BLOG

Ear to the ground...

I want to share a tragic, personal experience which brings home to me, every time I think about it, the essence of communication and the process of communication.
We were on the final day of our honeymoon and went to make one final visit down to the beach on the North Cornwall coast near where we were staying. The sun was shining and as the tide was in waves were crashing against the shoreline rocks and everyone was off the beach and on top of the rocks above the waterline. It was a glorious day. As we lay in the sun the squeals of laughter around us changed in pitch and intensity. Suddenly, we were aware of screams and a commotion down on the waterline.

Warwick Castle has a long and colourful history. The original wooden motte-and-bailey castle, built by William the Conqueror in 1068, was rebuilt in stone in the 12th century. Attacked, besieged, and hit by fire the Castle survived the ever-changing fortunes of history. It remained under the stewardship of the Earls of Warwick and later the Greville family as a private home until 1978. The ancestors of my in-laws worked at the castle as blacksmiths. To have been any good at their work they will have been well practised at ‘striking while the iron is hot’.

When we build a good, face-to-face relationship with someone it’s likely we'll have a sense of anticipation as we meet them, although I’m not so sure if that happens as much when we’re simply interacting online or through social media. Developing a relationship takes time, effort and know-how. Bradberry & Greaves in their book Emotional Intelligence 2 suggest that ‘know-how’ is emotional intelligence. Michael Schluter has written extensively about ‘relationships’. In his book The Relational Manager (co-written with David Lee) he identifies the conditions that allow relationships to build rather than deteriorate. He asserts the following conditions must be present for relationships to thrive: encounter, storyline, knowledge, fairness, and alignment. The authors sum these conditions as being about ‘relational proximity’.