How To Become An Unconsciously Competent Communicator

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A core NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) principle is “The meaning of a communication is the response you get”: What matters is not what I say but what my listener thinks I said.

Why does communication work this way? Don’t we all see, hear, and feel the same things? If we walk into a room with a desk and a chair, don’t we all see a desk? If we sit down, don’t we all feel the same seat?

The answer, in short, is, no, we don’t. We don’t all see exactly the same thing, and we don’t all feel that seat in exactly the same way. There really is a desk and a chair in the room, but each of us experiences that desk and chair differently.

Let me give you an example from my own life. I once lived on a houseboat on a river. That was the territory I lived in. “Territory” can be used to describe any part of the physical world. A room with a desk and a chair is a territory, for example. “Territory” can also be used to describe our psychological and political worlds.

I can describe to you where I once lived — my territory — even if you were not there with me. Sitting in my houseboat, looking at the river, I could have told you that the water is brown/blue/greenish, there are ripples, there are ducks along the bank, and so forth. My description of the river becomes a map of the territory for you. You are not experiencing the territory yourself, but you can experience my map of it.

Now, what happens if you came to visit me when I lived there? What if you and I were standing on my dock, looking at the river together? We’d both see the blue heron fishing on the riverbank, feel the cool-water breeze, and smell and hear the water as it flows around the pilings on which our dock and home float up and down with the tides. We could discuss the river and share what we each see and hear and feel. But here’s a secret that most of us know but never really accept. It’s the secret that will make you an unconsciously competent communicator:

Even though we are both experiencing the same territory, our individual experience of that territory will always remain different.

When we both stand and look at the river together, we both notice and experience different things. I might be knowledgeable about trees, and thus see beech trees and willows, whereas you might see just trees. You might like to fish and know where they’re most likely to be found, seeing those places that I don’t even know exist.

We also come with different emotions that change how we understand our sensory experiences. I might have memories of the Willamette River that color my feelings about it and how I see it — and those are memories and feelings that are different from yours. Because our senses are tied to our emotions and memories, and mediated by our individual nervous systems, neither of us will never see or hear or smell or taste or feel things in exactly the same way as another person. It’s what makes life so rich and interesting.

Those differences have significant consequences, however, for communication. Anytime we communicate, we are never going to be successful at giving people a pure experience of objective reality — the territory. No matter how well I describe my river to you, my map of the territory will never match your map of the territory. And neither map is the territory!

Distortion, Deletion, Generalization

There is a reason why our maps usually don’t match up. We put our sensory experience of the world through three different kinds of filters: distortion, deletion, and generalization. Our brain instantaneously and continuously uses these filters to be more efficient in our communication and our experience of the world.

As you read this article, you are engaged in these three kinds of filters. Until you read this sentence, you were probably not aware of what is on the wall to your left or the temperature in the room. You deleted that experience — and you will delete it again by the time this article is over — because our minds simply can’t process more than five to nine things at once.

You’re also distorting your experiences right now. In distortion we misrepresent parts of reality, often as a way of simplifying experience. We almost always distort our memories of events because we file those events in ways that make the most emotional sense to us, rather than according to what our senses actually told us at the time.

You’ve also been generalizing your experience of the place you are in as you read this article. We don’t have enough time or energy to analyze every object we see. To get through life, most of the time we have to label the world around us without thinking about its specificity.

Deletion, distortion, and generalization are necessary filters that enable us to process and make sense of the tremendous amount of information available to our senses. Yet when using these filters, we also sometimes delete, distort, or generalize in ways that may not be appropriate or useful. We may lose information we need, or we may misapprehend information.

When I tell you about the Columbia River I now live on, my map of the territory has been filtered through my deletion, distortion, and generalization process into language. That language is then filtered by you through your own internal deletion, distortion, and generalization process into your map. Your map is, in turn, a deleted, distorted, and generalized version of my map, which is in turn a deleted, distorted, and generalized version of the actual reality, the territory.

You may think when I describe the river to you that you’re getting the territory, but you’re not. All we can ever get from another person is a deleted, distorted, and generalized version of their map.

The Map Is Not The Territory

Think about how you could map your neighborhood. One map is the satellite map, showing how your home looks from outer space. Another is a road map of your city or county that shows all the streets near you but doesn’t show your house at all. A third map is the computer map your friend uses to get to your house, which may show streets or may be just a list of directions. A fourth map is the map of real estate values, which becomes very important when you want to sell your house. A fifth map is the map you carry around in your head of your neighbors — who lives next to you, who lives across the way from you, and so forth. You may even have a map of everyone’s dog, if you’re a dog owner, or a map of all the playgrounds in the neighborhood if you have young kids.

Which of these maps is the map of the territory? All of them, and none of them. Each map engages in deletion, distortion, and generalization. What makes these maps valuable to us isn’t whether they accurately represent the territory but how useful they are to us.

If I don’t have kids, I probably don’t care where the playgrounds are. If I rent, I probably don’t care about real estate values. I may not care what my house looks like from outer space.

What matters to us is what story a particular map can tell us — the story of who lives nearby, or what our financial value is, or how someone can find us.

It helps to remember that the code for maps is called a legend. The key to unlocking any map is the story the map tells. That’s true for communicative maps as well. What matters isn’t how accurate the map is — because no map will ever accurately reflect the territory — but rather how useful it is.

Reprinted with permission from Thom Hartmann’s substack The Wisdom School: What It Means To Be Human. 

Thom Hartmann is a NY Times bestselling author 34 books in 17 languages and the nation’s #1 progressive radio host, as well as a psychotherapist and international relief worker. Sign up to receive The Hartmann Report, a daily newsletter of Renaissance thinking about progressive politics, economics, science, and the issues of our day. 

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