​Sometimes when two people have a conversation, the person doing most of the listening takes away something completely different than the person doing most of the talking intended. This situation also occurs in a group setting because different people in the same audience may take away different ideas from the same presentation which may or may not be what the presenter intended.
 
As the Woman's Soccer Coach at the University of North Carolina, Anson Dorrance's teams have won 22 National Championships. Coach Dorrance coached the Women's Soccer team at UNC for 33 years and the men's team for 13 years. In his fantastic book, Training Soccer Champions, with Tim Nash, Coach Dorrance gave an example of the way different audiences respond differently to the same content.
 
"You don't need to show a videotape to a women's team to critique them. If you are in front of a group of men giving them general criticisms of a game, a videotape is crucial. If you are saying there was not enough defensive pressure in the game, every male in the room is think¬ing, "Yeah I was the only one working out there. The rest of you were useless." In his mind, he immediately blames everyone else for the lack of defensive pressure.
 
If you made that general criticism to a women's team, and said, "This is garbage. Our defensive pressure was terrible." Every woman in the room would think, "He's talking about me."
 
I find it interesting that a male will look at the video and see everyone making mistakes, including himself, and start to blame everyone else for his inability. But a woman will see herself and take full responsibility for that problem emotionally. With women, a video is more effectively used to show that they can play well and to show the positive aspects of the performance.
 
Not that you can never show negative aspects of a performance to a women's team, but seeing their mistake on tape does not really help them. If you tell them they made a mistake, they'll believe you.
 
I do not want to pretend that men do not respond to positive things, but you must have a balance of showing the positive and the neg¬ative. Coaches tend to only stop practice during an entirely negative environment to point out and correct mistakes. Yet one of the best times to stop a training session is during or right after a brilliant series of performances to confirm exactly what you want."
 
Who's in your audience?

​As the Woman's Soccer Coach at the University of North Carolina for 33 years, Anson Dorrance's teams have won 22 National Championships. In his in his fantastic 1996 book, Training Soccer Champions, with Tim Nash, he shares some great insights as to why "Complete Communication" includes more than just our words:
 
"Though trial and error, I have learned that the women I have coached listen less to what I say than to how I say it. In other words, they listen less to the language and more to the tone. If my tone is negative, it doesn't matter how positive the words are. They are going to hear negative.
 
If your body language is negative, it doesn't matter how careful you are in constructing your sentences to create a positive impression. It still comes out negative. Women listen to your tone and watch your body language, regardless of what comes out of your mouth.
 
They are discovering in research that a woman has so many other faculties in her brain that she draws on in a conversation, and these faculties are above and beyond her intellectual interpretation of the words you are using to communicate.
 
She is looking at your body language, and she is listening to your tone. Through a combination of all these factors, she is deciphering exactly what you are thinking about her regardless of what you are saying. It's crucial when you are coaching women to use the correct tone and body language to communicate, or at least have some sort of positive approach even if you are being critical.
 
If you are criticizing a woman in training — and obviously sometimes you are going to — they have to get a sense that it's nothing personal."
 
Anisha Sipporah, in this excerpt from her wonderful poem "Tone of Voice", describes the impact of "Complete Communication" as it relates to children:
 
"It's not so much what you say,
As the manner in which you say it;
It's not so much the language you use,
As the tone in which you convey it.

'Come here, ' I sharply said,
And the child cowered and wept.
'Come here, ' I said; he looked and smiled,
And straight to my lap he crept."
 
It is valuable to be mindful of your "Complete Communication" as a speaker and a listener and to be aware of the impact on the other person.
 
Are you?