Visual Intelligence: Sharpen Your Perception, Change Your Life

by Amy E. Herman

Albert Meh...

7 percent verbal (words only), 38 percent vocal (including tone of voice, inflection, and other sounds) and 55 percent nonverbal.”

often in Japan, people don’t raise their hands to be acknowledged, they simply look at the speaker and hope to be recognized,

We must be aware of our nonverbal communication, but we cannot let it replace our words. Body language is not an acceptable substitute or shorthand for saying what we see.

I was on a flight recently when the cabin crew told a joke: How do you keep a secret from a flight attendant? Announce it over the intercom.

To help ensure that our communication is received, we need to take a few final steps in our delivery. The secret for doing this successfully entails what I call the three Rs: repeating, renaming, and reframing.

to make sure your message was received: ask your listeners to repeat it in their own words.

If you’re uncomfortable asking someone to repeat the information verbatim, you can prompt him by asking him to rank it. Javitch recommends, “Ask the receiver what the most difficult, easiest or complicated steps will be to carry out the task.”

An elderly blind man was sitting on a busy street corner at rush hour begging for money. He had a cardboard sign next to his tin cup that read: BLIND. PLEASE HELP. The cup was empty. A young advertising copywriter walked by and saw the blind man, his sign, and his empty cup, and noted that people walked right past him unmoved. She took a pen from her pocket, turned the cardboard sign around, and scribbled a new message on the back. She left it with the blind man and went on her way. Immediately, people began putting donations in his cup. When it was overflowing, the blind man asked a stranger to tell him what the sign now said. “It reads: IT’S A BEAUTIFUL DAY,” the stranger said. “YOU CAN SEE IT. I CANNOT.”

Lucian Freud,

grandson of Sigmund,

That’s what both art and communication are: an invitation. An invitation to let others into our brain, to let them know what we see and how we see it.

humans, as Scottish skeptic David Hume put it, “avoid uncomfortable truths.”

To avoid leaving information behind, we have to be able to describe things accurately no matter what the situation. That need, however, is even more pressing when it comes to troubling information because refusing to acknowledge the information—let alone observe, analyze, or articulate it—can make it worse.

Facts are proven truths, not opinions. A good way to quickly sort through the difference? Say what you see, not what you think.

Francisco de Goya’s Naked Maja, is said to be one of the first instances in Western art of an artist painting a nude woman who wasn’t a mythological, historical, or allegorical figure. For his crimes of “depravity” in painting it, the artist was brought in front of the Inquisition.

art is about “raising questions, and giving space to interpretation and dialogue. The fact that art cannot change things makes it a neutral place for exchanges and discussions, and then enables it to change the world.”

triptych

habit.

smote

“willful blindness”—in

“sent to Coventry”

winced

stilts

when caregivers turn away from an upsetting situation concerning a child, the child often interprets it as the adult turning away from her. This can lead to the child permanently turning inward, acting out with negative behavior, or losing long-term trust in the parent figure.

True leaders can handle an uncomfortable conversation as easily as a crisis. They know how to digest and deliver bad news without displaying subjectivity or emotion, even when they don’t like it.

the most important thing we can do to sharpen our communication skills, especially in times of stress or duress, is to separate the objective from the subjective. In assessing, we separate fact from fiction. In analyzing, we separate inference from opinion.

In stressful communication, we must separate the message from any and all emotion.

I don’t agree with this. Pathos must be an important part of the interpersonal communication. (Scientific communications are excepted)

When you convey information, especially to people who report to you, choose your words and requests with care. If you include even a hint of negative emotion—disappointment, disgust, disbelief, condescension, sarcasm, passive aggression, or veiled insults—that’s what your listeners will hear first and hang on to the longest.

We must be aware of our own emotional triggers and signals because other people around us can see them, sometimes before we do.

When you first approach a situation, before you communicate anything, give yourself a few moments to work through your emotional response.

reticence

When you meet somebody you have to work with, a coworker or witness, a student or supplier, and you instinctively just don’t like him, step back and ask yourself why. Why don’t you like him? Specifically what don’t you like? You might discover it’s because he looks like an ex-boyfriend or the teacher who humiliated you in second grade. But once you recognize that, you’ll be able to see how subjective and unimportant it is and move on.

