Communication Skills

 We learn to communicate almost immediately after birth.  Infants can see facial expressions and infer meaning from them.  They communicate with their own facial expressions in a very short time.  It is not difficult to see when they are happy or whether something is bothering them.

When my kids were learning to swim at a very early age, the guy who was teaching them had developed his PhD around a system of teaching young children to swim.  He taught us that different cries from infants meant different things.

There are cries of anger.  There are cries of fear.  There are cries of hunger.  There are cries of, "Hey, I messed my laundry and I want someone to do something about it".  There are many other messages being sent by this crying, but in all cases, a response is expected.  "Let me know you have heard and understood what I am communicating and that you will do something about it".

We moved on to learning the alphabet, then putting it together in words and eventually, sentences and paragraphs.  Even before that, kids are learning language, simply by hearing others speak and trying to imitate.  I've long said that the first time a child says no is the beginning of the development of that child to become an independent and self sufficient adult.

Communication becomes more and more sophisticated as we grow and have more life experience.  I was fortunate to be a child and teenager during the 50s and 60s, when there was more discipline and eduction going on in schools, as opposed to much of the indoctrination of today.  I attended Catholic schools through high school.  We were drilled with correct spelling, grammar  and diagramming sentences.  

As you may know, if you have read my blog from the beginning, I did not attend college.  In some ways this is beginning to look like a blessing, although college was probably not as bad then, as it is today.

Two years after graduation from high school, I was drafted into the United States Army.  I have written extensively about that experience. This morning, I was thinking about some of the things I was taught about communication while in the army.  During my second 8 week period of training, Advanced Individual Training (AIT), we were being taught how to talk on radios.  This was primarily because we were being trained to be scouts for armor units.

As scouts, we would be probing advanced areas, searching for the enemy and reporting back to the main body, the location, nature and size of enemy units.  We would also be calling in artillery strikes.  Precise and clear communication was critical. Mistakes or misunderstanding could cause lives to be lost.

Sometimes it was necessary to spell words in radio communicaion.  It has been decided that the normal alphabet can be easily misheard or misunderstood.  Therefore a phonetic alphabet was developed.  Words are used to represent letters.  You may be familiar with the phonetic alphabet that was being used by the US military during World War II, from seeing the TV series Band Of Brothers.  It covers E Company, 2nd Battalion of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division, "The Screaming Eagles".  At that time the phonetic word for E was Easy.

At some point after WW II, the countries of NATO changed the phonetic alphabet.  This new one was the one we learned in 1966.  For example, Easy was changed to Echo.  Supposedly, the reason for the change was to make communication between people who spoke different languages more easily understood.

Not long after I left the army, I began learning how to fly and as you can imagine, precise and easily understood communication is as important in aviation as it is in the military.  Here, I encountered the familiar NATO phonetic alphabet again.  This makes sense, as airplanes can easily be flown anywhere in the world, it is necessary to have a standardized method of communication.  It was decided that English would be the language of international aviation communication and the NATO phonetic alphabet would be the standard.  Lucky for me, I did not have to learn new ones.  Not so lucky for those who want to be involved in aviation and their first language is not English.  Life can be tough.

Another aspect of critical communication, that I touched on slightly in discussing infant communication, is acknowledging reception of messages. In aviation, a read back is usually expected and sometimes required.  When air traffic controllers tell pilots to fly a certain heading, change to a different altitude or clears them for takeoff, landing or an approach, they want to hear back from the pilot, exactly what they have cleared them to do.  Simply saying Roger, will usually piss someone off.  The read back should also include the call sign, to assure that the correct airplane will do what the controller expects them to do.

Although it is usually not as critical, normal communication between humans should also have some standards.  When someone says something to you, it is good policy to acknowledge in some way.

OK, the reason I started thinking about this, is that I have a mobile repair guy, here in Fort Myers, I have been dealing with for a few years and I have been trying to get information from him.  He and his office have not been getting back to me and I am pissed, but I don't want to dust him off.  He is very good, when I can get him out to work on the coach.