The many languages of English.

I had a pretty heated discussion with a client the other day. It was an extremely frustrating experience, and one that almost cost me a good business relationship. At no point could either of us answer the other's questions, and when he dropped the "You're not listening to what I'm saying" bomb, I was floored - I had been thinking the exact same thing!

We both left the conversation angry, depleted and nowhere even close to having an understanding about the other side's argument.

It took a while of reflection to figure out what had happened. Even though were we both speaking English fluently, we were speaking different languages! The client was a project manager and wanted to talk in terms of milestones and scope, whereas I was wearing my bookkeeper hat and wanted to talk in terms of source documents and invoices.

Since neither of us were willing to bridge that disciplinary gap, it created a barrier between our communication. We were talking about the exact same thing, but without a common language we just ended up butting heads without finding a solution to the problem at hand.

It is vitally important to know who you are talking to, and know how to communicate with that person. I was only recently introduced to the concept of code-switching, but until the other day I didn't have a practical application for it - I'd only previously seen it refer to either multi-lingual conversationists or bridging the gap of talking and texting between kids. But it is more than that. To be a successful communicator, you need to know that what you say makes sense to the person listening. Communication isn't about talking, it's about making sense to the person listening.

Many of us work in cross-disciplinary workplaces, even multiple workplaces. This is a minefield of social cliques and dialects! How often do you actively change your communication to suit the people you are around on a daily basis?

I'm learning to communicate with the programmers at RocketHands. I know now that I can't just take off about 'shareholder drawings' and 'targeted demographic marketing' without giving examples.
I talk with my band mates differently than I do with my bookkeepers. I certainly don't knuckle-bump my co-workers and give a "'Sup!" to my office manager.
And now I know that there isn't a single client language. They all work in different industries, come from different circumstances. They don't all know about bank reconciliations, the same as some audiences don't care about pentatonics and many gamers don't give a flip about monomyth narratives.

I did call that client back. I put on my project developer hat and talked in a language similar enough that I could start to breach some bookkeeping concepts. As a result we now have a dialogue and process that isn't usual for bookkeeping, but one that can develop into a solid understanding of both businesses.


-Anthony
we need to synergise our backwards overflow