COMMUNICATION

When your instructions are followed incorrectly, do you blame others? Wait! Quite often, such errors are caused by a justified misinterpretation of your message. Here are three examples of how apparently simple instructions were misconstrued:

1. A merchant ordered 500 turkeys for the Thanksgiving season. A few weeks before the holiday, however, his sales dropped sharply. Afraid that he wouldn’t be able to sell all the turkeys, he phoned the distributor and instructed him to “Cut my order in half!” When his order arrived, guess what it contained? Five hundred turkeys, of course, each cut in half!

2. A new employee at a large company walked up to a paper shredder and stood before it looking confused. “Need some help?” the senior secretary asked. “Yes, how does this thing work?” “It’s simple,” she said as she took the thick report from her colleagues hand and fed it into the shredder. “See?” “I see,” he said, “but how many copies will it make?”

3. Upon approaching an airport for landing, just short of the touchdown, the pilot of a military planed determined that the runway was too short for his landing approach, so he’d better circle around and try again. He yelled to his engineer, Take off power!” The engineer reached up and turned off the engines. The plane continued downward and crashed at the end of the runway!

The pilot wanted the engineer to give him extra power for the takeoff.

SUGGESTION: Give clear instructions and ask clear questions, so you won’t be misinterpreted.