Yesterday in class the discussion had to do with communication. Feinberg had many messages, but at the end of class he highlighted his main two.

1. Two way communication is better than one way.
2. Active listening is good.

These messages reminded me of a Seinfeld episode (sorry, Seinfeld had to come up at least once in my blog). In this particular one George is working for the Yankees and he happens to be using the restroom at the same time as his boss. As George washes his hands, his boss begins to give him a work assignment from the stall where is he doing his business, to which George heard none of. When his boss comes out of the bathroom he says to George "so is everything clear," George responds "crystal clear sir," although he has not heard a thing his boss said.

So now George has a very important assignment, and he has no idea what he is suppose to do for it. Jerry suggest he just ask his boss questions about the assignment to try to figure it out, so George does. As his boss walks by, George tells him he's having some trouble getting started and wanted to know where the best place to start would be, his boss says "well probably with accounting, is that all," and George says yes. He's still perplexed as to what his assignment is and does not figure it out until the very end of the episode (conveniently).

If George would have just used two-way communication he could have avoided this whole problem. When his boss asked him if everything was clear he could have responded that it was not and a little more explaining would help. I'm sure his boss would much rather preferred explaining it again, then and there in the restroom, than a couple of days later when George still has no idea what was going on.