Feeling Inane
Courtesy: Lifehacker.com
“Hi- I’ll be your waiter tonight.”
“Great!”
“…..menus in a minute……”
“Terrific!”
“…. about our specials…..”
“Excellent!”
“…..bread with the house spread….”.
“Goody!”
“…drink order…..”
“Brilliant!”
________________________________________
Oh dear. Within five minutes, and before my napkin was even comfortably settled in my lap, I’d exhausted my supply of positive rejoinders. Unnecessarily, and even possibly inappropriately, as well. (Is it terrific that he’s going to bring me a menu?) I’d like to say that this was a particularly celebratory evening and I was in high spirits but I think the truth is that I just indiscriminately toss around happy words without much thought as to their suitability. Wouldn’t a few “thank yous” and an encouraging smile have done for this agreeable but unremarkable waiter?
I vow to think more carefully about the words I use.
As we left the restaurant I heard the hostess ask another diner how he had enjoyed his experience.
“Stupendous!” said he.
Wow.
Maybe It Isn’t a Listening Issue
Courtesy: dogercisela.com
The other day in the park Edgar and I watched our friend, Clover, being summoned by her person.
Come, Clover.
Come.
Come!
Come on, Clover!
Come on, girl! Let’s go.
Come ON, Clover!
CLO.VER. Come!
Clover! I know you hear me! What’re you…Come HERE, Clover!
As she stomped past, Clover’s person scowled at us. “That dog doesn’t listen.”
Doesn’t listen? I don’t know. I’m pretty sure Clover heard, which is a pre-requisite for listening; I’m guessing she knows the meanings of the words she heard; and I expect she can intuit the feelings that underlie those words. Sounds like listening to me. So why didn’t she come?
She didn’t want to.
What has Clover learned from this? She can do what she wants.
What has Clover’s owner learned? Nothing.
What have I learned? Observing communication is endlessly entertaining.
What has Edgar learned? Hold on, I’ll check. Edgar, come!
Frontier Word Reports
Courtesy: Poster by Stephen Hunek
Congratulations! Some of you embraced the Frontier Word project and acquired new words that are now enjoying life in your lexicon. (A quick review of the Frontier Word project: A way to expand your vocabulary in which you are the one who chooses the words to work on. You collect a few words that are almost known to you, and you work at learning and using them.) You’ll note the word “work” in this explanation. This is key.
Some of you reported on your experiences, and I pass on these comments:
- I thought it was a great idea, but I didn’t come across any words I don’t know.
- I looked up some words but I forgot the meanings.
- I couldn’t find ways to use the words I found, and then I forgot about them.
- The words I picked weren’t very common.
- I liked knowing the words I picked, but I’ll never use them.
These are all pretty common barriers and easily overcome. Some tips:
- Don’t stretch to find “really hard words”.
- Work on only one word at a time if you aren’t using or remembering.
- Abandon the word if it isn’t fitting into your life.
- Pick the kinds of words that fit your speaking style.
Let’s focus on the last one for now. Here’s something to do that might help you get going. If you like adjectives, and who doesn’t, you might work just on words to describe stuff. If you speak adverbially (she said slyly…) you might select words to describe all your fun verbs. And if verbs excite you (thrill you, delight you, absorb you, invite you….) that can be your word group.
Here’s the exercise:
1. Think of the words you use now to describe something positive:
Lunch was……..; The restaurant was …….; That new salad is……..; Her dress is……..; It was……..to see her again.
(If you filled in the blanks with any of the following: amazing, awesome, great, terrific, really good, this exercise is for you. And even if you reached for Fantastic, you could benefit from this work-out.)
2. Listen to yourself for a few days and note the positive descriptors that you’re using.
3. Write them down.
4. Stop using them.
5. Find some new ones! Listen to other people and note the words they use, although this is usually not a good source since we seem to hang out with people who use the same words we do, or snoop around in places where words hang out: dictionaries, on-line, books. Dial up your reading material a notch. Try the Brits. They do some nice things with English.
6. Use those new words! Done!
This exercise is helpful because by focusing on a specific area of your speaking practice you’ll be more likely to use the new words. Picking positive descriptors is a good place to start because you frequently say nice things, right?
If your answer is no, maybe frontier words isn’t the right project for you to start on, but whatever frontier occupies you right now, do let us know how you’re doing.
We love to wallow around in words- yours and ours!
Friendly February
February is a good month for honoring friendliness. The advance of Valentine’s Day reminds us of warm feelings and sweet words and prompts us to reflect fondly on many of the people in our lives. What a good time to take advantage of that inclination to connect, and expand our friendliness fields. Opportunities abound! Every communication can be conducted with some degree of friendliness, and most communications will benefit from at least a small dose of it.
Courtesy: Jen-elise.blogspot.com
For some people, friendliness is spread over any encounter, while for others it is sprinkled sparingly, if at all. The spare sprinklers conduct many encounters with a minimum of relationship exertion. Cool, correct, cordial, crisp- get on with it. No valentines here.
From the sprinklers:
“I’m not here to make friends; he’s fixing the whatchacallit.”
“I’m nice to her! What- I’m supposed to talk about her kid’s soccer team?”
This last was from a client who was surprised at my suggestion that he say more than Good morning to his secretary. Every day. He was pretty sure her name was Betty, but….
Sprinklers have told me that they want to “keep things on a professional level”, that they fear being asked to solve personal problems if they are seen as approachable. Some have confessed that they are uncomfortable stepping into friendliness because they fear that they then can’t step out and be adversarial, or give directions, or avoid sharing unwanted information. Some have admitted that they don’t know how to engage in what they call mindless chatter so they stick to business. Almost all of these friendly-avoiders remind me that they are in a workplace, not a party, and the purpose of being together is to get the work done. “I don’t care if they like me or not as long as the work gets done,” has been said many times.
