Communication as Giving

Over the last few months Mark Walter has written an extraordinary series of posts for his blog eternal awareness on the subject of The Art of Giving. These posts offer deep and unexpected insights into the nature of a process that affects almost everything we do. They have certainly helped me to understand why some activities become a virtuous circle of increasing returns while others (which may not appear all that different) peter out into oblivion. I would strongly urge anyone who isn’t familiar with Mark’s writing to take a look.

The Art of Giving series has also prompted me to think about how the process of communication might be similar to giving, and about how we might usefully apply these insights to make it more effective. But before I go on, I should first summarise one of Mark’s key points, which is about the relationship between the four principles of giving: respect, appreciation, gratitude and value.

As I understand these, respect is having a correct attitude towards the source of the thing one is giving. If we were talking about giving money, respect might be directed towards one’s livelihood or towards those from whom one is raising funds.

The next principle, appreciation, is concerned with the value one adds to what one has to give. In this case, it might be as simple as deciding where the funds could be most effectively used. On a much bigger scale, for instance in a charitable organisation, it might be the management of the process of giving: having representatives on the ground, mechanisms in place to facilitate distribution, checks and balances to avoid wastage and loss.

The third principle, gratitude, is less familiar to us. Yet this is the one that makes the crucial difference between whether the giving prospers or goes to ground. This is about returning a tithe of what is given to the source. If we go back to the example of a charitable organisation, this might be about investing in the donors – making them feel involved and valued, providing feedback, etc. (However, this is where the example also shows its limitations, because the circle of fundraising, distribution and involvement I've described confines the process to flow of finance - while The Art of Giving challenges us to develop a deeper understanding of the nature of ‘source’).

The fourth principle, value is not another stage but describes the intention of the process, the increase and sharing of value.

Perhaps another example will allow us to look at how giving can work with intangible value. Imagine a counsellor with a client. The first thing the counsellor does is to listen, and this is respect. The more the counsellor can attend to the client, to give him full attention rather than allowing herself to be distracted by interpretation and judgment, the more value comes through. She then appreciates what she has heard, by using her knowledge, experience and skill to frame a question that can help the client to resolve the issues he has been describing. There is a circularity here that many people would think achieves what counselling sets out to do: you talk about your problems, I help you to understand them, you can then resolve them.

But the third principle of giving, gratitude, requires us to do more than this. The counsellor also needs to help the client become a more aware person. To understand this, we need to see that the ‘source’ of what the counsellor is able to give is her greater awareness (which may have been stimulated by her training and experience, but now stands before it). The client is caught up in his own problems. He doesn't understand them, can’t see past them. The ‘problems’ may be the pressing issue, but his inability to understand them is symptomatic of the level of his awareness. By ‘tithing’ a percentage of what she gives to the client to the task of increasing his awareness, the counsellor is lifting what is happening outside the merely transactional into what could be described as ‘service’. The client leaves counselling not just able to deal with the issues in hand, but as a more aware human being.

How is communication giving? To find an answer, we need to look beyond the usual parameters of ‘I have a message, I select an appropriate medium for it, I communicate my message’ and, instead, look at communication as a process of engagement. As an illustration, let’s take the example of an everyday marketing communication. I want to tell you about my product. First, though, I need to ‘listen’ carefully both to the product and to you. I need to understand what makes the product good and also what might interest you about it (which means understanding something about you, your needs and your interests). I then appreciate this understanding in the usual kinds of ways: with good writing, nice imagery, well crafted type, good printing (or coding, if it is communicated through the web) etc.

Where is the gratitude? This is a good question, and I believe that this is where many communications fail. Or, indeed, where some unexpectedly succeed - without anyone really understanding what their success is based on. What could it mean for a communication to ‘tithe to source’? At the most basic level, something like good writing or design, if it lifts the communication beyond being just a product promotion into something that is also beautiful, appealing, interesting in its own right, is making a tithe back to the place where the skills and experience of the communicator(s) come from. At the same time, it’s giving something back to the audience: if one is making demands on their attention, it is not enough to give them your marketing message in return. There needs to be an element of ‘something in it for me’. If the communication is funny, joyful, life-enhancing, it is increasing the amount of positive energy in the world, regardless of whether anyone is interested in what it has to say.

But this isn't going that far back ‘upstream’ (even though many marketeers are resistant to giving away even this much). The 'source' of communication is much deeper. It comes from the place that mystics describe as the Logos, the coming into being of our world as language, as ‘words’, as meanings that are comprehensible and distinct. To mouth a sentiment which might seem a bit rich for some readers, communication has a Divine source. ‘In the beginning was The Word...’, and all that. How do we return a part of the communication to that Source? Not necessarily by smothering our promotional materials with hymns and prayers (although it is interesting to note that this is exactly what happens in some cultures, for instance in the almost obligatory ‘786’ that sits above the signs of many Indian Restaurants, which refers to the Islamic invocation ‘In the Name of God, the most Compassionate, the most Merciful’).

Tithing to Source in this sense doesn't have to be so explicit, or so overwhelming. When a communication is conceived and executed in a state of ‘presence’ – if the designer has made a conscious intention to create it in a state of heightened awareness and ‘rememberance’ of her or his own Higher Self – it will convey some of this quality. How? Through the way that the elements are composed, which will result in a harmony in their relationships and proportions. And through the intangible ‘energy’ that inheres, mysteriously, in words and images. In this case only the intention needs to be conscious: the way in which these things are achieved will flow, effortlessly, from the supra-conscious being of the designer.

The Art of Giving can enable our communications to bridge between the essence of what human beings are and the mundane, everyday activities we involve ourselves in, without becoming portentous and obscure. All work has this potential. The ‘tithing’ that gratitude requires doesn't demand total devotion, only a hint, a ‘whiff’ of something else. And, as I've said so many times before, ‘something that is created with love and delight communicates that love and delight, but something that is created with other qualities communicates those qualities’. The engravings that William Blake made for Joseph Flaxman’s ceramics catalogues came, unmistakably, from the hand that penned ‘To see a world in a grain of Sand. And a heaven in a wild flower...’ But they sold pots.