Harmful Assumptions Plague Us – and Especially Them

Posted on September 10, 2007
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One of the most troublesome communication traits shared by most of us is making unfounded assumptions – speaking or acting on the basis of impressions that turn out to be misleading, or flat-out mistaken.

An example comes in a story in the Harrisburg, Pa., Patriot-News on how the stresses of poverty show up in public school classrooms. (In that context, the report notes that “the percentage of students receiving free or reduced (price) lunches has been creeping up in many midstate school districts.”)

Steelton-Highspire School District Superintendent Norma Mateer told the Patriot-News reporter about a student who couldn’t stay awake during class. “I was on him that he wasn’t going to bed early,” she recalled. But as she learned more about the student’s home life, the teacher found that the boy’s bed was the family sofa.

“An uncle staying there watched television late into the night and the boy couldn’t sleep.

“We make assumptions based on how we grew up and what our childhood was like. And those assumptions can be way off base,” Mateer said, “Part of what we as a school district must do is constantly remind ourselves of their reality.”

Reminding ourselves of other peoples’ reality. Other terms for a very necessary way of gaining insight are “walking in others’ shoes,” or practicing empathy. We can’t hope to have a sense of realities unfamiliar to us unless we travel in them a bit. It doesn’t have to be a far distance, just a pause and the insertion of ourselves in another’s circumstances, enough to ask, “What might really be going on here? What might I be missing?”

Enough of that sort of inquiry could change the world very much for the better.

Apple’s Wise Acknowledgement

Posted on September 10, 2007
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A New York Times report called it “a remarkable concession,” but Steve Jobs’ decision to give Apple’s early iPhone purchasers a $100 credit, rather than let them keep smarting over a $200 iPhone price cut, was good, responsive public relations.

Forgetting how those early adopters might feel was an aberration for Apple, and Jobs acknowledged as much. “Our early customers trusted us, and we must live up to that trust with our actions in moments like these,” Jobs wrote on Apple’s website.

Rather than let an abuse of trust keep festering, Jobs acted to mollify some of Apple’s most loyal customers. Whatever prompted the price cut without an accompanying credit for early buyers in the first place, Jobs acted promptly and considerately to face up to it. As a result, loyalty is assuaged and restored.

“I think it was probably the best compromise from a P.R. standpoing and the right thing to do for consumers,” an iPhone purchaser said. “I’m sure they are taking a lot of heat but they are listening to their customers.”

A good move it surely was – sincere, empathetic, active listening public relations.

A Gas Company’s Stand-Up Acknowledgement

Posted on September 8, 2007
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Kudos to UGI Corp. for acknowleding up-front that it was responsible for a gas-leak fire that destroyed a mobile home in a Campbelltown, Pa., trailer park.

The fire, in late August, erupted when a construction crew extending a sewer line through the trailer park to a new development hit a gas line that, as UGI acknowledged, was not properly marked.

A resident of the mobile home escaped when the punctured gas line erupted into a flaming geyser, just minutes before fire destroyed her trailer. Other residents were evacuated until the gas was shut off.

“We accept responsibility and we apologize to the residents,” said Craig Siebler, UGI’s Lebanon, Pa., district manager. That’s a stand-up way to deal with a relational reality, one worthy of emulation in other crisis situations when responsibility is readily apparent.

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