My daughter has started middle school this fall. She now has her own locker!
Coming back from school with great excitement at the first day, she told her friend brought a small shelf with extendable legs to organize the locker and she wanted one, too. She said she got it at a dollar store. We went to the store in that evening but we couldn’t find anything like that.
So, instead of grabbing something else without knowing how it would fit, I told her to get the exact dimensions of the locker first.
I am a landscape designer. I used to measure a property and draw the plans to scale. Dimensions are something I count on.
When I asked her to take the dimensions, she said okay casually.
However, I know she didn’t really know how to do it (I’m her mother).
I grabbed a piece of paper and pencil.
What I did was drawing the 3D picture based on her description of the locker. Then I added several arrows to indicate where exactly she should measure.
I explained her, showing the drawing, to measure the length of each spot.
Then, my husband who was overhearing our conversation came in and took the sheet of paper.
He started drawing a plan, the view of the object as projected onto a horizontal plane.
Of course I could read his plan, but I highly suspected if my daughter could. Not only she has less life experience but she is not the engineer type. She is not the type to read a plan.
Through my years of experience as a landscape designer, I know many people can’t visualize things only with a 2 dimensional plan.
The designer comes up with the garden idea. She has the picture in her head. Her job is to make the client see the same vision she is seeing. The clearer he sees the vision, the faster the project goes.
She shows a plan to start. Some clients get the idea right away, others don’t. To make his vision clearer, she draws a quick sketch and/or perspective view. She presents referential photos. She shows the actual samples of material and sends him to an existing garden that has the feature she is talking about. All to make him see the future vision better.
We often hear to set a goal to be successful.
When I was watching my husband making the poor little girl confused with his plan, I was thinking about goal setting.
When you set a goal, you should make it as clear as possible. The clearer it is, the more chance you have to achieve it.
Setting a goal is indeed understanding it so deeply that you can see the picture vividly in your mind. You ‘experience’ it in your imagination and it really comes true. Knowing what you are going to achieve to that degree, you can see where to start and what to do without so much trouble. As the result, you naturally work effectively.
My daughter was told to take the dimensions. She said okay but she didn’t really know what exactly taking the dimensions of the locker meant. I drew a picture to make her visualize the locker. I told her to measure this and that, pointing on the drawing. I showed her a tape measure and demonstrated how to place it and read the numbers. She could visualize herself facing to the locker, using the tape measure and reading the number.
In comparison, the plan he showed her wasn’t enough to make her see such a clear vision. The plan helps him see his vision, but it is not for her.
If you want someone to move, you need to make the person experience the future vision as clearly as possible.
Developers build a show home to make customers feel how the future home will be. Many businesses give you samples and free demos to let you experience what actually it is. They know people tend to purchase the thing more when they can imagine the better future by getting it.
And each person has a different way to get the future vision. Logical explanation in words works the best for some people while a graphical information such as pictures and photos are way more effective for others. The multimedia such as a video clip is getting more and more recognized as the powerful tool to teach people something.
It doesn’t matter which way it is. Use whatever works for you to see the vision. Having a clear goal makes your life much easier and more successful.
And if you want someone to understand you, think how he sees things. Choosing the easier way for him to see the picture is the key to make your communication more successful. What is easy to you is not necessarily so to others, and vice versa.
And the result of the communication between my daughter and me is this:
We now see the same picture of the locker clearly!