Today I had the honour and pleasure to participate in one of my change management client’s key events – the 300 day anniversary. It was a day of organisation at one hand but more so of experiencing how much the organisation moved a head into the direction they wanted. Coming back after a long day I saw the enclosed picture on Facebook and I thought – yes that’s it. In a nutshell that’s what I’m aiming for in my work – let the people feel the change. You need not only to understand it, to talk about it, to do it –  but you need occasions where one can feel it. Today was such a day. I’m very happy that I was part of it!

Today in a meeting we spoke about “spontaneous impressions” of somebody. It was in context of just hearing and missing the visual context. We all agreed, that we will be able to judge if the other person is competent, is taking care of us, is able to generate a friendly atmosphere and so forth.
Now, how about if we neither have visual nor oral context if we just see words in emails or letters. Will we still be able to have a “spontaneous impression” of somebody? Would we attest ourselves that we have enough information to even do it at all? I guess it’s of no surprise to you when I tell you – we do it anyway! – regardless of we think we can do it or not. Our “mind” is doing it subconsciously. We start to read in-between lines, we put the text into the context we think is correct – or the one we want to have it in and so on. It actually says quite a lot about ourselves how we “read / understand” texts, as the way we connect and validate (just not to use judge) “just relays on us”. Our mood, experiences, cultural background, belief systems and so on are the filters we look though the word and determines how we perceive things.
Want a proof? Just look at the smiley face  – what words jumps into your “mind” – what do you see…. there are tons of words in there….what you see first is what you want to see first and not what  you grasp subconsciously.

Gestern brauchte ich 3 Mal das Wort Abriss und jedes Mal meinte ich etwas anderes damit.  Zuerst das überteuertes Mittagsmenue, dann ein Gebäude, das nun nicht mehr steht und zuletzt in „tiefer“ Nacht als ich einen Zeitungsverlag besuchen durfte den Papierabriss.

In jeder Sprache gibt es Wörter, die je nach Kontext verschiedene Bedeutungen haben. Erst durch die Betonung, die Phrasierung oder die Aussprache kann im Kontext  entschlüsselt werden, was wirklich gemeint ist.

Ich selbst erwische mich, dass ich mich im Englischen viel mehr hinterfrage, was gemeint ist, als dass ich es in meiner Muttersprache tue. Mache ich mir damit meine Meinung zu schnell? Verpasse ich etwas oder gibt es im Deutschen nicht so viele Interpretationsmöglichkeiten? Auf alle Fälle hat mich das untenstehende Bild, als ich es das erste Mal gesehen habe, zum Lächeln gebracht, weil ich nur eine Variante sah – und Sie? 🙂