STUDENTS' CORNER - 190
Students Corner – Consideration as communication skill
Skill is an
ability that can be acquired through practice. And talent can be looked upon as
a fast performing skill. Every individual is likely to have some natural talent
in some field or so; a natural cricketer is one for whom the play of cricket is
born in him and he intuitively learns the tricks of cricketing; but anyone can
develop the skill in cricket by serious practice which means he gives his time
and energy to the game of cricket; here also, his time and energy must be
linked with a sort of awareness which is both critical and creative. Minus
awareness, mere endless repetitive performance will not add to the skill of the
person.
On a similar
line, consideration must blossom into a natural talent from a desired skill.
What is consideration in business communication? In fact, it must be clearly
understood from the beginning that business is a very important integral part
of one’s living, part of the living of a business man. Life cannot be just whole business nor
business can be a whole life; they are inseparable. This is underscoring a very
essential fact: no one can be totally independent and nor can be dependent but
has to be inter-dependent. Total independence is an impossibility and total
dependence is definite misery therefore, foolishness. A CMD of a multinational
is also playing willy-nilly the role of a father, a husband, a son so on. Just
to illustrate the point that none can be totally independent, both
professionally and personally. It says that one cannot exercise consideration
in one area of living alone; that is, you are considerate in business
communication and you shed consideration in non-business activity. Rather the
other way round, it is easy to understand. You are considerate to your husband,
your wife and children but you are not with your ordinary stakeholder. Let us
go rather in depth here.
On observation
with sensitiveness, you can see that people generally are not considerate even
in their personal lives, leave alone professional domain. This is only to point
out that consideration is becoming a rarer and rarer experience for us. A
father wants his son to fulfill his ambitions which he missed; a mother wants
her children to depend on her for guidance; an elder brother tends to dominate
the younger ones; exceptions may be there.
The essence of
consideration is empathy; that is, putting yourself in the shoes of the other;
seeing things from the other’s point of view. You may find umpteen number of
justifications not to be considerate; it only means you see everything from
your perspective only; that is, your direct or indirect focus is your own
benefit, position, prestige, so on. This is common experience in government and
corporate offices that the officer is very keen to please the officers above
him and by extension wants those below him to please him. Of course, polite
manners and sophisticated language might screen this tendency. The authority
says in a statement: The Management is pleased to say that the employees can
avail themselves of one more permission every fortnight. Of course nothing is
offensive or wrong in this circular. But the same fact could be said as
follows: You can take one more permission every fortnight. The difference is
you are given first place and in the first sentence you are in the second
place. No doubt, the management is all powerful ; the second sentence appeals
to the feeling of the employee; ‘ my management respects my feelings.’
We will see some more examples for consideration in communication.
