That's not what I meant!

"My dinner's caked and dry on top of the oven, which means you're angry that I am late, and you just don't appreciate the hard work I have to put in to support this family, in fact I'm beginning to wonder if you love me anymore!"

"You've accepted my view and that means you agree with me."

"You're always on time for meetings, which means you respect my needs."

"I can tell from the way you wear your hat that you love me!"

"Because it has snowed we are in for a double dip recession, sledging back down at speed to another crash!"

What a strange and natural skill it seems we have, when you think about it, to make meaning out of apparently unconnected things, and of imposing our meaning where there is none to be found.

You might argue that the search for meaning (the interpretation of what we sense) is a vital strategy for survival.   We watch, we wonder what it all means, and how it will affect us.  We make up some meaning (anger of the gods, a sign from the otherworld, evidence of a slide to a double dip recession), and we choose how to act (say a hail mary, throw salt over our shoulder, stop spending).

As we watch each other's behaviour, there seems, from board room to bedroom, challenge after challenge to judge events, and find a complicated equivalence of meaning between them and our outcomes.

Some of these complex equivalences can become institutionalised:  if you didn't manage to get this sale, it means you are not a good salesperson, if you didn't realise early enough that this unit would fail, it means you have a poor attitude to health and safety.  That person, team, department, is just not working hard enough.  It is fairly common to see an event interpreted into a generalised assumption about a person or group's abilities

Like my last post on universals, this complex equivalence is evident at the heart of a lot of human communication and rife with difficulty.  The problem is that we are only quite good at guessing what things mean.  If it is not that we were too afraid, lazy or careless to check on our accuracy, it is entirely possible that any validating information was also unavailable.

Even when we do trouble to check, it's sometimes not so easy to find out.  "What do you mean?  Not everything is about you, you know!" "I don't want to talk to you right now! :-("

No surprise then that there can be a lot of confusion, even among the highly articulate and intelligent, about what is going on, and a heap of judgements being made about what to do about it too - what is the right and the wrong way to act, who's behaviour is "right" and "wrong".

Our guesses about what a major customer, colleague or loved one "really means" significantly influence our responses.  As relationships build a bit of history, especially through adversity, what started as a series of simple uncorrected misunderstandings can become entrenched difficulties; even legal battles.

There is plenty of material here for the business coach to use.  Firstly, check up on yourself.  You can probably find 4 or 5 situations just in the last week (look for those few where things have not gone quite to plan and a bit of temper or sorrow has resulted).   Were the meanings you made possible...can you map that comment or action to this outcome?  Does it map across?  Is that the only possible meaning?  Did you check?

Having practiced this for a while, you should quickly be able to pick up possible complex equivalence confusion in client presentation - especially about those board room battles that can take up so much energy.

The role of the coach is varied, and a couple of very useful elements are to help clients find perspective, to see things from other angles, and encourage them to increase their range of response.  This applies as much to the internal response (what meaning am I making about this event, and how do I feel about myself and my colleagues as a consequence?) as to the external response (what will I say and do, and how will I do that?).

When you pick up on a strong problematic complex equivalence:  disrupt the thought pattern, challenge the meaning, and look for evidence of alternative meanings and choices.

"So, what happened to my dinner then?"
"Oh, I am so sorry about that, my aunt rang and was on the phone for an hour, John turned up from rugby caked in mud and traipsed it all through the house and by the time I'd cleaned it up it was bath time for the Melanie...I am afraid I just couldn't do it all"
"Oh, and I thought it meant you didn't love me any more, Mike!"
"Awe, Mary, don't be silly, come here, you!"