Learn Low vs High Context Communication - Don’t Make My Disastrous Mistakes

For years, decades even, I felt like there was an invisibility cloak that instead of hiding physical things hid meaning and blocked interpersonal connection.

I would hear and understand literal words being spoken but I would be confounded by what’s the real meaning of what’s being said.

I would feel like I was speaking as clearly and non-provocatively as humanly possible, yet my words would provoke unexpected emotions that caught me unawares.

That was until I intuited the significance of low context vs high context communication styles.

Only recently I found that it’s a real anthropological phenomenon. Writers use it to to craft dramatic dialogues for characters…you know, those characters that seem to miss “obvious” context-cues that propels the narrative through exciting conflicts. I even learned that the US State Department has training modules about how whole countries’ cultures could be considered low context or high context

I still struggle with how to connect fluidly and organically with people who communicate on different levels from me on the low-high context spectrum.

It’s tedious for all concerned to continually ask for explicit clarification of the “real” meaning of everything or to double check that everything that was intended to be conveyed was actually what was understood.

Did you know about low/high context communication?

Any tips on how to organically bridge low/high context communication styles ?