Some of the anxiety people have about communication is mixed expectations. And sometimes it is about about control.
Episode 40 of the Make Saints podcast: “Why They Never Listen”
the episode script
She’d come up to me and tell me she didn’t know what’s going on. Probably every six weeks or so. She blamed me; and our church communication.
She was angry and frustrated. And every one of these interactions made me angry and frustrated.
Until I figured out what was going on. And realized it really didn’t have anything to do with me.
Trouble communicating
In the last two episodes of the podcast, I’ve outlined the two biggest problems with communicating. Which is really that we use this one word (communication) to mean very different things.
So we use the word communication to refer to conversing that is happening synchronously—you and I in the same room at the same time. And asynchronously—you and I, not in the same room and not at the same time. And the trouble for us is that we want asynchronous to be instantaneous. In other words, more synchronous. And it isn’t.
The other problem with communication is that we often mistake the idea of communicating for broadcasting. We sometimes think of communication as only a person at the top of the pyramid talking at other people and not a dialogue between people.
I have found both of these problems everywhere and cause so many headaches for everyone.
But if we were to get just a little more clarity about what we’re doing when we’re communicating and get on the same page about expectations for our communication, we can eliminate almost all of our frustration.
I say that, and believe it. But there is one more piece hiding in the shadows. And this one is really deceptive.
Elizabeth
Let’s turn the clock back a few years. I was serving a church we’ll call St. Gertrude’s. And one person, let’s call her Elizabeth, was exceedingly skeptical of me.
She didn’t trust the diocese or the circumstances of my coming there. She also didn’t like that she didn’t know that much about me. And the fact that she didn’t ask me about myself should be seen as a clue, here.
During my time, it is fair to say that I heard from Elizabeth (or her daughter) no less frequently than every six weeks or so. She’d say that she never knows what’s going on. And she doesn’t “do the internet,” because, in her words, “she’s old” (she was in her early ‘80s, so consider that alongside her self-assessment).
This is all quite reasonable, I should think, right?
And I would lay out for her what I had control over.
I pointed out that everything would go to the website, Facebook page, Twitter, and our weekly email. Of course, I don’t expect her to get those things and we had stopped weekly mailings over cost.
But, I said, all of that same information was in the bulletin each week AND I made verbal announcements of all the interesting things each week. AND I almost always announced things for a good three weeks before they would occur. SO, she certainly wouldn’t need to be online if she were in church regularly.
This, of course, was a big part of the problem. She didn’t come every week. She didn’t come every other week. It was maybe every three weeks.
None of this was good enough, of course.
And yet, I offered, what could I do? We were already making tons of announcements on all of the channels. And if she isn’t in church to hear, why would she expect to know what’s going on?
And that’s the question of the hour. I finally landed on it.
I was so focused on the illogic of wanting the impossible, I forgot to examine why she would even expect it.
She wasn’t asking for the possible: she was demanding the impossible. Because her problem wasn’t me: it was her.
If someone doesn’t look for information, doesn’t show up to our regular gatherings, and never came to anything outside our regular gatherings, what is she actually looking for?
That’s what drove me the battiest anyway! She wasn’t going to do anything with any of this knowledge! Not once did I see her at something that wasn’t on Sunday morning! Why does she even want to know what’s going on?
Because knowledge is power.
Elizabeth didn’t want to know what’s going on to participate in it. She wanted to know because that’s where power is. And she was no stranger to power.
Elizabeth was a woman of some means. I don’t suspect great means, but she would tell us how she used to live in the wealthiest suburb in the state. So she wanted to communicate that she could choose to help or hurt the church at any time.
So the power that knowledge offers fits in two places in our world: social influence and political influence.
This aging woman felt ostracized from her influence. Because she seemed to have zero influence over me and no more over the church.
Which reminded me of the social part of this.
She didn’t have any friends.
And I don’t say this to be mean or condescending. A lot of us struggle with relationships. But it was easy to see that she presently had few friends in the church. People to encourage her, make her laugh, bring her to events. Even call her to let her know about them.
Because if she did, I suspect she would have a better sense of what was going on.
Disappearing
As we age, and more of our peers disappear from our lives, it can be striking to wake up one day and realize we’re all alone. No spouse. Few friends. None local, anyway. Happiest times are in the past. Body turning against us.
For as miserable as Elizabeth tried to make my life, and she did try, I developed a lot of sympathy for her.
And the hardest part—she would never accept my sympathy. She kept demanding the impossible.
I know that we all get that sometimes the thing isn’t really the thing. We say it’s the thing, because we don’t want to face the real thing. We do this with trauma or to protect our egos.
We get that often the problem someone has isn’t really about us.
And yet, sometimes we struggle with the idea that there must be something we can do anyway. There must be a way to get through.
Elizabeth’s problem wasn’t a communication problem for the church. She put no effort in gathering the information she claimed to want.
She didn’t have friends who called her and invited her to things. And to be brutally honest, none of us wanted to.
But we didn’t want to exclude her, either. And we racked our brains for months trying to solve the problem. By focusing where she wanted us to look. Which is where?
She wanted us to kill our online presence.
Turn back time, recreate phone trees, stop evangelizing in the community, and while we’re at it, hold a seance to bring her friends back. Maybe cajole my predecessor to move back to town so he could come fix all this bad stuff I was doing.
We took her words at face value, even as they made little sense to our situation. The problem had nothing to do with what we were or weren’t doing.
Like inherited wealth, she wanted the influence to drop in her lap because she was owed it.
It was easy for me to tune out Elizabeth.
And it was easy to get stuck on what she was saying.
But it was hard to find what Elizabeth was actually communicating.
For me, the value in this experience was in making Elizabeth an avatar for communication.
She isn’t who I podcast for, obviously. But she is who I remember when people have unreasonable expectations.
When people say “I don’t know what’s going on!” I see her face.
And when they complain about not knowing things we’ve clearly advertised, I think about what’s going on with them. Not what’s going on with our newsletter.
Most importantly, though, it helps me set the limits for my own mind of what communication even is. Of course I know that I can’t reach everyone. And yes, I try really hard to communicate effectively. But some are never satisfied. Some are never happy. Ever. Never ever. It is irrational for me to put that on me!
Instead, setting clear boundaries, expectations, and encouraging dialogue are essential to healthy, meaningful communication. Anything else is just noise.