Communication is not about the number of things you say, Susan, know that it is about the number of things that are understood.
Clearly,
Wisdom
The last few weeks I’ve been very frustrated by communications. We’ve been working to sell my parents’ house in Texas and to say the least the process has not been an easy one for me.
Odin clearly communicates with his eyes.
I emailed dad’s attorney a while back because I’ve been told that I need to have probate filed on his will within six months. He hadn’t returned any of the emails. Then we had affidavits that needed to be signed by two people who knew him. They sent this original paperwork in July. I found two people and returned it to them.
Apparently, these weren’t good enough. One of the people had said they had only known him for four years because that is how long he’d had a business relationship with him. It needed to say 10 years. So, I had to find someone else. Not a hard task in our small community where he’d been the beloved and only doctor for many years, but my brain was drawing a blank.
One of the most frustrating things for me was that I had returned that in July and they didn’t start the process of getting the affidavits until nine days before the closing. I haven’t done many closings but the ones I have were set about 30 days out. Why wait until the last nine?
These young horses are figuring out communications in the herd.
It felt as if no one thought I had anything else to do. It’s irritating when people don’t honor your time. Having to track down someone new to sign and getting the paperwork notarized were bad enough. People who live in the city don’t understand that FedEx or any other delivery service may not be overnight from rural western Kansas. Our FedEx drop box pickup is at 2:15 pm. If your package isn’t there by then it will sit in that box overnight.
Then we thought we had someone from out of town to be the second signer, so I did all the local paperwork and took it to the dropbox around 4:00, too late for overnight. That was OK because we had a week before closing.
No, that would have been way too easy. My affidavit had to be changed and the second signer fell through. Now I had to find someone else.
I’m not sure what Dalila is trying to communicate.
Two days before closing I worked really hard to get the second signer, got my new affidavit notarized, scanned them so I could email them to the agent, and got them to FedEx in the morning. Now I could relax.
Not so quickly. I soon got an email from the agent. She needed an updated version by my first signer that I had sent the week before, the date was wrong. She hadn’t been clear with her communication saying she needed that updated. It was the same form with a different date. What’s the problem it was saying she had known my dad for at least 10 years. What difference did the date make?
I had already gone on with my day and I was resistant to interrupting it even more. I was able to get that one signed, notarized, scanned and emailed, and out to FedEx before pickup. Even if I was unhappy about it.
Had she been clear in her communications in the first place or had they bothered to notice before sending the first stuff that we would have to have a different second signer before nine days prior to closing it would have been so much easier for me. I wouldn’t have felt like they didn’t value my time.
I did talk to dad’s attorney, but he didn’t get back to me in as timely a manner as I would have liked.
If your communications are not clear you can end up face first into that jump.
This can be frustrating in a doctor’s office as well. We take the time to go in at our appointment time and sit in the waiting room longer than we think we should. I may have a different take on this than a lot of people because I’ve traveled a lot to see doctors and it’s usually the thing I’m doing that day. I feel that if the doctor is running behind because they are taking the time they need with another patient they are more likely to take the time they need with me or my loved one. Doctors are being pulled in many different directions. They don’t always have control of their schedules. It may take them a little longer to explain something to a patient or to help a patient that has been given bad news.
If the doctor makes a connection with their patients the patient is more likely to understand. If the doctor is understanding that they see the patients and their caregivers at their worst when they may be anxious about what the doctor is going to say it will also make this easier.
Often things in our lives don’t go as planned and you need to go with the flow. Misunderstandings happen because each one of us filters every type of communication through our own life experiences. It is easiest to clarify what needs to be done and assume nothing. The better you are about communicating with those you are working with the easier it will be. You are the only one who has power over your communications.
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Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood.
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Onward!
