Thank Goodness It's Monday #365

THE POWER OF WORDS:

K.I.S.S. AND TELL

According to research psychologists, the average one-year-old has a three-word spoken vocabulary. 

But quickly --

·         By fifteen months, children can babble nineteen words.

·         At two years of age most youngsters possess knowledge of 272 words.

·         Their vocabulary catapults to 896 words by age three

·         … 1,540 by four

·         … 2,072 by five.

·         By age six the average child can communicate with 2,562 words.

And, of course, our word accumulation continues to grow.

Yet …

Effective use of them does not necessarily follow. Even though the average adult speaks at a rate of 125 to 200 words per minute and up to 18,000 words per day, this does not mean messages have been clearly relayed.

“Words, like glasses,” wrote essayist Joseph Joubert (1754 – 1824), “obscure everything which they do not make clear.”

It’s baseball season. So let’s use as an example a well-known, confusing-yet-creative communicator from that sport.

No, not Yogi Berra. As much as we appreciate the tangled life lessons in Yogi-isms from our Jersey Boy neighbor, today’s sports celebrity reference is another linguistic legend whose name became linked to his oral acrobatics.

"The Old Perfessor"
Charles Dillion "Casey" Stengel
(1890-1975)
mugging his trademark wink
in a photo from
a 1949 issue of
Baseball Digest 

Casey Stengel: Stengel’s use of the English language became known as “Stengelese.” For example, he once said –

“I’ve always heard that it couldn’t be done,

But sometimes it don’t always work.” 

That almost makes sense. It might even be profound. But it also has to be viewed in the context of other things that Casey said. For example, addressing his baseball team one day, he instructed--

“Now all you fellows line up alphabetically by height.”

What was that message? Who knows? But, believe it or not, Stengel once held a position on the Board of Directors for a California Bank.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Casey described his responsibilities this way: 

“There ain’t nothin’ to it. You go into the fancy meeting room and you just sit there and never open your yap.As long as you don’t say nothin’, they don’t know whether you’re smart or dumb.”

Perhaps this explains in part the current banking/financial crisis. 

But it also gives us some useful guidance on communicating clearly.

TGIM TAKEAWAY: We all reveal our own form of Stengelese; whether it’s the way we use the language to convey our messages or how we interpret what others say to us. Either way, it’s the same result: Frequent misunderstanding.

TGIM ACTION IDEA: Keep It Sweet and Simple. 

K.I.S.S. and you will tell. Don’t put your listeners in the position of paying more attention to how you say it, rather than what you say. Never use more complicated language than you need. Your goal in your communication is to connect, not dazzle them with words of wonder. 

TGIM IDEA IN ACTION: Your style should reflect your personality, education, environment and experience as well as those of your audience. So don’t abandon your usual vocabulary. Select the most effective words.

One caution: Don’t talk down, ever. Talk down to your listeners and they’ll know it and not appreciate it. 

Manage tech talk, too. Virtually every specialized interest or industry has a jargon or shorthand, but it you speak it fluently yourself, before you do you should be very aware of your listeners’ familiarity with it.

Example: Ever have to dial 911, have the EMTs arrive and, after they take the victims’s BP and maybe administer CPR, rush them to the ER where an MD, or maybe RN, gives them an EKG then moves them to an ICU where they go on O² and get an IV?

Don’t talk like that. Although you probably figured that out quickly enough, it’s still distracting to have to slog through the jargon and abbreviations. And it’s often harder to hear than it is to read.

When in doubt: Be considerate of the lowest common denominator among your listeners and speak to it. If necessary, acknowledge that some “old pros” may be just fine with the jargon but that you’ll provide ongoing translation so everyone gets the message. Do that and all will do a better job of listening.

A final point: For the most part, we’ve been speaking about speaking and listening. But there’s an important difference between written and spoken language that allows you to –

Boost the level of language you use for written communication – if you wish.

TGIM EXCEPTIONAL RULE: The spoken word is gone as quickly as it’s spoken so, if the listener must ponder an obscure word, the distraction is at the expense of missing some other part of the message. But the written page has permanence and allows the reader to halt, figure out your meaning, then return to exactly where they left off. So -- 

Are you following this? The written words “permanence factor” let’s you hone your language more sharply and, for example, write a word like “onerous”  when in conversation you might say that using “onerous’ could be a bit troublesome.

Hope I didn’t trouble you. Here’s to clear communicating. 

Geoff Steck   
Chief Catalyst
Alexander Publishing & Marketing

8 Depot Square

Englewood, NJ 07631
201-569-5373
tgimguy@gmail.com

P. S. “He could fool you. When Casey wanted to make sense, he could. But he usually preferred to make you laugh." Yogi Berra clearly made that point about “The Old Perfessor.” “He’s one of the smartest men in baseball … in business … in anything he’d try.” Edna Stengel, Casey’s wife for 51years confirmed Yogi’s observation.