Suzy Lamplugh Trust Update

For those who have been following the saga of my attempts to get the Suzy Lamplugh Trust to correct an (inadvertent, I am sure) error on their website, here is the latest instalment.

But before that, give me a second to bring new readers up to speed. I blogged a while back about the Mehrabian myth, the notion that  the words in a verbal communication account for  only 7% of the meaning we receive; the rest being voice (38%) and body language (55%).

I came across it again when being trained for the voluntary work that I do, and was told that the source of their (mis)information was the Suzy Lamplugh Trust. So I looked on the Trust's website and found  and they do not quote the figures there, but they do say  'The majority of communication is through body language, a lot through tone of voice and only a little through words.' (Their emphasis). I blogged about it here, including why it is so worrying in that context, and also wrote to the Trust.

In due course, I received a reply, which I thought might just be fobbing me off; so I resolved to re-visit the site after a while, and see if they had actually changed anything. They had not. So I wrote to the Chair of the Trustees, and this week received his reply.

Thank you for your email to me of 4th March. Having looked into this I really don't think that the information on the Trust's web-site is either misleading or dangerous. To the contrary, it is making an important and correct point: that body language is often more important than what one says and that it is important to be aware of one's body language if one is to defuse aggressive behaviour. As you have noted yourself, our web-site doesn't use the (often misquoted) Mehrabian percentages. Accordingly, I am satisfied that the responses you have previously received from the Trust's staff were appropriate and that they reflect the Trust's policy. I am grateful to you for bringing this issue to the Trust's attention. As a result of you doing so we have now reviewed this matter twice. However, we do not propose to review it again, at least not in the immediate future. Accordingly, we not intend to correspond with you further about this.

Beneath the formal courtesy, that sounds like a clear 'get lost.'  I note that at no stage has anyone from the Trust maintained that the statement is true, still less given any reference to support such an assertion.

However, never one to give up too lightly on helping people to learn, I tried one last shot:

Thanks for your email. I have no intention to waste your time, and do not expect a reply to this. 

However, I would point out that there is a vast difference between these two statements: 

 'The majority of communication is through body language, a lot through tone of voice and only a little through words.’

 'body language is often more important than what one says and [that] it is important to be aware of one's body language if one is to defuse aggressive behaviour.'

My only intention was to help you correct this inaccuracy - if you changed the wording on the site to what you wrote in your email, that would be telling the truth rather than telling an untruth. 

Perhaps it is my training as a linguist that makes this seem important to me. Try telling any student of a foreign language that 'The majority of communication is through body language,’ and you will see what I mean. 

I have little hope that it will do any good, but I will revisit their site occasionally, in the hope that the change will be quietly made.

And I continue to wish them well with the important work that they do.

If you agree with me that they should correct the site, you might choose to drop them a courteous line to that effect.  If you think I am wrong on this, you could drop me a line, of course.

Learning to communicate

I like to think I am pretty good at communicating, but over the last week or two, I have really learned something new - something that can be summed up as Assert, then Justify. The idea is to be crystal clear from the outset about the purpose of the communication, and state that.

My preferred style, which works well with groups or in one-to-one conversations, is a narrative approach. I introduce a theme, develop and explore it, and reach some kind of conclusion.

However, feedback has been converging on me from different directions. This is not always the style to use.

So on the one hand, Andrew Derrington, who has been giving me feedback on my book, has got me to re-write a chapter using this approach.  I had written it as a set of case studies, from which I assumed the intelligent reader would be able to derive some learning.

He has persuaded me to try writing a proper introduction to the chapter, in which I give the reader a preview of what is covered and why, therefore, the reader should bother to go any further.  Likewise, he has go me to write a proper summary at the end, reminding the reader of the key learning points.

I have to say, the chapter is much better now: I think he is right.

Also, working with Karen Ainley of Mosaic, this week, I got very similar feedback.  We did a radio interview, and as usual I told a good story. She was very positive in her feedback about my narrative style and so on, but said the same thing: I needed to give listeners a reason to listen from the very start: what am I going to say that is interesting.

So I am going to work hard on this: firstly thinking much more consciously about which approach to use when, and secondly to practice Assert, then Justify until it becomes as comfortable part of my repertoire as telling a good story.