If you ever tried to work with others in a group together before, and found the communication to be lacking or that it took too long to effectively solve a problem together.... then you might want to take a good look at this article. It has some good tips for making a better team, just from learning from how deaf people work together.
What the Deaf can teach us about effective communication and quicker problem-solving.
My favorite snippet from the article itself:
To most of us, the idea that we could learn lessons in effective communication from people who can't hear very well – or at all – might seem like a bit of a oxymoron, but Dr Kahne insists that while deaf people can find it difficult to communicate effectively with hearing people, this is not the case when talking to other deaf people.This is pretty much true... After I spend a lot of time with other deaf people like myself, I tend to find myself becoming impatient with hearing people because it always seem like forever when they're speaking to me about a project they need my help with."Deaf people are not deaf when they are together, only when they are in contact with hearing people," he said, and adds that they are better communicators, "passing messages much faster and more precisely than any hearing person".
But with another deaf member, talking about it would take only one minute.... because we tend to think about it all, what to say, etc before we come into the room to talk to each other. our statements end up being far more "right to the point". We know better than hearing people how to convey a lot of information in a few sentences. As an result, we solve problems faster together as an group.
Isn't that interesting how it ends up being like that?