Clarity Strategic^TM

As a social media PITA, I periodically find myself tweaked by something someone else has said. And with even greater frequency I find someone else tweaked by ME. I guess if you are online a lot, and you consider engaging an audience to be part of your business then that's gonna happen. Too many people to hear you and too many things to talk about for it to be otherwise.

But when it happens, there is always a delay before I can get back to the serious work at hand. Either because someone else is angry with me and I have to deal with it, or deal with their disconnecting from me; or I'm angry and can't get a darn thing done until I've got hold of myself again. Obviously, this ain't something I want happening over and over, but it happens too often for my taste. And now I know why.

I talk about what I wanna talk about. It may be something I know well. It may be something I know others like. I may have spent some time preparing for this moment of audience engagement. But what I did NOT do was run it all through the Everyone Else Filter. I didn't check to see how it's going to PLAY with that audience. Here's how the filter works. If I leave a bullet out, please get back to me on that, wouldja?

• Not everyone likes what you like. You could fool around with disclaimers, but what you really need to do is not talk about it like everyone DOES like it. Same thing is true with what you DON'T like. And because it's community, you will be tempted to assume a certain unity of feeling. Here's where this is going:

Never assume every member of the audience
feels exactly the same way you do.
NEVER.

• Sometimes people disagree. And we're living in times where people are sensitive about disagreements. Because I've worked REALLY hard, for YEARS, to gain a body of knowledge, I am really sensitive, for instance, about people not respecting that body of knowledge. Yet sometimes, when you disagree with people, they think you are stupid and will not hesitate to act like it, or even say it openly. SO:

Let people know that when you disagree
you are not calling them stupid.
Smart people can disagree.

• A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. You'll need to remember this when the faceoff starts, and you are tempted to forget that when you first became friends with these other people, you had a reason. Maybe. LOL Remember:

Always remember the good in them
before you examine the bad in the discussion.
Don't lose a friend over what you say.

• Up to this point I've been talking about that one person who's bent out of shape about that thing you said. But the world isn't just that one person and you. Consider:

EVERYONE ELSE IS WATCHING!

That's enough for now, but I bet there's more. Probably learn another later tonight. :-)