Misrepresented, Misquoted, Misunderstood – Tips to stop the self-pwn.

Teenagers, goths and emos should just step aside. People’s Action Party (PAP) members are by far the most misunderstood group of people in the world. It appears as if they can’t say or do a thing without being misunderstood. If they went to a MacDonald’s to buy a Big Mac with extra lettuce and no pickles they’d probably get Fillet o’ Fish.

Grace Fu, Senior Minister of State for Ministry of Environment and Water Resources, is the latest in a long line of PAP politicians who have been “misunderstood” by Singaporeans.

After the release of the report on ministerial salaries, she posted the following on her Facebook page:

As you can see from the 970 comments and 994 shares (as of 11:45pm on 5 January), there has been a storm of reactions. Although there have been a few messages of support here and there, many of the comments have been negative, like so:

She has since come out to say that she has been misunderstood by Singaporeans.

I shan’t go into what I think about what she said. This post isn’t really about her comments on the review of ministerial salaries, anyway.

I’m just wondering – why is it that our leaders appear to be misunderstood all the time? Why do they keep putting their foot in it? They have such a flair for self-pwn that it would be impressive if it weren’t so pitiful.

I’m no expert, but even I feel like I could give them a few tips:

1. Social media: Think before you post.

What you say will be seen, debated, shared and even printed in the news. If you want to avoid being “misunderstood”, stop before you hit post and think about what you’re saying. Think about how another person reading it will interpret it, how they will feel when they read it. Question yourself a little – is what you’re saying unfair? Are there things that you don’t understand? Are you making certain assumptions that you should not be making? If people criticise you, can you stand firmly by what you’ve said?

Also, don’t make jokes that don’t sound like jokes at all. I’m looking at you, MParader. (And also, if you want to be cooler, you might want to change that. MParader is like a try-too-hard uncle name. #justsaying)

2. Be coherent, for goodness sake.

I don’t expect my Singaporean MPs to have perfect BBC news anchor-accented English. Like Seng Han Thong, I can accept some level of “broken English”, no problem. But dear Mr Seng, even if I wanted to there’s no way I could accept garbled English. I mean, when you speak like this –

I notice that the PR mention that, some of the staff, because they are Malay, they are Indian, they can’t converse in English good, well enough, so that also deters them, from but I think we accept broken English.

– is it really so surprising that people get confused about what you’re talking about, and what you meant?

3. Sometimes silence is golden.

Sometimes you don’t have to say anything at all. Sometimes what you don’t say can be just as meaningful as what you do say. Sometimes you don’t have to try so hard.

Some of the PR nightmares we’ve seen from our dear leaders could have been easily averted had they simply acquainted themselves with the popular acronym STFU. If you have nothing particularly good to say, you don’t really have to say anything at all.

It’s understandable that comments and statements get misrepresented, misquoted or misunderstood from time to time. But when you and your party seem to be “misunderstood” practically every single time someone opens their mouth, perhaps it’s time to wonder if you are the one in need of better communication skills, instead of acting as if the whole world has comprehension problems.