Peter writes:
>>For me, long posters also do
>>themselves a disservice because they are less effective in communicating
>>their ideas if lots of people bypass their posts.
Artur replies:
>I have heard that idea lots of times; but if it is so, why worry? Long
>posts will be "punished" by their own length. The question is that long
>posts, like long books, some times have superb ideas one can't miss. "'A
>la recherche du temps perdu" (by the way the best novel of this century,
>IMHO) has seven volumes of compact, difficult to follow writing. Should
>we give the heirs of Proust (replace by James Joyce, if you prefer) the
>suggestion to rewrite the book in one volume of 100 pages or so? Should we
>appraise the "productivity" dividing the "content" by the number of pages?
>And what to do with the "form", the "narrative", that Maturana showed us
>that is the more important to convey meaning?
And then comes an important point, which why I asked Peter's permission to
distribute his msg, originally private to me.
>>"External auditory" comes from Neuro Linguistic Programming - the basic
>>propositions of which I think are very sound, but the ways in which they
>>have been extended and used can be a bit loopy to say the least.
...snipped part of Artur's response...
>> External
>>auditories are people who process thoughts in highly literal,
>>conversational ways and, indeed, often do so through conversation: that
>>is, high energy, thinking aloud. Often the only way to shut them up is to
>>tell them to shut up for a while. Typically, they occupy lots of airtime
>>when in group settings; the same time, their energy is often very
>>valuable.
Yes, Peter... I agree. Extreme examples of this behavior drive me nuts in
meetings!
Artur replies to Peter:
>Notice your words: "shut up", "airtime", "group settings" - you are mainly
>talking of ORAL communication in group meetings. There you are 100%
>right. Time can't be enlarged; the time used by the loudy people will not
>allow others to communicate.
>
>But here we have asynchronous communication: the time I use to write my
>message is not the same that you use to read it; and you can even avoid
>reading, and writing instead a post of your own.
Yes, we have in learning-org a medium in which a long msg doesn't
necessarily take "air time" as a long speech would in a conventional
meeting.
-*-*-*-*-
I thought this exchange important because it raises the question of
different personal styles of communication, a fundamental idea that
appears in NLP, in theories of human type (e.g. Myers-Briggs and the
"Human Dynamics" of Seagal and Horne)... This idea has arisen over and
over in my adult life whenever I have attempted to understand how to be
effective with other people.
I believe these notions are important and my design for
learning-org is based on these:
- People have significantly different communication styles
- The style tends to go with the person
- It's very difficult for a person to change styles or be flexible, using
one style in one setting, and another in a different setting (although
people can learn the skill of being able to adapt styles... For example,
that's one of the skills in NLP)
- A person in one style won't communicate well with people in other styles
(although people can learn the skill of being able to listen better)
(A direct conclusion from the above is that learning-org will not be for
everyone. It's part of a much larger network of exchanges and
relationships in our field.)
Now, why this aspect of diversity is important to me here...
Some people can only write in short, punchy exchanges. Others cannot
fathom how such an exchange could be be worthwhile!
There have been comments about long postings... For some, this is THE way
to write about anything important. It may be a minority, or there may be
hundreds of you hiding among the LO subscribers... I don't care whether
it's a minority or majority! Let's indulge ourselves to welcome this group
here on LO!
-=- Rick
--Richard Karash ("Rick") | <http://world.std.com/~rkarash> Speaker, Facilitator, Trainer | mailto:Richard@Karash.com "Towards learning organizations" | Host for Learning-Org Discussion (617)227-0106, fax (617)523-3839 | <http://www.learning-org.com>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>