DISTINGUISHING MEANING & RESPONSE

As a professional communicator seeking to communicate insightful meanings, strange as this may seem—you cannot directly communicate “meaning.” That’s because meaning is a phenomenon which is co-created between you and the person(s) with whom you communicate. It is not a singular thing under your complete control. An NLP premise presents this distinction: “The meaning of your communication is the response you get, regardless of your intention.”

Implied in this premise is this shocking realization: “You never know what you have communicated! That’s because you never know what the other person heard.” What did he hear? Hearing is what the other person does with your words as he filters it through his way of interpreting things. So how can you figure out what he heard? Without that person telling us what he heard, the way to begin to figure out the answer lies in this question: How did he respond? That is, by noticing his responses you can begin to discover what the other person heard—the meanings he generated. Meaning shared is a phenomena between those communicating.

Neuro-Semantics focuses on the meanings (semantics) that we communicate, the meanings we program into our body (neurology), which we then perform as actions. Yet meaning, as a phenomenon of the mind-body system, does not exist in the outside world. Meaning is not externally real. It does not exist “out there.” You have never walked down the street and tripped over some meaning that someone dropped on the sidewalk. It’s not that kind of thing.

Meaning is mentally constructed as an understanding. It arises from how a person links and associates ideas and references. It arises from how you reflexively apply an idea so it becomes your frame-of-reference.

Meaning is inside, response is outside. When a person responds to what you say, that response gives you some clue about the meanings she must have constructed from what you said. Now you can explore.

“What did you hear? What does that mean to you?” “What meaning did you give to X?”

If you discover that the other has constructed meanings which you does not fit with what you meant to transmit, then simply try again. “Sorry, that’s not what I was attempting to say. I’ll give it another try.” The ensuing dialogue continues the co-creation of shared meanings.

This meaning/response distinction highlights that different people give different meanings to what is said and how it is said. A stressed tone of voice is just a response, the meanings you give

to that voice tone are your meanings. It may correspond to the other’s meanings, it may not. Therefore an incongruous response, one that doesn’t seem to correspond to your meaning is feedback— “This other person is interpreting it differently.” This is not a matter of right or wrong; it is a matter of co-constructing until a state of mutual understanding arises. To discover that difference, suspend your own meanings, and inquire again.

The danger is that you automatically attribute meaning to a response. Yet you, like all of us, are biased to do this. Yet you are coming from your map of the world. You are operating from what it means to you. Actual communicating has not yet begun. Instead of communicating, you have jumped-to-a-conclusion assuming that your meanings are the same as the other person’s. This is a great formula for confusion, distortion, and ruined relationships.

To avoid that, use the meaning/response distinction to your advantage and do one of the most challenging things as a meaning-maker—suspend your meanings and explore the other person’s meanings. Slow things down to check out what each person means by the words being bantered about. This is what masterful communicators do. They know that they don’t know anyone else’s inner system of meaning. They know that the greatest seduction is filtering information through their own meanings and assuming that is what the other person meant. They know that this is a formula for being blind and deaf to others. That’s why just witnessing responses and distinguishing responses from meaning is so important for staying in the game.

In summary, responses don’t mean. Responses are just a response. It comes from meaning— so it is an invitation for you to discover the meaning that it comes from. How do you do that? Simply ask the other person, “You just responded with Y, I’m wondering what that means to you?”