© Elliot Essman 2005. All rights reserved.

These pages contain the complete text of Human Action, public speaking trainer Elliot Essman's philosophy of human achievement.

Elliot Essman Public Speaking Training
Human Action Table of Contents
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Creative Confusion may be confusing, but it is also creative. It involves using words so that the words yield new information, and maybe even create a Shock in the listener. If you want to create a Shock that doesn't get you anywhere, then all you have to be is obscure. Your listeners will be disturbed, perhaps stimulated, but they will not advance to a higher state of human knowledge. Such a Shock is un-vectored. It lacks a direction and does not use Human Integration. It may be creative, but if it refers to no reference frame at all, it is not particularly useful. Without some static common reference frame, even if temporary, there cannot be communication. Communication takes more than creativity; it takes skill and restraint, planning and careful execution.

Creative Confusion involves taking chances with language, stretching reference frames, but with a high degree of personal discipline and wisdom gained through feedback. You probe, you challenge, you learn. Above all you listen. It is often difficult if not impossible to guess how you will be understood by a single other person, much less by a group of other people. You gain skill in communicating, with individuals in particular and with people in general, by winning small victories and gathering feedback one tiny bit at a time. The feedback tells you how you are understood. You learn the wants of people, their needs, their priorities. The “Confusion” in Creative Confusion refers to the way you stretch the reference matrix. As a leader, you want to stretch enough so that reference frames are threatened, but not too much so that you lose the connection with the other person. Once a reference frame disappears all together, you lose “meaning.” In the final analysis, meaning requires some sort of common ground.

Here is a very mundane, un-philosophical example of the use of Creative Confusion to elicit feedback and expand meaning. In conversation, you discover the person with whom you are speaking is enthusiastic about something, sports for example. By taking control of the conversation (which, as here, will often involve doing more listening than talking), you can dig into the real reason why sports motivate the person, instead of falling into the trap of a rather automatic conversation about teams and players. It's all a matter of asking a few questions most other people may not be creative enough to ask. By asking something like, “What force inside you do you think is responsible for the appeal of sports?” you will be injecting a low-level jolt into what otherwise would be small talk. As a skilled conversationalist, if all you get is a quizzical stare, you know well enough to drop the line of inquiry. You may, on the other hand, get the other person to open up and reveal some personal sensitivity: “Oh, I guess I like sports because it brings out the hero in ordinary people,” or, “I admire the courage and dedication of professional athletes and use it as a model for myself.” Once you have the toehold, you can, with sensitivity to and respect for the other person, take the communication exchange as far as it will go.

We cannot anticipate all or even some of the conversational or communications situations where you may have a chance to inject Creative Confusion, to add little bits of challenge to the (often automatic) use of words in everyday life. The key is that it is creative, so you have to think up the techniques, not take them from this book. But the opportunity to grow as a communicator and wordsmith is out there. Your own creative Shock is to view every human interaction—down to the act of ordering a product by telephone—as an opportunity to stimulate and open up a unique and potentially fascinating human being.

Exercise: Creative Confusion

Here are some Shock questions and comments you can sprinkle into everyday communication to add a little Creative Confusion:

• Ask someone: “What is your great passion in life?”

• If you're ordering a product through a toll-free number, ask the order-taker what geographical location you are reaching and chat for a few seconds about it. Ask them if they like living in that area. This personalizes an otherwise mechanical conversation.

• Ask someone's opinion on a political or social question and then wait silently and attentively for the answer. Do not give your own opinion but when silence falls, try to keep the conversation going by a “why do you feel that way?” or “and then what?”

• Never let your own or someone else's statement lie unanswered. Always dig, question and challenge.