What are the odds that a female, Indigenous, legally trained, former prosecutor will naturally be on the same wavelength as group of male, Caucasian, business trained or political staff experienced individuals?

Or vice-versa.

Just about zero!

Any skilled communications/relationship expert would quickly tell you that the life experiences of these two parties are (most) likely quite different and that any situation or communication between them would be viewed through their quite different lenses and filters.

Situations, words and body-language may not seem like anything vaguely similar for people who are using different frames of reference.

People who are not into this field of study are of course always shocked to find out that other people attach different meanings to words and body language than they do – that they use different criteria and processes for making decisions – that they have different strategies for ‘knowing’ things. Furthermore, that these variances are often context specific for each individual.

There is no ‘fault’ here. Each party is doing the best they can with what they have to work with.

However, there can be a responsibility here — if you care (have a serious requirement) that you are properly hearing what another party really means to communicate or that they are properly receiving what you mean to communicate (understanding what is heard as it is intended to be understood – not simply hearing the words) — then you have (or the other party has) a responsibility to have processes to calibrate and validate the effectiveness of the communication.

These are quite simple – you can say, let me make sure I am understanding what you mean – then you tell them what you heard – discrepancies will leap out to the other party.

Alternatively, you can ask the other party to play back their understanding of what you said – again, discrepancies will leap out at you.

People rarely start out by thinking that they might be the ‘different’ party.

You are you and think of yourself as the ‘normal’ one so if there is some sort of gap in understanding between yourself and another party you assume that the other party is the ‘different’ one.

People rarely lay out all their ‘assumptions’ – they assume that they and other parties share the same set of assumptions.

This is rarely the case even when you think you are in strong agreement it is often the case that it is for a different set of reasons.

People do not like to share these internal, very personal aspects of why they think the way they do because in doing so it exposes them to being seen or thought of as different.