As someone who loves precision as much as possible, I’m always intrigued by the level of ambiguity inherent in human communications. It’s even worse now in our world of increasing use of acronyms, jargons, and emojis. What you say or write may not mean what you think it means to the recipient.
While traveling to Italy on a business trip a couple of weeks ago, my daughter wrote a simple message in the family group chat after she boarded her flight to Europe. As a family, this is something each of us typically do while traveling to let all the other family members know the progress of our journey.
Her message simply said, “I’ve boarded. Luckily no one is in the middle.”
It took a while before I saw the message. When I did, I responded with, “Are you in the middle?” By that time, her flight had already departed and she didn’t see my question for several hours until she landed in Europe.
The next day, during our weekly video family meeting, one of her brothers took me to task by asking why I asked if she was in the middle seat when she already said no one was there. Then, they both started laughing at the ridiculousness of my response.
Clearly, their dad had lost his mind!
You’re probably thinking the same thing. Or maybe not.
Before you align yourself with my kids that I’ve lost my marbles, allow me to explain my thinking process, which I later explained to them.
When I read “Luckily no one is in the middle,” my mind did not go to a middle seat since she didn’t include “seat” in her message. As someone with a boatload of international travel experience, who is also very picky about where I seat on such long-haul flights, my mind went somewhere else.
With "middle," I immediately thought of the middle section of the row of seats bounded by the two aisles in a typical jumbo jet used on trans-Atlantic flights. From speaking to her prior to boarding, I knew she was flying in a Boeing-747, a jet with a typical 3-4-3 seat arrangement - a cross section of three seats, an aisle, four seats, another aisle, and three seats.
So, when I saw "middle," I thought she was referring to that middle section of four seats. This is why I asked, "Are you in the middle?" My thought was that if she was in one of those, she could easily lift up the armrests between the four seats and turn them into a bed during her long overnight flight.
That’s where my mind went to because that’s what I typically do on those flights when there are empty seats. In fact, I actively monitor and change my seats on such flights several times on the days leading up to the flight departure. My goal is always to pick seats close enough to a row of empty middle section seats, so I can commandeer and turn them into my bed once the airplane door is closed.
Despite this explanation, my son, who brought this up, insisted I shouldn’t have responded the way I did. He just wanted a good laugh. And they both did!
This hilarious experience reminded me of two important things when we communicate:
Being very clear in your messaging so there’s no ambiguity.
Even when you think your message is very clear, how it’s interpreted by the recipient may be completely different.
You have no idea in what state the recipient’s state of mind will be when they receive your message. Their state of mind in that moment could steer the meaning of your message into territories you never imagined - territories you may have never imagined.
For this reasons, I try to clear my head of any assumptions I may have about a topic when communicating with others who may not hold similar assumptions. That way, the likelihood of miscommunication is reduced.
Still, it doesn’t completely eliminate it. But I can do my best to remove every possible ambiguity I can think of from the messages I communicate.
So can you.