Speak in plain language: The language of many professionals is highly specialized and full of unnecessary jargon. This alienates many laypeople and those in other disciplines. To communicate effectively, we should use everyday natural language that everyone understands.
The language of academics, organizational development (OD) practitioners, professional facilitators, senior human resources managers, managers educated to MBA level, and the like is highly specialized and alienating to many people.
Moreover, the language of facilitators who work in community building who use “new age” words such as sacred, heart, love, harvest, compassion, human warmth, and the like is profoundly alienating to hard-nosed business managers.
When communicating, it makes sense to use language appropriate to the context and the people involved, but, by and large, it is a good idea to speak and write in plain language that everyone understands and with which they feel comfortable.
Plain-speaking is vital in sense-making.
When in conversation, you should be in the flow. Much is lost if you are jerked out of the flow by alienating language you don’t understand or is hard to grasp.
To communicate effectively, we should use everyday natural language that everyone understands.
POST NAVIGATION
CHAPTER NAVIGATION
SEARCH
Blook SearchGoogle Web Search
The Gurteen Knowledge Letter is a free monthly newsletter with over 20,000 subscribers that I have been publishing by email for over 20 years.
Learn more about the newsletter and register here.
I like the rhythm of your writing style. Do you think that regional and foreign accents can improve or detract from conversations and could be used in different circumstances, and if so, how?
Ooh, what a great question :-) I have never give that any thought until now.
Let me reflect on that and get back to you but my immediate thought is that for me at least regional and foreign accents add a great deal to conversations though maybe in some circumstances they can be distracting :-)