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Sunday, August 31, 2008

Communicating-Part Six



Handling Information


Between partners the first rule of thumb should be “Give and Take.” It is also the first rule to be broken if we take our own positions too strongly. When that happens we get into the principle of the thing, forgetting that principles come at a very high price. The tricky balance is to give in on the issue when the balance shifts even slightly against the position that you hold.

Having once learned and mastered the art of active listening you will become a very popular person, as people will want to bring their problems to you. What do you do with all the information that you acquire? It seems to me that the absolute essential is that you maintain the information entrusted to you in complete confidence. It must not be shared with anyone as once it passes to another it is out of your control.

Men have the greatest problems with what to do with the information they receive from their female partners. We feel compelled to offer our suggestions to resolve the problems, but our ladies often only want our empathy. We are not allowed to do anything else while receiving this information. We have to put aside the newspaper, turn off the tv or the stereo and pay attention to what is being said. We can make encouraging remarks, and best of all we can offer our partners hugs, but solutions are the province of our mate. She can figure out what needs to be done even more effectively than we can.

The topic of appropriate handling of confidential information fills many volumes. It is surprising how many institutions fail in their duty to protect confidential information entrusted to them. I recall several years ago boxes of banking records were found on an open trash dump. To embarrass the culprits an advert was placed in a local paper listing the names of the people affected who were invited to call in at an office to collect their personal information. To say that someone’s head rolled for that is an understatement.

Data protection is a serious business and in most countries is covered by legislation. It is a well-known fact that information between doctors and patients; lawyers and clients; and certain other professionals is absolutely protected. In other situations, private information is considered so important that people will go to prison to protect their sources.

Where there is an absence of law there will be ethical considerations. Information shared with you in confidence should not be passed to a third person under any circumstances. Unfortunately, all too often such confidential information makes its way in the form of gossip. No matter how natural a thing it is for humans to do, gossiping is one of the worst forms of communications, and it is engaged in equally by men and women.

Curiously, if you decide that you don’t want to further a particular thread and you try to track the particular bit of gossip back to its source, someone will stonewall you. The need to protect their source of the information becomes paramount. However, if people will talk about others behind their backs to you, they will also happily talk about you to others. Stop Gossip Now!

Copyright © 2008 Eugene Carmichael