before the word “BUT”.
Of course the ears hear the words, and the mind actually processes every word in the sentence you’re saying to someone, it’s just that once the mind hears the word “BUT” it is programmed to essentially dismiss or significantly discount the value of the words spoken prior to the word “BUT” and to amplify and give more value and meaning to the words that are said AFTER the word “BUT” is spoken.
So in the example I gave earlier with the child and the report card, if this is how the parents are always communicating with their child, then chances are that this child will probably tend to feel judged and unsupported and unappreciated, and may even lash out and tell their parents that they never support them.
Of course the parents will be perplexed and confused as in their minds all they ever do is support the child with compliments, words of support and encouragement etc.
The challenge is that the parents don’t realize that it is their improper use of the word “BUT” in the middle of their sentences that is causing the child to feel unsupported!
The same mistake can be made when speaking to employees.
For example, an employer could be giving their employee a very favorable review and they could be trying to communicate to the person that they’re very happy with their performance overall, except for this one small issue of the employee being late a few times.
The employer might say something like “You’ve been doing a great job, and we really appreciate your efforts here at Smith and Associates, and we recognize that you’ve really stepped up your game and really improved a lot over the last few months but the only thing is that there were those few times that you came in late, so if you can just make sure you are punctual that will really help us out.”
Do you see how the word “but” injected into the middle of that sentence takes the focus away from the compliments in the beginning of the conversation and places the emphasis on everything AFTER the word “but” is spoken?
Go back and re-read that sentence and just see what sticks in your mind as you read it. Do the compliments stated in the beginning jump out at you or the fact that the employee came in late a few times?
Now, let’s replace the word “but” with the word “even though” and re-read the same sentence again.
“You’ve been doing a great job, and we really appreciate your efforts here at Smith and Associates, and we recognize that you’ve really stepped up your game and really improved a lot over the last few months even though the only thing is that there were those few times that you came in late, so if you can just make sure you are punctual that will really help us out.”
Doesn’t that change everything just by changing out those two words?
Go back and look at some of the other examples above where I’ve used the word “BUT” in the sentence and replace that word with the words “even though” and you’ll see how drastically the meaning of the statement changes.
Now just think about how often we use the word “BUT” in our conversations with people, not realizing that the word causes this mental process to unfold in the minds of the person we’re speaking to.
This is just ONE tiny little example from the first chapter in this book.
There’s so much more that the author reveals about words, language, conversations and how we communicate.
I strongly recommend picking up a copy of this book if you’re looking to improve the way you communicate with people both verbally or in written form.