About perceptions

Each of us has our own model of reality and it is a big question how close those are to the actual reality. This model is like a prism, and when light goes through the prism you might see all the colours of the rainbow, or if the other side is like a lens, it might cause fire. Let’s imagine a situation: person N says X in an email to the person M, and the person M does not respond in a timely manner, so it becomes like a filter and X comes out as Y in the mind of N, and we have a big communication issue. What do we do? There is a very useful method called ABCDE. A = activating event (trigger), so in our case person N said X via email and did not receive any response for two days. B = beliefs (self-talk), so this is how we see this event through our own prism from the default point of view, and that can be that person N thinks that he/she is not important enough for the person M to care, and no one wants to help. C = consequences, so that might be that the person N is upset and certain project actions got stuck because there is no communication flow between the two main stakeholders. D = disputation of beliefs, so what are those other lenses/sides of the prism? For example, it might be that person M just got destructed and missed the message, or had 200 emails after vacation, and did not yet get to the one from N, or just forgot to hit “send” button and wanted to discuss on a call. So, we see that initial belief might not be true and even close to the reality of the situation and is not helping to solve the problem. And we even did not touch the person M's perspective. E = effective new approach. What outcome we want to achieve? – to get communication back on track. What can be a helpful belief in that situation and a more productive action strategy? – not to attribute anything to the personal feelings upfront, be rational about business and variety of potential destructions, send a reminder and openly discuss the situation. Analysing uncomfortable situations through this model might be very helpful. And as you can also see on the picture even though we know that the Earth is a sphere, the projection might look different, depending how you look at it!