What Are You Communicating?

What Are You Communicating?

After resisting for a while, I have finally succumbed to my own advice and have just joined the blogosphere.

What should you expect from this blog?  What am I all about?  I would say communications – but in its widest sense.  I am about building bridges of understanding among people from different backgrounds and different cultures.  I am about strengthening relationships – since the quality of your life is, in essence, equal to the quality of your relationships – be it your relationship with your boss, colleagues, clients, or friends.  This field has become known as Social and Cultural Intelligence.  For me, it boils down to a form of communications that begins with understanding yourself and all the messages you are sending both intentionally and unintentionally. 

Although my career has always been tied to politics in one way or another, and although it is difficult to avoid politics in the Arab world; you will not find any political commentary here.  My intention is to focus on the people, the cultural motivators that make a person behave in a certain way.  My intention is to help people bring out the best version of themselves by paying more attention to how they carry themselves, how they interact with others in the office and in public places, how they speak and what they say when they are not even speaking.  My perspective comes from today’s Arab world – a rich and diverse culture, mixed with the traditions of old and practices of the new.

I always say at my workshops that we are constantly communicating not only in what we say but in everything that we do.  What I choose to wear, my hairstyle, even the colour of my nails communicates a message.  The way I walk into a room, my facial expressions and how I physically respond to people around me also communicates a message.  How I react to the simple daily issues that life throws at me also communicates a message.  The question I need to be aware of is: Am I communicating the message that I actually intend to?  Or is something getting lost along the way?