Just as we seek confirmation that our message has been received by having the other person repeat it back to us, we can use the same strategy to turn the tide of a heated debate. To do this, philosopher Daniel C. Dennett advises, “you should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, ‘Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.’” Dennett suggests then stating any points of agreement and anything you have learned from the other person.

To defuse the situation, Charles decided that instead of defending himself or telling his wife how wrong she was, he would try to simply repeat her concern. “So you leave stuff on the steps for the next person going up to save you from having to always run up and down them,” he said, “and when I walk right by it without picking it up, it aggravates you, yes?” “Yes,” she said. “A lot.” “I really don’t notice it. It might as well be invisible to me,” he said. Then he dug deeper into her concern. “But it’s not to you, is it? It’s the opposite. You not only see it, you see it as an insult or something I’m doing on purpose?” Caroline hesitated because he was right—that was how she saw it. For further clarification, she then repeated his words. “You really don’t see things on the stairs?” she asked. “Like it’s invisible? That’s crazy to me because the pile on the stairs is so obvious to me, it might as well be glowing. It practically shouts at me.” “Really?” Charles answered. “It bothers you that much? It’s like visual pollution to you.” “Yes,” she said, relieved that he understood. In fact, he explained it better than she had. It was like visual pollution to her. And he didn’t see it at all. “I had no idea you didn’t see it,” she continued. “The stairs are your blind spot, then?” Now it was Charles’s turn to be relieved. Piles of socks on the floor really didn’t register in his field of vision, and he was glad his wife understood. Instead of allowing the conversation to degener...

Another way we can try to extricate ourselves from the entanglements of a he said, she said, what-did-they-really-mean debate is to rename it. Instead of slogging through what exactly happened to get you there and whose fault it was, wrap everything—all comments and feelings and innuendo and assumptions—into a single package and give it a new name. Call a time-out, and then sum up the entire messy situation for what it is and label it accordingly. Instead of referring to the problem as a mess or disaster or even a problem, rename it a miscommunication.

Finding a solution takes just one more step: reframing any outstanding concerns as questions rather than problems.

Instead of saying, “X is wrong,” reframe it: “Is it true that . . . ?” or “Did you mean to . . . ?” Instead of asking someone, “Can I talk to you for a minute?” which immediately implies a conflict or problem, ask instead, “Can you help me with something?” Reframe the issue in the best possible terms, and the response will be more positive.

If repeating, renaming, and reframing doesn’t work and the person you’re communicating with still won’t let go until blame is assigned, go ahead and assign it—to the situation. Try “I’m sorry there was a miscommunication/misinterpretation/things weren’t clear.” Some people won’t quit until they hear “I’m sorry,” and while you’re not saying it was your fault, you are giving them a truthful concession, since chances are you’re more than sorry to be stuck in this situation with them.

Mary Poppins’s famous advice: “A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down.” Coating our words with sweetness can help the other person receive them more easily.

editor, Eamon Dolan, is great at delivering difficult news with a liberal dose of kindness. Early in my first communication from him, he wrote, “My notes take a very matter-of-fact tone, but please imagine a ‘please’ in front of all of them. I use a very direct style in my marginal notes for the sake of clarity and efficiency, and I apologize in advance if any of them veer into brusqueness.” Those two sentences at the start of our professional relationship made months of otherwise hard-to-hear critiques not just bearable but many times delightful because he had dismissed any doubts I had about his intentions.

First and foremost, no matter how upsetting the communication is, do not react emotionally, orally or in writing. Instead, do what you did when you were becoming emotionally self-aware: absorb, process, let the negative feelings flow, then let it go. It’s probably harder to put emotion aside when you’re the one who’s feeling insulted,

We’ve learned how to assess, analyze, and articulate information. Now we must use those skills in the real world, a world that isn’t still or objective. To do this, we need to adapt. Adapt to our surroundings, adapt to less-than-ideal circumstances, by adapting our own thoughts and behaviors.

We don’t see things as they are. We see them as we are. —ANAÏS NIN

GEEZER

“vile”

grind,

when something we see is not in sync with our expectations, we can subconsciously make it align, either by missing important details or making assumptions that fill them in or simplify them. To refine our model for improving observation and communication skills, though, we must look at how these inherent filters can do more than just make us miss something based on our background, mood, or political affiliations. We need to examine how our perceptions can lead to biases that affect our actions, and learn how to adjust for them accordingly.

bias toward

bias against