Misaligned Signifieds… Everywhere

When the argument between my best friend and me inspired me to think of de Saussure and the application of his work to (self-)improvement, I didn’t really think it would get me this far.

Just a little reminder – we’re still in the realm of signifiers and signifieds, i.e., the form, the attached meaning, and the arbitrary relationship between them. However, we are observing this through the lens of (self-)improvement. So even though de Saussure states that a signified’s meaning emerges only in relation to other signs, we’ll be focusing here on the practical side – how our personal signifieds often clash or cause misunderstandings in daily life.

Which is why noticing specific patterns in my own environment made me realize that, surely, I’m not the only one.

Sadly, I was right.

Clean the Floor!

I didn’t have to look further than my partner’s workplace. He constantly argues with waiters about trivial things to the point where one would think they all speak different languages.

For example, he often tells them, Clean the floor, and then freaks out when he sees that they don’t clean behind shelves or sofas, for example.

What he doesn’t realize is that they don’t perceive the floor as a flat surface that covers the entire area of the space in question. They perceive it as the visible surface of a certain space. The rest is just behind or under or around the given object.

I should know, LOL. I also perceive the floor as they do. Which is why, when I think of cleaning, I never think of cleaning the floor in particular, because that’s for those rush moments when you’re having an unexpected visit, and you need to tart the place up in five minutes to make it look decent. But it basically just means you’ll stuff everything in the closets and sweep the rest under the carpet.

Be a Good Manager!

Here’s a slightly different example.

My friend is a manager, and a few years ago, I had the pleasure of working both with her and some members of her team.

A few months into her role, half her team considered her the best manager in the world, with the other half thinking she was the worst – ever.

What was surprising for me was the fact that no one tried to hide how they felt, and everyone was ok with it.

During one of our sessions, I slipped in the topic of “good relationships at work and the role of a manager in it.” My friend thought about it for a second, and then said, In theory, a good manager does not have all the answers, but they know how to organize those who do, inspire them to find even more answers, and be better today than they were yesterday.

Then she looked at me, burst out laughing, and continued, In practice, those who like to work like me, those who don’t – don’t.

We both laughed, and knowing some of the incentives and rewards she had introduced for her team, as well as my previous personal experience, I translated this to myself as She’s demanding, but fair.

However, when I had the same talk with some of her team members, something completely different rose to the surface.

One of the girls told me, Oh, she’s the best! You can learn so much from her! If you don’t know something, or if you make a mistake, she sits with you and talks about it, and asks you a gazillion questions until you figure it out yourself, or you find a common solution if it’s something above your head! And when you do that, then she lets you do the job yourself so you actually know how to do these things in the future on your own! I’ve never had a manager like that before!

I was pretty impressed with the impact my friend had left on the girl, but soon, the same talk with another person hit me like a ton of bricks. Oh, she is absolutely the worst! The w-o-r-s-t! She doesn’t know anything about the work, and if you ask her about something, she’ll retort with a bunch of dumb questions that lead nowhere, and then just look at you – do you get it now? No, I don’t get it, and if I did, I wouldn’t be asking you. She never wants to help, and even if she wanted, she wouldn’t know how – because she doesn’t know anything! I’ve never had a manager like that before!

Having heard both sides made me realize what my friend was telling me. Those who liked learning, liked her. Those who didn’t – didn’t.

But that’s what’s on the surface. Luckily, my friend has excellent people skills, so she didn’t take the likes and dislikes at face value, but dug deeper to unearth the root cause of everyone’s behavior.

It turned out, as it always does, that many complex factors worked together to bring about specific behavioral patterns, like having a previous manager who expected you to know everything. If you didn’t, you were somehow put in the spotlight, either 1:1 or in front of everyone else. So it was only logical to think that a manager that doesn’t have all the answers can only be a bad one.

Patience led my friend to have the likes swing heavily in her favor, with her team becoming one of the best-performing teams in the company within a year.

Spot the Difference!

For the sake of brevity, I’ll stop here with the examples, but if you’d like to discuss more, I’d be more than happy to.

In the meantime, let’s tie things back to de Saussure. We have seen that meaning never exists in isolation, only in relation. Which is exactly why this concept nicely translates to (self-)improvement.

No matter how we define clean, or good manager, or anything else for that matter, it only makes sense in practical communication if we contrast – or compare – it with what it means to someone else. In terms of (self-)improvement, if we don’t have our signifieds aligned, we are destined to talk at cross-purposes.

So, next time, when you do feel you’re talking at cross-purposes with someone, instead of passionately insisting on the signifier, why don’t you ask a simple question – What does this mean to you, exactly?

You just might be surprised with what you learn. And it might not be that arbitrary at all.