{"id":432862,"date":"2010-03-16T04:21:29","date_gmt":"2010-03-16T08:21:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/calorielab.com\/news\/?p=6961"},"modified":"2010-03-16T04:21:29","modified_gmt":"2010-03-16T08:21:29","slug":"a-man-of-few-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/432862","title":{"rendered":"A Man of Few Words"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"Contributor: “Dr. J”<\/strong>
\nDr. J offers his irreverent, slightly irrelevant, but possibly useful opinions on health and fitness. A Florida surgeon and fitness freak with a black belt in karate, he runs 50 miles a week and flies a Cherokee Arrow 200.<\/div>\n

Early on in my career as an educator, I learned the importance of effective communication. It didn’t matter what wonderful knowledge I may have had to impart, if the patients or the students, or my colleagues couldn’t relate to my presentation of the material, it would be like the lonely tree falling in the forest.<\/p>\n

I recently read about a new book<\/a>, co-authored by Andr\u00e9-A. Lafrance, a communications professor at the Universit\u00e9 de Montr\u00e9al, and Fran\u00e7ois Lambotte of the Universit\u00e9 libre de Bruxelles, on the principles of effective communication. It seems that too much communication is as bad as too little. The authors feel that people communicate poorly and excessively when they exchange just for the sake of communicating.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

“There is a lot of information but very little communication,” says Lafrance. “Communication requires interaction between the communicator and the receiver, and the message must be tailored to the reaction of the other.”<\/p>\n

The book has three premises for effective communication:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. All communication aims to bring about change in the receiver, whether a change in knowledge, attitudes or practices.<\/li>\n
  2. All change comprises a challenge to the receiver due to their lack of expertise, the amount of effort required to understand or their questioning of the information.<\/li>\n
  3. The communicator must have the ability to convince the receiver to make the needed change.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    It’s like baby bears porridge. Not too much, not too little, just the right amount to get the message across. I had a personal experience with porridge one day when I went back to my old karate studio and had a conversation with my Sensei.<\/p>\n

    Visiting Sensei<\/h3>\n

    As I walked into the karate studio that day I felt I had come a long way from that first time as a white belt, arriving early to an empty room, sweeping the floor unasked, as I waited for the other students to arrive. I no longer lived in that city as my schooling had taken me to another state, but I was seeing my parents over the summer break and I wanted to visit my old karate school. Not much had changed; it still had that clean crisp feeling of a newly sharpened knife: simple, practical and alert. As I dressed in the changing room, I proudly tied that same black belt that this teacher had given me, though now, as it was not my way to add additional stripes, I had attained higher levels of that coveted black belt.<\/p>\n

    As the class began, I was no longer at the back of the room, but initially leading the students in the basic warm up exercises before bowing to the Sensei and taking my place at the head of the class. It was a good day to return to my karate roots.<\/p>\n

    At the end of the formal class, I asked my Sensei if he wanted to spar with me. I had come a long way since he first tied that black belt around my waist, and I felt very confident in the abilities I had learned and proven in other karate schools and tournaments, and I had the trophies to show for my skills.<\/p>\n

    Sparring With Sensei<\/h3>\n

    The Sensei accepted my challenge.<\/p>\n

    We went to the center of the empty floor as the other students sat against the walls and waited to see what would happen. We bowed and assumed our fighting stances. I was ready.<\/p>\n

    I attacked!<\/p>\n

    I remember seeing him blur off to my left, then the room turned upside down! After a few strikes, it was over. I had watched him fight other students before, and although he was usually a very mild man, I had seen him do his share of damage to others. As I got back to my feet to acknowledge my defeat, I remember thinking how I was physically unhurt, even after the apparent violence of his attacks. It was the best defeat I ever had! To this day I can’t really explain it, but I felt great.<\/p>\n

    After we bowed to signify the end of the conflict he said, “It is not appropriate for a lower rank to challenge a higher rank to fight,” and that was that.<\/p>\n

    He definitely applied those three premises, as he changed my attitude, he effectively answered my challenge, and he convinced me to learn a needed lesson on that day from this man of few words.<\/p>\n

    From the RSS feed of CalorieLab News<\/a> (REF3076322B7)<\/p>\n

    A Man of Few Words<\/a><\/p>\n

    \n<\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n

    <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Contributor: “Dr. J” Dr. J offers his irreverent, slightly irrelevant, but possibly useful opinions on health and fitness. A Florida surgeon and fitness freak with a black belt in karate, he runs 50 miles a week and flies a Cherokee Arrow 200. Early on in my career as an educator, I learned the importance of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-432862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=432862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432862\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=432862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=432862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=432862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}