Friday, March 15, 2013

Carolyn's Communication: Listen, Learn, Speak



When I began thinking about the word, communication, the first thought that came to my mind was the schism in our society that pits one side against another.  It’s all around us – in families, at work, among friends, and all the way to our Congress in Washington, DC.  I selected the background to emphasize how shattered our  country seems to be in talking with those who hold views that oppose our own. 

I chose 3 arrows to represent the communication cycle.  The quilt is named Listen, Learn and Speak.  It seems that our society needs to recover the most important step in effective communication, the ability to listen.  Listen is represented by the purple arrow. 

The second communication skill is learn.  By listening to others, we can learn why people hold to their beliefs.  Often, we gain information and discover that their positions are not that different from ours.  Learn is represented by the orange arrow. 

All of us as children heard the admonition,  “listen before you speak.” So, speak became the third skill in my communication cycle.  In our high-tech communicative world, it’s so easy to speak before you listen or learn.  It is represented by green, the color we use to know when to "go."

The yellow in the circle is the harmony that results when we listen and learn from one another.


12 comments:

  1. Oh Carolyn, you took on an important problem. I love, "By listening...we can learn why people hold to their beliefs. Often, we...discover that their positions are not that different from ours." So many of us have family and distant friends on the opposite side politically, and yet we are still so close. We are not so different. Others would say they could never be friends w someone on the other side.
    Anyway, I want to know how you did that background. It belongs in a zillion of my pieces!

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  2. Carolyn, though I got to have a "sneak peek" at your quilt, which is go graphic and colorful and so beautifully constructed and quilted, I absolutely LOVE your narrative about it. I made me yearn for the days when our Congress, both House and Senate, were willing to listen to one another and even to change their minds! But this applies to me personally so well; it contains a "sermon" that I, myself, need to listen to and take to heart!

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  3. I might add this: the reason that Janet (about my quilt) and I (about Carolyn's) referred to a "sneak peek" is that both Carolyn and I chose to put our Communication quilts in the Dallas Quilt Show. Now that the Reveal Day is here, I can go back and add our two quilts to the post I wrote about the Show! Janet, of course, is one of the Texas MMs who had quilts in the show, in addition to Carolyn, Rita, Sara, and me.

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    1. And Kathy ! My quilts were also included in the Dallas Quilt Show :-D

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  4. Linda, I wish I could say that I created the wonderful background of my quilt, but alas it is a Kaffe Fassett (or Brandon Mabry) fabric. Aren't their fabrics great?!!!

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  5. Carolyn, I love the background you chose. It's perfect graphically with the arrows. The colors are great as well as your message. Great solution.

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  6. Nice piece, it sort so vibrates with the colors.

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  7. Another thought provoking quilt. I love how you constructed the arrows to have visual dimension, which gives them more "weight", as they represent such basic, yet important communication skills, that we all need to be reminded about from time to time!

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  8. Background fabric is perfect and your arrows are so three dimensional they seem to jump off of the sphere of harmony. Such important aspects of communication we can so often forget to do. Nice job!

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  9. I love the message in the quilt - the listening so often gets lost and without it there is NO real communication. I like the dimensionality you achieved in the arrows too.

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  10. How thought provoking! When I saw your quilt at the Dallas show I loved it. The colors and graphic way you depicted the communication theme is superb. Listening is the skill I work on the most because it is the hardest. Too many times you can tell people are not listening to you, instead they are planning what they are going to tell you. I know I do that and after I leave a group I shake my head and say, "Why did you say that?"

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  11. As many of the others have already commented about, the communication skills you discussed are so important: Listen, Learn, Speak. I must admit that often when I'm trying to listen, I'm also thinking about what I'm going to say in response. Gotta work on that "Learning" component ! Great job, and great narrative !

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