The Ombuds Office recently released the UNLV Ombuds Office 2022 Annual Report. Preparing this report and sharing it with the campus has helped me to put into perspective the issues people bring to the office.

If the numbers tell the truth, the biggest obstacle to greater happiness and satisfaction for UNLV employees is communication, primarily with their supervisors, but also with their peers. I don’t know whether it is a good or bad sign that most people have not been surprised by this. It seems to be a given that leaders, staff, faculty, students, and other members of the UNLV community are simultaneously not being provided with the information they want and not sharing information that others need.

Learning that we have a communication problem, however, should be maybe more than a little upsetting. We all share the goal of maintaining a university that honors its community by providing its students an excellent education. And communication is an essential part of that education: one of the five University Undergraduate Learning Outcomes (UULOs), which we consider critical for students to master before they graduate, is, in fact, Communication (With a capital C, no less). Specifically, all students who earn a UNLV diploma, in theory, can “write and speak effectively” to a variety of audiences, “respond to the needs of audiences and to different kinds of rhetorical situations,” use oral and visual media (including the latest technology), and, most important to the campus communication discussion, “collaborate effectively with others to share information, solve problems, or complete tasks” (University Undergraduate Learning Outcomes).

Certainly there are some excellent communicators on campus. And yet, as a whole, it doesn’t seem that we have mastered this very important skill.

Since September of 2020, the University Libraries and Greenspun College of Urban Affairs have sponsored “We Need to Talk: Conversations about Racism for a More Resilient Las Vegas,” a series in which university and community figures have frank discussions about race, inequity, and inclusivity—issues that deserve and demand the greatest sensitivity, issues that may not always be easy to discuss. Host Claytee White, among others, has fostered stimulating and productive exchanges of ideas in this forum, proving that we can talk, even about difficult issues.

Which raises the question for the rest of us at UNLV: “Why can’t we talk?” Why can’t we do a better job of communicating with each other, not only about important societal issues, but also about our daily hopes and frustrations? What makes communicating so difficult?

Often, communications get complicated because others aren’t listening the way we would prefer, but we can’t avoid our share of responsibility. Chris Cornell has a great line in Soundgarden’s “The Day I Tried to Live” that for me sums up how we all can struggle in this area: “The words you say/never seem to live up to the ones inside your head.”

Cornell’s words helped me reflect on the problems we have with communicating. And it occurred to me that when you “say” something, you’re really saying four different things:

1. What you think you want to say
2. The words that come out of your mouth
3. What others heard
4. What others shared

As you can imagine, there can be quite a gap between what is thought, spoken, heard, and shared. Written communication is, perhaps less prone, but not entirely immune to, similar discrepancies, and has its own limitations: tone, for one, is difficulty to calibrate. So it might not be surprising that we have difficult in making ourselves understood and understanding others.

Specifically, when people cite “bad communication” as a factor in a conflict, they can be referring to one of several things:

• No communication: People aren’t telling you what you need to know. In fact, they aren’t telling you anything. You almost wish you got some bad news, since even that would be better than no news at all.
• Unclear communication: You’re getting a message, but you don’t understand it. Either the language is confusing, or you don’t have a framework to understand the content. This could be a jargon-laden reply, or drowning out the relevant information in fluff. It also might be an email message typed on a phone that made perfect sense in the sender’s mind, but didn’t quite make it to their fingers.
• Ambiguous communication: You understand the message perfectly well, but you are struggling to decipher its meaning. The Oracle at Delphi was a master of ambiguity: telling a visiting commander that his upcoming battle would end in a glorious victory was technically true, but not mentioning that it would be for the other side allowed him to read his own meaning into your prediction, letting him go home happy—which was probably the point.
• Untimely communication: This message is clear, and you understand it perfectly. You just didn’t get it when you needed to. This could be giving someone critical information when it’s too late to do anything about it, or trying to initiate a conversation about an important topic when one party isn’t in the right emotional state to make it a productive one.
• Unwelcome communication: This message is clear and unambiguous; now is as good a time as any to hear it. The problem is, you don’t want to hear it. In this case, you need to think critically about your reaction: is this genuinely poor communication, or is it just that you don’t agree with the content?

The gulf between what we intend to say and others hear, combined with the challenges above, in which meaningful exchanges fail to take place, might explain why we can’t talk. But while the obstacles to better communication are many, they can be overcome.

We can start with ourselves. Before communicating anything, ask ourselves, what words will we use, and how will others hear them” Is there any way to make them clear and unambiguous? And is this the right time to have this conversation?

Fine-tuning your communications with those principles in mind can contribute to a culture of good communication at UNLV, and maybe reduce your own frustration just a little bit. If others don’t want to hear what you have to say, you can’t do much to manage that, but at least you can rest secure knowing that you did your part to communicate clearly.

To help UNLV employees communicate, the Ombuds Office has developed a 60-minute workshop on how to make difficult conversations less painful and more productive. If you would like to schedule one for your unit, please contact us. We also offer facilitated conversations and other tools to help groups communicate better.

And, as always, if you would like to speak with an impartial voice in a confidential setting that is completely distinct from any formal process, disciplinary or otherwise, do not hesitate to make an appointment with the Ombuds. Our door is open.

David G. Schwartz