If you have just been mugged, served with divorce papers, told that you have one month to live, received a letter of termination from your employer, had dental surgery or just had a telephone conversation with your son who has just lost his graduate school fellowship, it is going to affect the way you speak to others in terms of content, speed, focus and tone. Rather than sound like a maniac, a word-salad machine, a drill sergeant, a disgusted ingrate or an incoherent babbler, explain what happened (i.e., offer your audience context) to you prior to your presentation or conversation so that they will be lenient and compassionate in their receipt of your words.
This introduction of an explanation of context can make a bit of Humanization and empathy work in your favor, and soften an audience to be more receptive to your less impressive (but occasionally more impassioned) speech.
If you walk into the staff lounge of your workplace, which is populated with friends and colleagues (all seemingly happy) right after you've learned that your spouse has been cheating on you with your trusted landscaper (usually named Franco or Fabio), and you blurt out, "What the f**k is wrong with you idiots! Why don't you get back to work?",they will be totally taken aback.
Without at least an explanation of your recent epiphany (and you thought that Franco/ Fabio was being literal when he said, "I love tending to your wife's beautiful topiary garden," and "I have to do some serious aeration."), your colleagues are left to imagine either 1) what they might have done to offend you, and 2) what might be going on in your life that might be making you into a threat to them. Neither sends a good signal.
Rather than having someone scream at me (as if I had done something to warrant his or her anger or resentment), I would automatically feel better, and be more receptive, if he or she were to explain, as a contextual forward, that he or she had just been stopped by a police car and had been subjected to a breathalizer test, a Miller Analogies test, a curbside urine analysis and a full body cavity search. In this way, I would understand that the stressors underlying his or her mannner of speaking were not in response to some shortcoming on my part.
Volunatrily prefacing your words with the context of what is affecting you can give you a great deal more latitude in your communications, and pre-emptively de-fuse your audience from having a strongly adverse reaction (either shutting you out or arguing back at you) to your communications.
Douglas E Castle
http://aboutDouglasCastle.blogspot.com
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