Not long ago, as I sat in an unremarkable conference room surrounded by other professionals, I realized that the meeting facilitator had been talking for nearly the entire hour without saying anything.
I recently changed day jobs, leaving higher education for a project management role as a government contractor. A different world. As such, they speak a different language. My first three weeks, I understood next to nothing said in meetings between the specialized content and endless acronyms. As part of my onboarding, I was provided two separate lists of the pesky things with associated definitions. Of course, I first suspected that my lack of substantive comprehension was due to being new. New jobs are emotionally exhausting. Trying to remember names and roles, the policies and procedures for my new company, the policies and security protocols for the client agency, while not looking like a complete idiot makes for an uncomfortable time. Add a new commute route, different expectations for dress, and daily security screenings complete with x-ray machine and placing one's laptop in the plastic bin just like the TSA line and I'm eating my feelings with my buddies Ben and Jerry.
So, was it me? Did I zone out and miss important points hidden among the buzzwords? Nope. After two more of these time-wasters, I recognized the strategy of sacrificing content for the sake of appearing smart.
These phenomena are not exclusive to government agencies. I spent a year or so writing and editing academic proposals and requests for capital funding at a university. PhDs are not necessarily fantastic writers. A completed dissertation doesn't mean that coherent sentences flow like the chocolate fountain at the Sizzler. My boss routinely had me wrestle nonsensical passages into clear descriptions, justifications, or calls to action in order to get the desired result. At the end of the day, that's what matters, right? Getting the approval, securing the funding, scoring the job, whatever the goal is. Once, when my boss was out the office, the president of the university tracked me down, a bundle of pages from a funding proposal clutched in his hand. "What's missing here," he said, "is that the current version SUCKS."
At some point, we just have to cut the bullshit.
The desire to sound smart, to clutter up our writing or our meetings with useless phrases or obscure terms is natural, but immature. Smart people don't have to appear intelligent - they are intelligent. Saying "low hanging fruit" or "let's move the needle" regularly does not make someone more professional than really talking to others like human beings.
When I teach creative writing students, either fiction or nonfiction, it takes a few weeks to get them comfortable enough to edit out all the extraneous crap cluttering up their stories and essays. Again, it's the result that matters. What does your reader feel? Are you connecting? Are you getting the punch you want? If not, step one is to break out the red pen and start trimming out the fluff, the cliche, the fat.
It's hard to get out of our own way, though. Our voices tend to creep into our work and if we are accustomed to patterns of speech that don't fit the needs of the moment, it can feel unnatural to adapt. Years ago, during my Disney attraction days, I was training to be a bandit in The Great Movie Ride. Imagine "Kate Durango" busting through the bank doors, six shooter in one hand, dynamite in the other, shrieking YEEEEHAW! before exchanging banter and gunfire and blowing up the bank. If you've ever done any theater, you know that's a complicated process - learning blocking (where to stand, where and when to move) while delivering lines in a way that immerses the audience in the story. Not getting blown up is a priority, too.
No one would confuse me for an actor, but I made a go of it during my training, running through my lines, "Well, lookee here," not dropping the gun or tripping on the fake rocks or losing my cowboy hat. I looked over to see my trainer Rob doubled over in spasms of laughter, almost incapacitated. I had unconsciously been correcting my character's grammar and destroying the performance.
We have to tailor our communication for the audience - for the desired result. Hopefully, that isn't to show off your vocabulary for a conference room of tired, busy professionals. Give your colleagues the gift of thoughtful, clear communication. Don't waste their time. Trust that clarity is a positive thing.
Unless you are a grifter, or a spy, or a press secretary. Or an actual bandit bank robber. The rest of us don't need to hear "low hanging fruit" again. Ever. Just stop.
No comments:
Post a Comment