Tuesday Insight: Love Actually and How We All Interpret Information Differently

I recently posted a belated Christmas-themed post on LinkedIn about our favourite Christmas film, Love Actually.

In it, I asked a simple question about the famous necklace scene.

Spoiler alert – if you’ve never seen the film, Harry (played by Alan Rickman) buys someone who’s not his wife Karen (played by the equally brilliant Emma Thompson) a necklace for Christmas.

When Karen realises the necklace she’d sneaked a peak at wasn’t actually for her, she poses a question:

“Would you wait around to find out:

Now, you’re probably thinking what on earth has this got to do with leadership and development, yet alone work - but bear with me.

I realised I’d watched Love Actually more than a dozen times (probably) and drawn my own conclusions. I’d always assumed, perhaps out of a kindness to Alan Rickman, that it was just a necklace, that he’d got swept away in the moment, but that ultimately there had been neither sex nor love before he came to his senses.

To support my perhaps romantic view of the world, I’d interpreted the scene where his secretary is putting on the necklace in her underwear as a metaphor for her ultimate loneliness.

But then I wondered, does everyone interpret these scenes in the same way?

It turns out they quite categorically don’t. 

In fact, in what turned out to be a very popular poll, 61% assumed that it had been a necklace and sex and that, much more surprisingly to me, 22% had assumed love.

In total only 17% had ever shared my interpretation and 83% had a very different idea of what they’d witnessed.

Why this is interesting, to me at least, isn’t the question about the level of Harry’s infidelity, but rather how we can see the same thing as others and come away with a completely different impression.

We all interpret the information we receive with reference to our unique set of past experiences, which have shaped prejudices, biases and beliefs. In other words, we all have a unique view of the world. Sometimes the differences are subtle, and sometimes, as we’re seeing in the world today, not so subtle. 

The fact that the same information can be perceived in totally different ways matters to us as trainers and to anyone in a leadership role. Because we can never be sure that what’s in our heads is what we’re actually conveying to our audience or team. 

What’s crystal clear to us might be as murky as a fetid pond to those on the receiving end. Or it might provide in their mind an equally clear view - but of something completely different.

This is a reality I play with in activities like Prisoners of Dongia where members of the same team often end up trying to communicate using completely different perspectives of the solution, and in games like Miss-Communication or A Different View. 

And, of course, in what feels like my most famous creation, The Witches of Glum, where participants’ previous experiences will always shape their interpretation of the story they hear. 

Understanding that what we think we’re communicating is not necessarily what is being received is key to understanding the need to check other people’s interpretation whenever we’re communicating – or think we are. It’s also key to understanding conflict and, importantly, how to begin to resolve it.