Life was uncomplicated in our childhood. There were no televisions, internet, video games, WhatsApp, facebook etc. The advantage of that was that we were forced to play games together. Even the games were not so sophisticated that we see now like cricket, tennis, swimming etc. Often the games were simple that didn’t involve expensive things, like pitthoo, marbles, lattoo, gilli-danda, antakshari, hide and seek, cards and many others.

One such game was ‘telephone’ – though telephones were rare then. In this game we used to sit in a circle and one of us said something in the ear of the person sitting next to him. He then said the same thing in the ear of the person sitting next to him. Finally, the last person in the chain had to tell everybody what he had heard. It was a surprise that almost every time the final message was different from what was said initially. While for us it was a game then it had a very strong message in it, to the extent it is an integral part of most workshops on communications today. But then, most of the things that we study in workshops we tend to forget with time. I had also forgotten the underlying message of this game, till one fine day I got a rude shock.

We were having a discussion on a particular topic in our office. I had sent a mail on this issue to few people explaining the issue, context and its importance to us. But in the meeting one important person said that he couldn’t really understand what I intended to say. I understood the reason immediately and without arguing said that ‘as a person who wanted to communicate and send a message to you all, onus was on me that intended message was understood by everybody. If you have not understood, the problem was in my communication’. We subsequently carried on with our discussions further after I had given right explanation to everybody present there.

This thought stayed with me – sender of the message has the onus to ensure that recipient(s) understand it the way it was intended. Objective of communication is to communicate a message which may or may not require words or complex jargon. Sometimes silence communicates, sometimes just one word or a gesture, just a cartoon, movie, story or a lengthy book. In every single case the onus to make his message understood is always on the sender and not on the recipient – just like it is on me now that my thoughts are understood by the readers the way I intend, though it is not necessary that they agree with my thoughts. How many times do we say ourselves or hear others saying “why don’t you try to understand? Here I’m trying to make you understand for a long time and you like an oaf just don’t understand”. Anybody who says this forgets that onus to make the other person understand what he wants to communicate is his, not the recipient’s.

Let me give few simple examples from different spheres of life. We had a great cartoonist in ‘R K Laxman’. For many years he successfully communicated with masses highlighting their concerns by drawing simple cartoons. Complex issues were highlighted by him in minimalist way. Those cartoons were sometime funny, serious, sarcastic, matter of fact, emotional etc. The genius of the cartoonist lay in communicating his thoughts and emotions without writing too much. The best part was that a huge majority understood what he wanted to communicate. I’ve rarely found people asking – what did he mean? Laxman, the great man, was an excellent communicator and practiced what I just said – Onus of making people understand his thoughts is on the communicator and not the recipient.

I remember one of my previous bosses in this context. He was quite a well-known figure in the industry and had created a brand for himself. Once we had meeting with senior people of another company. Discussions in the meeting went on for a long time during which a major role was played by my boss. He spoke the most. After the meeting got over while we were walking to the door one of the participants came to me and said, Sanjay, your boss only kept speaking but communicated nothing to us. He just used lofty words and jargon and confused everybody sitting there. No one countered him considering his stature, but I don’t see anything positive emerging out of this meeting. Indeed, that is how it evolved. Intentionally or unintentionally, my boss was unable to communicate his ‘right’ thoughts leading to failure of the intended objective.

I think I was in class 10th then. There were four sections of 10th class. All the subjects were compulsory till 10th and selection of subjects started from 11th class. History was considered a boring subject by most of the students in my section. But whenever we spoke to our friends in the other section we were surprised to hear that most of them liked the subject. It was quite a mystery for us till one day we found our teacher was on leave and the class was taken by the history teacher of the other section. That day we started liking history, which was of course short-lived since our own teacher returned after few days of leave. The subject was interesting or boring for us not because of the content, but because of the teacher. The teacher who made it interesting for us had a way to communicate with us. He not only communicated the historical facts and dates but also linked them to the present context, kept the language simple and made the subject anecdotal. This not only made a drab subject interesting for us but made us understand and remember what we had to. This is the power of communication.

