The Progression of Understanding

The keys to good verbal communication include understanding internally what it is you want to describe and knowing how to express it in a way that it understood. For me, there is typically a progression leading to good communication and subsequent consensus on a notion. Sometimes I call this the "The Progression of Understanding" and other times I call it "The Progression of Confusion". There are four painful steps I go through:

1. Knowing something is there but being clueless as to what it is. The "something" may be a problem or solution, a situation, an abstraction or generalization. I say things like "I just can't wrap my head around this one" and internally I feel totally confused.
2. Having an internal understanding but not knowing how to describe it. In this step, I have a good internal sense for the problem or solution, or the situation I'm dealing with, or whatever. Often the internal notion is visual and I haven't found the words to describe it.
3. Knowing how to verbalize it but no one understanding me. Now I can put words to the thoughts in my head, but for some inexplicable reason, no one has any idea what I'm talking about.
4. Others understanding me but disagreeing. This is actually a very good place to be, because now I can talk it through with others, examine chains of logic and implications, and work in a group to reach a consensus.

These ideas are somewhere between steps two and three. Send me comments if you have any.