Voter contact (conflict)

The past semester was conflict after conflict after conflict, often as many as 100 per day. You may be thinking, how could someone get into so many conflicts day after day? Does he go out and knock on doors looking for them?
Pretty much. As a full-time deputy field organizer for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, part of my job was to knock on doors and have ‘voter contact,’ in which I had discussions with voters regarding the election.
Needless to say, there was a wide spectrum of reactions, tones, and discussions. One person chased me off her deck with broom, others invited me in for drinks. The hardest aspect was realizing that while an issue might be important to me, it was most likely not important to the person I was trying to persuade. The key was finding what was important to the voter, what their immediate concern or misgiving was, and addressing it. I found it wasn’t so much the facts I had memorized that won voters, it was more the presentation. When speaking strongly and confidently, while listening quietly and attentively, hearing them out in full, we got much better reactions. We could have conversations and discussions, even if we disagreed.

The point wasn’t to change someone’s mind right then. It was not to win a debate. I know if I lost a debate, it certainly wouldn’t change my mind about who I would vote for – only make me think about how I could have won the debate/what I should have said. The discussion, the listening, the back-and-forth understanding, allowed for the other person to hear the ideas with a more open mind, and they would probably spend some time considering the idea from a different point of view later.

Effective Communication

When I first think of effective communication, I think of the strong, tall, sharply dressed, confident young business man/woman who everybody notices when he/she walks into a room. The man/woman who can win you with a smile and eye-contact, who gets to the top of the pecking order without any conflict or demonstration of ability. This is the person whom you can never win a public debate with, because the listeners hear the certainty in his/her voice, not the reason and groundings of your argument. His/her ideas always win support, he/she will get the promotions, he/she will get the sales, and the connections. He/she is a leader, for better or worse.
He/she is also no accident. He/she is the product of years of training and experience, of honed communication skills, both verbal and nonverbal.
Effective communication to me is being able to say what you are thinking; to let other people see your thoughts. This is often very complicated, as thoughts and ideas usually come in a quick burst, containing many layers of thoughts, reasons, and justifications, all of which needs to be quickly slowed down, decompressed, prioritized, layed out in a coherent order, and presented in a specific fassion of speaking. Effective communition is no easy task.

Testing

Testing