When Communication Goes Wrong

Sometimes you can't help but wonder "what if?". What is Stephen Harper had never become Prime Minister? What if the Liberals had selected a different leader? What if, what if, what if? Personally, the last couple of weeks away have been a great chance for me to take a step back, reflect and re-evaluate and during that process, one thing that I always knew became so, so clear: Communication is everything. Someone can have an idea, no matter how good, bad or otherwise that it might be, but how it does will always come down to how it is communicated to the public that will decide on it. So tonight in homage to the Dave Chappelle skit "When Keepin' It Real Goes Wrong", I have two examples of "When Communication Goes Wrong".

The first is one that I know others have commented on, but I had to have my say on it just because it hits close to home for me. Those that read here frequently know that I have more than a few opinions about Liberal MP for Thunder Bay-Rainy River Ken Boshcoff. Well, last week when reading his column in the Rainy River Record, he decided to write about the Liberals Carbon tax plan, but sadly for him, the piece entitled "An Agressive Anti-Poverty Plan", he gave us a prime example of "When Communication Goes Wrong" in the very first paragraph:

"The Liberal Party’s Green Shift announced on June 19th marked the most aggressive anti-poverty program in 40 years. The ‘shift’ will transfer wealth from rich to poor, from the oil patch to the rest of the country, and from the coffers of big business to the pockets of low-income Canadians."

Now, I've gone into the merits of this plan, and it's supposed "anti-poverty" measures before, so I won't go over that ground again. My concern here tonight is with the actual communication of this. For starters, isn't this supposed to be an environmental plan, and if that's the case, wouldn't the title "An Agressive Environmental Plan" be a more appropriate title? Personally, if you're looking to convince people of the environmental benefits of this plan, wouldn't you try to sell that? I'd think you would. Also, but not talking about that, Mr. Boshcoff is further opening up his party to criticism on the effectiveness of his plan. Furthermore to that, the Liberals have been getting attacked by the Conservatives for supposedly making this plan the next NEP, rightly or wrongly. So what does Mr. Boshcoff do??? Puts down in printed words, in the very first paragraph for that matter, that this plan will do exactly that, shifting income from the west to the east and all of that. Once again, this is supposed to be an environmental plan, so how does that help the environment? Regardless of the merits of the plan, this kind of confusion and miscommunication cannot help the sales job.

The second example tonight of "When Communication Goes Wrong" comes to us from the riding of Perth-Wellington in Ontario (h/t to blogging horse). Liberal Leader Stephane Dion was in Stratford to sell his plan. 15 year old high school student Gabrielle Arkett of St. Pauls went to the event looking to get some questions on Mr. Dion's plan answered. But what happened was something that she might not have seen coming:

"A high school student invited to Liberal Leader Stephane Dion’s appearance in Stratford left the event disappointed. Gabrielle Arkett of St. Pauls was looking forward to the town hall-style forum July 11 but afterwards felt “used” by the party as a poster child for the next generation of Liberals. She was introduced to Liberal party supporters but felt they were pushy and talked at her, not with her, as she was whisked around a portion of the renovated Festival Theatre lobby.

The Liberal leader was in the area recently to talk about the Green Shift, the Liberals’ new environmental plan promising taxes on pollution and a reduction in income tax. The 15-year-old said she didn’t feel that Mr. Dion sufficiently explained the Liberals’ new plan in a brief, eight-minute address. A portion of his speech was spent attacking Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

“I had no idea what the Green Shift was at the end of it,” the Central Secondary School student said.

“Copies (of the Green Shift) should have been handed out so people could ask good questions.”

After the article above was written, Ms. Arkett wrote a letter to the editor of the Beacon Herald where she gave the readers some more information about how she felt:

"The local Liberals had been searching for a youth who cared about the environment to chat with leader Stephane Dion during his visit to Stratford on July 11. I volunteered for this and I met Mr. Dion after his Green Shift presentation.

When I arrived at the Festival Theatre, I was beset by a swarm of Liberals, pressing me for contact information and pushing me to volunteer for their party. I was talked at (rather than with) and shoved at many different people. After a surprisingly abrupt ending to a rather trivial presentation, I, along with a couple other youths, was placed in Mr. Dion's presence for a couple of photographs and a handshake.

After it was all over, I felt slightly used. The presentation was advertised as "a town-hall type discussion." I came expecting to find out what the Green Shift plan was and to be able to ask Mr. Dion some pressing questions, but I was used just like a local poster-child for the Liberal Party of Canada.

I'm not even a member, nor do I want to be. Since when does the fact that I want to be informed mean I want to join the Liberal party? I was overwhelmed by the pushiness of the party members and underwhelmed by the presentation."

This story, which some would like to go away for good reason, is a prime example of bad communication. Here you had a young person, volunteering and coming of her own free will to Mr. Dion's event, wanting to hear about his plan. She had a obvious excitement about the plan and wanted to learn more. This young environmentally conscious person is precisely the kind of person that the Liberals want to attract to their party and their plan. This is precisely the kind of person, if given the details that she was looking for, who would spread "the good word" about his plan all over the place.

But what went wrong? Well, first the lack of substance in the speech was a problem and not being able to get her questions answered. While I have no issue with the attacks on Stephen Harper, people were there also expecting some details. Both of those things could have been satisfied, but weren't. Secondly was how the staffers there operated. As someone who has been a candidate and worked on a campaign, I've always been very careful about not being pushy or overbearing because the last thing you want to do is push people away for reasons other than policy. People will refuse to vote for you if you rub them the wrong way, even if they agree with your policy. When someone comes away from an experience like that feeling that they were used, you've definitely managed to rub them the wrong way. Is there anyway to fix that? Yeah, of course, but spending time to go back and fix a mistake like that costs you valuable time that you could be using to sell your plan to someone else. That's why communication is so important. The way that Ms. Arkett perceived the Liberals there treated her communicated something to her about how serious they are and what they are up to.

Now these are just two examples of "When Communication Goes Wrong", but sadly for the Liberals they have been far from the only two. Every time something like this pops it's head up, it takes away from whatever their message is trying to be. Every mistake like this has consequences, and those add up over time. That's something that cannot be ignored and that's why that communicating one's message is so important.

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