If you Google, “solving communication problems” you will get over 133 MILLION results! Amazon has over 180,000 books on communication. Do you think communication issues are common? I think we can all agree that at one point or another we’ve all had some kind of issue communicating with others. But why do we have these frustrating problems? Are we that difficult to understand? Are our loved ones, employees, or work mates that confusing? Surprisingly the answer is simple…no! Our brains just communicate differently.
As always with yours truly, it’s all about the science of the brain, realizing that most of it is just in the way our brains are wired differently and how we see things from different perspectives. When we look at each other this way it can solve a lot of frustrations.
I often talk about our sensory modalities that is how our brains take in information the most efficiently and effectively. There are three modalities, Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic. All of our brains process information the best through one of these methods. We all of course process information in many ways but our brains have a strength in one of these manners.
The visuals in our society are in the majority, taking up about 50% of the population across the board. Visuals pick up on those optical ques immediately and are often distracted by them. They often use speech like, “I see what you mean.” They’re usually very well put together, very neat, clean clothes and like their surrounding clean and organized.
Only about 20% of the population fall into the auditory category. These are the readers in society, they love to read! These are the people who will often say, “I hear ya.” Or “That sounds great!” They’ll pick up on things that are said that others won’t or will be tortured by that faint clicking sound in the background that no one else hears. Words are very important to auditories. They need verbal affection (I love you) and instructions, you can’t hint at what you need done you have to say the words and tell them exactly what you need them to do.
Rounding out the categories are your kinesthetics with about 30%. Personally I believe this number is actually much higher. When I do this experiment with a group the number is usually about 50%. This is hard to measure because kinesthetics aren’t honored in American society, they are actually shamed, especially men.
Kinesthetics live by what their guts tell them, they often say things like, “That doesn’t feel right.” Or “My gut is telling me…” Their brains bring in information through all of their senses. They will choose their wardrobe based on comfort and not necessarily style. They’re great at reading a room and getting a sense of someone before even talking to them.
So if we’re able to determine the sensory preferences of those in our lives and learn how their individual brains converse, we may began to do a lot less of just talking and a lot more communicating! Take a short quiz to determine what your sensory preference is.