让我们消除误会，摈弃陈见，坐下来，面对面，敞开心扉地谈一谈，至少能够包容彼此不同的意见。这可是各种研讨会、书籍、导师和顾问通常为促进沟通开出的药方。
这也正是乔治•弗兰克斯(George Franks)牢记的建议。弗兰克斯说，他的顾问建议他每次和新老板谈话时，都以“我能帮上什么忙吗？”作为开始和结束语。结果，这惹恼了他的老板，因为这句话暗示老板需要帮助。
弗兰克斯说，“我的老板对此非常恼火，他开始把所有没人愿意做或者没人在做的项目丢给了我。他见我的时间更少了。”
坎迪•弗雷森(Candy Friesen)则听取了这样的建议：解释别人的话，表示她充分理解了其中的含义。这么做的效果也不怎么样。每当她这么做的时候，弗雷森说，“我似乎都在引起憎恶或敌意。”
所有这些指导书似乎都漏掉了一点：和你谈话的那个人或许不喜欢别人重复阐述自己的想法。
在商务咨询行业，有一个解决问题的万能灵药，通常那就是更好的沟通。沟通的障碍很容易找到──而且俯拾即是。调查问题的政府委员会总是会发现沟通障碍。父母、青少年，甚至是蹒跚学步的婴孩也是如此。战争也因为沟通不力而爆发。
建议别人加强沟通不会有错。不过有时候，消除误会的努力并不是依靠那些五步、七步或十步计划就能见效的。人与人之间有一些问题很难驾驭。如果你碰到的是一位很容易得罪的经理、一位不加思索的反对者，抑或就是一个──客观地说──疯子，那么即便是天才的沟通也无济于事。而且如果有人厌恶你的机智，那么巧妙的沟通也不一定会收到成效。
达特茅斯塔克商学院(Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business)企业沟通教授保罗•阿根提(Paul Argenti)说，“如果存在人际关系问题──尤其是那个人不喜欢你，那么与他加强沟通根本没有用。实际上，这么做还会产生负面作用，因为这个人会利用你的立场来针对你。”
他说，电子时代的即时通讯令沟通更加频繁。但有时侯，不沟通反而更好，“尤其是你知道情况将发生变化或可能发生变化的时候。”
不能把责任全都推到商业顾问身上。无差别的速成解决方案还是有听众的。而在办公室里，人们通常在开会时交换意见，而此时言语经常被误认为是行动。
雪上加霜的是，有些人经常重复显而易见的道理，比如“倾听才能增进理解”。
不过，增进沟通的建议常常显得过于敷衍。比如，诺曼•文森特•皮尔(Norman Vincent Peale)在《正面思考的力量》(The Power of Positive Thinking)一书中表示，“选择快乐好了。这是世界上最容易做到的事。”（更容易得到快乐的秘诀：大幅降低你的预期。）
还有一些人表示，将所有事情都归咎于沟通问题显得过于敷衍了。克劳迪娅•麦特西斯(Claudia Mattheiss)遇到过一个老板，总是告诉她“永远不要隐瞒”自己的任何想法和感受。
麦特西斯的老板曾要求她找出员工惴惴不安的原因。她与同事们交谈得越深入，越发现是她的老板──一个不可接近、睚龇必报的人──把所有人都吓得六神无主。于是，麦特西斯小心翼翼得把自己的想法照实说了出来。
“她差点儿炒了我，”麦特西斯回忆道。“她说我完全越了界。”她和老板的关系就此一落千丈。
麦特西斯说，“有句话叫对牛弹琴，还有种说法就是把某件事情‘说死’。而有时侯，最好用行动说话。”
Not Communicating With Your Boss? Count Your Blessings
Let’s clear the air, clean the slate, have a sit-down, face-to-face, heart-to-heart meeting of the minds in which we’ll at least agree to disagree. That’s part of the advice from seminars, books, coaches and consultants to communicate better.
It’s advice that George Franks took to heart. He says his mentor suggested that he start and end every conversation with his new boss, who never had time for him, by asking how he could help. The tactic, it turns out, offended his boss by implying he needed help.
It ’so infuriated him that he started dumping all the projects no one else wanted or was doing on me,’ says Mr. Franks. ’He became less available to meet with me.’
Candy Friesen took advice about paraphrasing what a person says, indicating her understanding. That didn’t go over so well. Whenever she did it, she says, ’I seemed to engender animosity or hostility.’
One small thing that was left out of all those advice books: ’None of them ever said the person to whom you’re speaking may not appreciate having his thoughts paraphrased one little bit.’
In the business-counseling industry, there’s a solution for almost everything. Often it’s to communicate better. Communication breakdowns are easy to spot -- and are everywhere. Government commissions investigating problems find them all the time. So do parents, teens and toddlers. Wars are waged because of bad communications. Love is lost.
You can’t go wrong advising better communication. But sometimes efforts to clear the air don’t go according to the five-, seven-, or 10-step plan. Some problems between people simply are intractable. No amount of genius communication may help you in the face of an easily threatened manager, a fast-draw blackballer or, clinically speaking, a nut case. And if someone hates your guts, spilling them tactfully isn’t always productive.
’If there’s an interpersonal problem where the person doesn’t like you especially, communicating better with that person will have zero effect,’ says Paul Argenti, professor of corporate communications at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business. ’In fact, it will have a negative effect because the person will use your position against you.’
Instant communications in an electronic age creates a rush to do so, he says. But sometimes it’s worth not communicating ’especially if you know the situation is going to change or could change.’
Business advisers aren’t totally to blame. There’s an audience for non-nuanced, microwaveable solutions. And in the office, where talking about talking is systematized in things like meetings and their follow-ups, words are often mistaken for deeds.
Compounding the problem are the bad apples who, having failed to heed advice in preschool, make it necessary to state the stupefyingly obvious such as, ’Listen to gain understanding,’ as one article on communication notes.
But advice to communicate better can often seem too pat, like much of the self-help industry that influenced business books. ’Just choose happiness,’ wrote Norman Vincent Peale in a model of can-do literature, ’The Power of Positive Thinking.’ ’It’s the easiest thing in the world to accomplish.’ (Nomination for an easier happiness key: Vastly lower your expectations.)
What’s too easy, some say, is calling something a communication problem when there’s a lot more to it. Claudia Mattheiss had a boss who always told her to ’never hold back’ whatever she thought and felt -- until she communicated what she thought and felt.
Her boss had asked her to find out why people were so fearful. The more she talked to people, the more she learned that her manager, unapproachable and vengeful, was scaring the daylights out of everyone. Gingerly, Ms. Mattheiss explained just that.
’She almost fired me,’ recalls Ms. Mattheiss. ’She said I’m totally overstepping my bounds.’ Their relationship never recovered.
’There’s such a thing as talking to the wall. There is also such a thing as talking something to death,’ she says. ’It’s sometimes better to do instead of talking about doing.’
