For the last few month I have been practicing a salsa routine with the Rise and Improvise club, a group of friends who just like to dance, however good or bad it might look. Two weeks ago we nearly fell apart due to a miscommunication.

The team is quite “hot”, and I mean not just good looking, but we all have feelings and temper, and sometimes those clash.  Our choreographer is a great chica Cubana who loves salsa and knows it inside-out, but sometimes she gets stuck and just needs more time and a little bit of help to move on with the steps. When that happens, I try to contribute when I think I know a way out. Lately I have been feeling uneasy because all my suggestions seemed to have been ignored by her. We could had been standing there for five minutes trying to figure out an answer that I knew all along, but I wasn’t heard. I brought it up to her attention a couple of times, but nothing was changing. I was ready to quit and the opportunity presented itself at the second-last practice. I was pushed over the edge by an unexpected comment from one of the members, it was enough and I left!

Of course I did not want to leave! I like the team and want to practice with them, but the message had to be sent that not all was as well as it seemed. In fact, I know that other team members had thoughts that were ignored as well. The confirmation was in the email by one of the guys who quit shortly after, saying he did not see us continue together.

A few days went by and the choreographer and I talked. She realized why I was unhappy and admitted to have had no knowledge of my feelings. She also brought up a very good point! She wasn’t ignoring me, but simply because she was overwhelmed listening to everyone, she was ignoring everyone in hopes to focus on a problem at hand. I could of course get mad about it, but why would I. The thing is, “the customer is always right”. In this case, she was my customer and I failed to deliver a message. Was she wrong in ignoring me, perhaps, but so was I because I failed to understand her reasons.

Communication is a two way street. If you want to be heard, you have got to listen, and visa-versa. There is also a difference between listening, and hearing. I think very often it is easy to listen, but to actually hear one needs to put extra attention and really want to hear the message. The other side though has to understand this and send the message so it is well understood. In this case we wanted to dance, we knew there was no problem but the temper problem. We talked, we worked it out, and we moved on dancing. It could have been easier to just say “I am right, you are wrong” and go separate ways, but neither of us would have been happy that way.