Chinese whispers

Are you familiar with the game "Telephone"? Perhaps you played it as a child at birthday parties. For those who aren't, I'll explain it in a moment. The outcome of the game usually leads to great amusement. In projects, however, the phenomena that arise tend to create a bad mood.

For those who were "saved" from playing analog games by PlayStation and Game Boy, I'll explain "Telephone" as promised. The players sit in a circle. One person thinks of a sentence, for example, "Chantal kissed Marco last week and he passed out," and whispers it to the person next to them. This person then whispers the sentence back, chuckling happily, as they heard or understood it. Finally, the sentence, or rather what it has become, reaches the end of the whispering chain and is spoken aloud. The originator of the sentence then recites the original, and everyone is amused by the miraculous transformation of sense into nonsense, or nonsense into more nonsense. Sometimes, nonsense even turns into sense.

In terms of these transformations, whisper chains at children's birthday parties are not very different from communication in the adult world.

Before I elaborate further, please answer this question: What would reality be for you if you didn't know you were at the end of a game of "Chinese whispers"?

At a children's party, the distortion of information might stem from a lack of unnecessary seriousness, perhaps because one or two children are still chewing on a chocolate-covered marshmallow while talking, or whispering and laughing simultaneously. When adults communicate in a project, there are other causes of misunderstandings. These lie, among other things, between the ears of the recipient, where a game of "telephone" is also played secretly and quietly.

On their way from the outside world to our consciousness, signals are subtly altered. Much of this happens without our being able to influence the change. This can be nicely demonstrated with two simple experiments.

1. Blind Spot Experiment:

Please draw a filled square with sides of approximately 0.5 cm and, about 5 cm to the right of it, a dot with a diameter of 0.5 cm on a blank white sheet of paper (see image). Now cover your left eye with your hand and focus your right eye on the square while slowly moving your head closer to the paper. You will notice that the dot disappears when you are about a hand's breadth away from the paper.

2. Hot-cold experiment:

You will need three containers placed side by side. Fill the left container with water that is just hot enough to comfortably hold your hand without burning yourself. Fill the right container with ice-cold water. Pour about a third of the contents of these containers into the middle container. Now, for about 10 seconds, hold one hand in the ice-cold water and the other in the hot water simultaneously. Then, alternately hold both hands in the middle container. The temperature sensations in your hands will be noticeably different.

Clearly, our nervous system has no real interest in an objective and precisely calibrated perception of the external environment. I'm referring to the environment outside our bodies. No wonder, since the body it inhabits greatly influences what information reaches our consciousness – the body with all its organs, muscles, blood vessels, glands, and everything else anatomists can find. The many trillions of body cells have a significant say in the matter – or to put it another way – on the path of information from the outside world to consciousness, countless body cells play a game of telephone.

For example: You arrive at the office in a foul mood because you had a fight with your partner just before leaving. On your desk, you find the following message: "Hi, we're in deep trouble... The client's system blew up last night. Crisis meeting with the boss!" Suddenly, your experiences with words like "mistake" and "boss" send your hormones into overdrive. These players in your internal game of telephone inflate the words into terrifying scenarios. Fear and anger take hold of you. If you're a hot-tempered type like me, you curse, slam your fist on the table, and march into battle. You formulate your attack and defense plan. "I told you, we need to do more testing!" On your way, a friendly, grinning colleague passes you. You think to yourself, "What does he think he's doing, grinning like that in a situation like this? Maybe he'll get my job." By the time you reach the boss's door, you're so pumped with adrenaline that you can't think straight. You enter as if in a trance.

Then you hear: "April Fools! The system is running perfectly. The customer is happy. Champagne?"„

Everything that has happened since reading the note is suddenly exposed as pure fiction by your nervous and hormonal systems. But for you, until "April Fools'!" plus the delay until the game of telephone with the new information reached your conscious mind, it was reality.

In the case described, the misunderstanding was quickly cleared up. But how often does fiction subtly accompany us in our projects? How often do we refuse to acknowledge what's really going on? How often do we ignore valuable ideas or legitimate concerns because the game of telephone filters them out or interprets them according to our own preconceived notions and moods? The greater the pressure or euphoria, the more ruthlessly ideas are filtered out and reinterpreted. We fail to recognize that we're at the end of a game of telephone, whose invisible players are our bodies, minds, and personal experiences.

Then it's quite possible that you'll find a note on your desk that is not an April Fool's joke.

Tips: How to unmask and outsmart the "Chinese whispers" game: Request now!

I welcome your suggestions at denkanstoss@microconsult.de.

Further information

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MicroConsult Training & Coaching on project management

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Food for thought:
Column by Peter Siwon about the human side of project work

Peter Siwon: Systemic project management