Um, can you hear me?

Clarity, I write about it all the time, often finishing one of my more flamboyant posts with the edict: Clarity or death! I’ve been doing some thinking about clarity and just how hard it is to be clear. This all came to me this afternoon, I saw speaking to my boss about some work I’ve been doing over the last three weeks. Finally after finishing up our talk she asked me if I had sent them into our main administrative office in Indiana. I had not and when she asked me why I told her that we had never discussed it, that I never knew where it was supposed to end up. We were both amazed that we could have miscommunicated on such an important point. Yet we had and all because we both assumed that we were well understood.

Inconceivable!!! I almost wasted a lot of work, it had almost been for naught, as it was I sent it in and got it in right under the deadline. But disaster was far closer then I would have liked and all because neither one of us could see beyond our own initial assumptions about what we had talked about. I assumed that if there was anything else that I needed to know she would have told me. She assumed that if I really wanted to be a part of the process I would have gotten into contact with the correct people. Both of us were right, both of us acted properly and yet but had very different mental pictures of the situation. Thank god we communicated, it could have cost me a job I really like, I could have mad her look bad. We both almost suffered from horribly passive aggressive behavior all due to us assuming we knew what was going on in the others head. As so I say to you today, do not let important things in your life go without being sure you get real and lasting clarity. Do not fall into the traps of passive aggressive behavior and most importantly Clarity or death!