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.

Thank Goodness It's Monday #364

WORD UP!

JDS!

The words we use often determine the success or failure of our interactions. 

Huh? Just exactly what does that mean? 

You’re right. It’s not clear. Intentionally, let me quickly add –

To make this point: Communication has the potential of being a powerful tool in a person’s repertoire of skills. The clarity, effectiveness and positive tone of that communication not only determines the outcome of your personal interactions, but it ultimately determines the quality of your life.

It’s a 21^st Century fact: Every waking moment of your life you are communicating, either with other people or yourself. Some folks who tally such things calculate that the average person receives 250,000 information “signals” each day.

BIG Q: How important do you think it is to differentiate your signals?

BIG A: Very! In today’s world, more than any other time in history, you need to deliver your message powerfully, quickly and with clarity.

So here’s the deal: In the summer Mondays ahead, with an occasional time out to consider topical events like “Olympic”-size Life Lessons, I figure we can benefit from a mini-course in –

How To Communicate

With Clarity & Confidence

Why this? And why now?

In this “Age of Communication” via an abundance of effectively free media readily available to all and connected to all, there seems to be an abundance of miscommunication at every turn. (And the upcoming political campaigning isn’t going to help matters.)

But if we do have something of value to convey, we ought to do that effectively. And although the “tech” of communicating may be nanoseconds new and evolving with 4G speed, the problem is classically old. 

And that’s –

Good news: Proven-in-action secrets, strategies and solutions for effective communication have evolved over the millennia. That’s what I hope we can explore here.

Bad news: These only work if we master them. And mastery takes time and practice. And life requires living. So you can’t tackle too much at one time if you expect it to stick successfully.

More good news: Summer has a “slump” quality (if you let it) that may afford us the opportunity to add some skill-building to the routine. And communicating seems like a good place to begin. 

So let’s begin by confidently suggesting you (and we) –

JDS

We love acronyms. And JDS has become the battle cry of a recently formed “Inner Circle” of similarly minded friends. If you’re not in the Inner Circle, then you need to know the acronym stands for –

Just Do … “Stuff”

Actually the phrase is more, uh, “graphic” most of the time. 

No offense. But, c’mon. If you have a summer slump mentality, you’re not gonna shake it with niceties.

And that helps us transition over to an important communication kickoff point:

Communication Fundamentals: Difficulty in communicating effectively arises primarily from our inability to do two things:

Say clearly what we really mean

and/or

Hear clearly what others have to say to us

And that’s what we’ll be confronting in the days ahead.

Good stories enable good communication. So here’s a smile-inducing story we heard from some friends in the “Information Technology” business (not known for being a hotbed of clear communication).

NOT for-geeks-only: Keep reading and we’ll get to universal takeaways.

The pilot of a hot air balloon discovers he has drifted off course and is hopelessly lost. He spots a man on the ground, descends until he is within hearing distance, and shouts: “Excuse me, can you tell me where I am?”

The man below shouts back, “You’re in a hot-air balloon, about 30 feet above this field.”

“You must work in information technology,” the balloonist yells back.

[Note: Fill in your own choice of industry when retelling this story.]

“Yes, I do,” the man on the ground replies. “But how did you know that?”

“Well,” says the balloonist, “what you told me is technically correct but of no use to anyone.”

The man below says,” Ah, then you must work in management.”

“I do,” the balloonist acknowledges. “But how did you know that?”

“Well,” came the reply from the ground, “You don’t know where you are, how you got here, or where you’re going, but you expect my immediate help. And you’re in the same position as you were before we met, but now it’s my fault.”

Don’t be full of hot air. Although we sometimes use this tale to teach leadership lessons to managers who tend to be full of hot air, for TGIM purposes this Summer of 2012, let’s consider its value as a lesson in less-than-effective communication.

TGIM Takeaway #1: Although this joke is set up to make it’s point, it’s funny because it’s pretty darn close to many real-life experiences.

How often do we let our personal and professional “communication” descend to this level? Who’s at fault here? And what breaks down? And why?

TGIM ACTION IDEA #1: Hone those listening skills. Communicating begins with listening. That’s an old bit of news, for sure. And it’s really just a shorthand way of describing listening with intent; listening with an open mind, with preconceived notions set aside and with the objective of understanding the real meaning of what the speaker has to say.

TGIM Takeaway #2: From the “speaker” side of the communication equation, consider carefully before you speak.

TGIM ACTION IDEA #2: When you speak, be sure what you say is – to the best of your ability to say it -- what you mean to say. Follow up your initial message with differently phrased observations. Toss in some open ended questions in order to elicit responses that indicate you have not simply been heard, but that you’ve also achieved clear understanding.

JDS: In the 1941 film noir classic The Maltese Falcon, based on a novel by the master of hard-boiled detective fiction Dashiell Hammett, Sidney Greenstreet’s character (Kasper Gutman) says to Humphrey Bogart’s character, Sam Spade –

“Here's to plain speaking and clear understanding.”

For us this summer that will be, to quote the penultimate line of the film, “The, uh, stuff that dreams are made of.”

“Stuff” of dreams. No shit.

Bogart in a studio still with
"The stuff that dreams are made of"

The Rara Avis ... 
The Dingus ..
The Bird, The Black Bird...
The Maltese Falcon

Geoff Steck   
Chief Catalyst
Alexander Publishing & Marketing

8 Depot Square

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

P. S. “Behind the need to communicate is the need to share. Behind the need to share is the need to be understood.” Humorist and academic Leo Rosten (1908 – 1997) communicated that idea.