Killing Your Communication With The Lost Performer.

You may have heard the Easter Ham story as it has been passed around for many years. I am going to reference here as it is so indicative of today’s subject. To refresh your memory, it goes something like this… A mother and daughter were in the kitchen getting preparing things for Easter Dinner. The mother pulled the Ham out of the refrigerator and just as she always did, cut the ends off of the ham before she put it into the pot.

Perplexed as to why the mother always cut off the ends of the ham prior to cooking, the daughter asked the mother why. The mother’s response was “because you’re supposed to”… As far as the daughter was concerned, the answer was entirely insufficient. The ham looked like it fit in the pan just fine and the ends of it kind of dried out as a result. This just didn’t make sense… As she pressed the mother further, the mother let her know that her mother (the grandmother) had always done it and she learned from her…

Not to be denied, the daughter decided to call the grandmother to find out the culinary rule that was dictating this dissection of the ham prior to baking. After a few pleasantries the granddaughter asked her grandmother… “Grandma, why do you have to cut the ends of the ham off before you bake it?” The grandmother’s answer was “Well honey, back when we were younger and didn’t have a lot of money we couldn’t afford the proper size pan to bake the ham. Since the one we had was so small, I always had to cut it to make it fit in the pan…”  So, in effect the mother was unnecessarily caring out a now useless act…

We will dispense with the moral of the story as that isn’t what we are going after. This little illustrates what is known as a Value Based Judgment. In a literal sense, a Value Based Judgment is a claim of “right” or “wrong” in the objective sense and is based on a value system. In the story above the judgment is that it is right to cut the ham.

Now, although right and wrong are usually matters of subjectivity, it can often be misleading to make these statements without citing the source of the judgment.  I think we can all agree that one source may be more credible than another. For instance a professor versus a student in a respective field. When a statement like this is made, one it which the person making the judgment is removed from the judgment itself, it is called a “Lost Performative”.

The psychology of how these types of beliefs are formed is subject matter for another day. What is important for our purposes hear is to recognize these types of statements when we hear them. “Boys shouldn’t play with dolls” or “good girls shouldn’t cry”… These statements represent a major gap in the foundational information and beliefs that the person is holding mentally and the actual information they are communicating. This gap is not only responsible for perpetuating misinformation, it can cause havoc on a conversation.

There are a number of ways to spot and rectify these types of statements. To learn more, please visit my website.

David J. Parnell | Communication Expert