While we are still on the subject of teaching I also remember one of my good friends and batch mate during my engineering days. This guy had some way with words and communication. Even the toughest subject was not only understood by him well, he used to explain it in such a lucid way that our own seasoned professors could not do. Whole lot of the batch mates used to flock to him if they had any difficulty in understanding the subject. Probably where he succeeded was not the knowledge as compared to professors, but his ability to understand the students who were his own friends. So he communicated in a language that his friends understood well. His success was the failure of the professors, since they couldn’t do the job for which they were paid. Difference was merely the way a ‘communicator’ communicated with the ‘communicated’.

As a child I used to be quite awed by the conductor of military bands. He just had a stick in his hand and the entire troupe behaved and played their instruments based on the wave of that stick. I still can’t understand how they do it. But it has an amazing lesson in communication. Even if it was on account of training, it not only worked flawlessly it worked at all times. Whenever I saw orchestra subsequently in my life I saw the same stick in the hand of conductor doing wonders with the musical instruments. What a communication? Wow! When I started connecting the dots in other aspects of life I saw the same conductor, sans the stick. Sometimes the Chairman of the meetings in our life is helpless like the speaker of Indian Lok Sabha or Rajya Sabha. Nobody listens to them. So these Chairmen will shout, speak, stand up at their place but still there’ll be no order in the meeting. Suddenly the person in the Chair changes. Now the same set of participants in the meeting will start taking the messages from the look in his eyes, gesture of the finger or the few words that he speaks. It is not only a matter of his assertiveness or authority, but the way he communicates with others. The messaging is minimal but the message gets passed on well. Similarly, in meetings we find some participants speaking a lot but communicating nothing whereas some others will be conservative with words, but send firm, crisp and hard hitting messages. Communication is not about words alone, but the right choice of words and the right sequencing.

This reminds me of our beloved President Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, who just left us for his heavenly abode. He was a famous scientist, the Missile Man. He was an authority in scientific subjects and could speak with ease on the complex issues related to science and physics. He also stepped in the public life as the President of our country. There he had to be an expert on constitution of India as well as myriad complexities of our country. He had to communicate with the high and mighty of the world. In this field also he was excellent and never once he let down the nation by any miscommunication. But his supreme excellence was the way he communicated with the students of various age groups and various fields. He became one with them. There was no trace of a scientist or a President there. The way he communicated with the students was as if he was a part of them and he spoke in the language they understood. He used to come down to the level of his students to communicate with them. No wonder he was so popular with students.

Nowhere the power of communication is as important as it is in the public life and leadership. A good General will ensure that when he is with the jawans he is at a level where he speaks their language, when with senior officers he speaks their language and when with his seniors he speaks their language. A popular leader elected by the people has to communicate with the masses, intelligentsia, opponents, world leaders’ et al. All of them require a different way of communication, words and body language. We have seen different kinds of leaders, one who do all this with ease and one who are uncomfortable doing this. Successful are the ones who communicate their thoughts well to the target audience. These are the people who know the target audience, understand them, understand what is the best way to communicate the message to them without any distortion and be like one of them. Advertising industry has significantly recognized the rules of communication and best ways to convey the message. Even then, once they get a natural communicator their job not only becomes easy but far more effective. Electoral success of some leaders like President Obama and Prime Minister Modi owes a lot to the right communication and perfect combination of an ace communicator with some great advertising professionals.

My Little Thought of Life in this context is that the onus of ensuring that the right message reaches the recipient is that of the sender, the communicator. If the recipient doesn’t understand it, fault doesn’t lie with the recipient, but the sender of the message. We communicate with people day in day out. It is therefore essential for us to understand the importance of right communication in our life. If the onus is on the sender then it is also essential for the sender to understand that communication is not only about words or spoken words but it is a package deal consisting of words, expressions, gestures, pitch, sequencing and clarity of thought. Once these things are there it becomes important to understand the target audience and do the messaging in a way that is suited to that segment. So a President Kalam will ensure that he customises his communications based on the audience, like scientists or politicians or state heads or even students.

I wish my friends and readers of this article to be conscious of the disproportionate importance of communication in our lives and that it is they who are the masters of what they communicate and how it is received.