Choices and Connections

When you’re communicating, everything you say and do counts—and is connected to what comes after. There are no “take-backs” or “do-overs.” That’s why it’s so important to know how to make good communication choices.

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In season three of the IFC skit-comedy series Portlandia, an investigative journalist exposes the city’s mayor as the biggest “energy hog” in Portland—a city known for its environmental sensibilities. Searching his apartment with his assistants, the mayor discovers the source of his energy consumption: he has left his home printer running continuously in test mode for 10 years because he didn’t know it could be turned off. Hosting a press conference to explain his error to an outraged public, the mayor gets caught up in the moment and hurls the offending printer into the Willamette River. Of course, this only makes matters worse. Now he’s not only an energy hog but also a polluter. He resigns in shame and becomes a goat-herding recluse.

Though the skit is meant to poke fun at politicians and environmentalists, it illustrates two serious points that together form the central theme of this book. First, every choice you make as a communicator is connected to the outcomes that follow. Second, the different types of communication you engage in are connected to each other by similarities that vastly outweigh their differences.

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The incompetent choices made by Kyle MacLachlan’s character in Portlandia quickly got him demoted from mayor of Portland to secluded goatherd. When have you made a poor communication choice? How did you recover?
Scott Green/© IFC/Courtesy: Everett Collection