"The best communicators learn to align their intentions with their impact."
I found this sentence a few days ago on Conversational Intelligence by Judith E. Glaser. Since then, I've been pondering about this alignment between intentions and impact.
Using Judith's words; "While intention is what someone wants to make happen or plans to accomplish, the impact involves the quality of the experience from the perspective of the receiver—and that impact may not correspond with what the communicator intended."
So, I do align these two things? In particular, knowing that the impact of my communication is not something I have control over. Or do I?
My understanding is that to tune intention and impact, I must work on my awareness.
First of all, I must be aware of my true intentions. Often there is a gap between the stated intentions and the true ones underlying my words and actions. I don't know you, but I can be very good at deceiving myself. So, working on awareness and being fully aware of my intention is half of the work.
Then I must also be aware of the other. I must learn to read the signs in the people and the environment I want to connect and communicate with. Only by becoming aware of both of them, intentions and impact, I can create the alignment needed to build trust.