Short Story: Rabbi Horace Whitaker lectures on communication

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Rabbi Horace Whitaker was talking to his students about the value of communicating in a full, and an open, way to others. He told them that the words that you use, although important, do not convey your full message. "If while you are talking, you are doing something else, like even just scratching your ear, absentmindedly, your listeners will be distracted by this action," he then said. Here is the rest of his lecture to his students that night. "Your tone of voice is also very important too." "If you have a stridently high voice, or a rasping irritating one, your listener, or listeners will be being distracted, annoyed, by this feature of your voice, rather than listening fully to your words too." "If your voice tone, and your words used, do not match your body language, your audience will be put off by these inconsistencies, and doubt the value of your communication, or they might even start to think that you are not really being honest in what you are telling them." "Always check yourself as you speak, and try to gauge where your audience is at too, instead of just continuing willy-nilly, past a point where your audience has turned itself off completely from what you are saying." "Communication must come from the smile in your heart, rather than from the sense of any self-satisfaction in your mind." "One way is open, and ongoing; the other way is more a self-satisfactorily stance, that you are trying to fill with your talk, rather than just giving it out simply with a smile." "One way is stilted, and contrived, off-putting; the other is inviting, inclusive, and warmly engaging, of the listener too." "One way is speaking for yourself, for self-praise, and adulation for your talk; the other way is giving of yourself, in a way that the audience can feel given too, not just used as an absorbent sponge, that you are trying to get them to soak up your message with." "Ok. That's my lecture for tonight." "Go over your notes, and I will answer any questions that you have before my next lecture, tomorrow." "Thoughtful questions, based on proper consideration, are always better than spontaneous, off-the-cuff, questions, which are really just raised to try to elevate the questioner's status, amongst the rest of the audience, rather than having any real value in them." Photo Credit: The photo used in this article was sourced from the free media site, pixabay.com "The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place." George Bernard Shaw, (1856 to 1950) an Irish playwright, said this. And, I would agree with him on that too, as would the good Rabbi in my story, here too.