Many non-friendlies extend this practice out of the workplace. I know a kind, warm woman who treats restaurant servers with disdain verging on rudeness. Others eschew friendliness as unnecessary and time-consuming, or they adopt the clinical tone and frown of the salesperson. In a hurry! We’re in a hurry! Hurry up! Frown, frown.
The addition to one’s communication of friendliness: the offering of a smile, the use of someone’s name, an indication that actual people –not machines- are involved in an exchange, has benefits. Here are some of them:
- It establishes a foundation on which to build further, perhaps complicated, communications.
- It builds trust.
- It makes everyone feel better.
So whether our motivation is to create comfortable communications at work, to be known as the person who is easy to work with, or just to feel a little warmth in the February freezes, we can give ourselves the valentine of friendliness.
Who knows? We might get some chocolate.
Grab! Fire! Shoot!
Are we under attack? I don’t think we are, but apparently we’re really busy and have to move quickly.
People “run out and grab a sandwich”, or they invite others to “grab some lunch” with them. Pause a moment for this visual. What’s happening in the restaurants during this grabbing? Well, wait- we probably aren’t in restaurants if we’re grabbing. Is there a stand of food on the sidewalk along which the hurried and harried scurry, snatching food items as they run by?
People “fire off a notice” or “shoot her an email” which I guess implies how quickly these communications are going to occur. Does it speak to the importance of the message? High if we have to get it out there so fast, or low if we can send it without the time- consuming consideration that accompanies some messages.
Courtesy: Stefantheswopper.blogspot.com
The Language Grinch is definitely picky, and maybe this is a slow week, word-wise, but these words seem tired to me. There are so many interesting and useful words in our language, and with all the word spouting that goes on, there is plenty of opportunity to try some that you haven’t used, or to use some old word friends in different contexts.
I understand the pull of the familiar, however. Seeking new words is time-consuming, and we’ve established how busy we are. But some of us like a little challenge, busy or not, and maybe we’ll look for a way to break out of the verbal fast lane. The next time you start to run out of the office for lunch (really? Run?) ask yourself if there is something you can do with lunch besides grab it.
If you don’t starve to death, let us know how you do!
From the Desk of Edgar
Working, as I do, with a communication skills training company, I’ve learned the value of good communication. And being a dog, by ‘value’ I mean what’s in it for me. My needs are modest and pretty well known to my correspondents, so it might seem that being skilled at communicating is unnecessary. But if value is your goal, as it is mine, then you might be interested in knowing some of the things I’ve learned about communicating.
In my world, as might be true in yours, a lot of barking goes on. This is a fine, basic tool, and assertiveness is admired, so speak up. But I advise caution. The assertive bark can be annoying, and if this is the only tool you have, you’re likely to get more than your share of unwanted attention.
For this reason, I’ve dug up a few additional tricks to add to your skill set. Chew on these:
Look for clues about what’s going on. You should be able to tell if your people are distracted and busy, or relaxed and receptive. You can make yourself agreeable and accessible by adapting to the prevailing mood. You also look like someone who “gets it.” People like that.
Pick the right moment to ask for things. If your person is moving around, she might not mind opening the back door. If she has disappeared quietly behind a book or computer, you want to be sure your request is really important or you might be in for some serious growling.
Position yourself strategically. You know where the important things are: the leash, the food closet. Hang out there. Often good things happen just because you are in the line of sight when decisions are being made.
Pick your battles. Which is worse: having to wear the itchy red sweater or getting in the tub? You don’t want to be known as the one who resists everything, and you know which battles you have no shot at winning.
Demonstrate the things you’ve learned. It’s polite to give credit to those who mentored you by showing that you remember and use the tricks they taught you. If you know they like to see a sit or a hand-shake – offer them without being reminded. People like to see initiative.
Don’t assume. Just because something was left unresolved – the future of the cheese on the table is a dilemma I frequently face – doesn’t mean that your intervention would be welcome. There is a fine line between taking initiative – cleaning up when the cheese has fallen on the floor, for example – and assuming a result that you want. By all means, be ready to seize the moment but be careful.
Be alert. Pay attention to those people! Everything they do tells you something, and the key is to look for change. Your person may drag about with a noodle-body and a shuffle, so this isn’t interesting. But the moment that spine stiffens, the pace quickens, and the face perks up – something’s going on. Now is the time to make your move.
So- speak! And watch and listen. You may be saying, “ Isn’t this the same old kibble we always hear about communicating?” Well, yes, it is, but like our kibble, it’s good to have.
Woof.
You are Welcome
At one time the standard response to expressions of gratitude was “You’re welcome.” This seems to have gone out of favor. Like many good, plain words and phrases, this one is frequently replaced by a variety of substitutes:
“No problem”
“Sure”
“Yep”
“That’s fine”
“No worries”
“It’s nothing”
And the more agreeable, “My pleasure”, which is especially favored by those who work at the Ritz Carlton and is charming for the first five or six times one hears it from them.
The old, stodgy “You are welcome” might have been victim of a desire for freshness or originality. Or perhaps the giver wants to diminish the importance of the service provided or the strain incurred by providing it by tossing off the thanks as unnecessary.
Whatever the reason, we don’t hear “You’re welcome” so much, which is too bad. Welcome invokes good will, hospitality, generosity. It speaks of gracious invitation and entertainment, cordial acceptance. It assures the receiver that giving was done with pleasure and hints that the giver feels the recipient worthy of time and effort. So many nice things are conveyed as the giver gives, the receiver expresses gratitude, and the giver gives again in assurance that the gift was intentional and deserved.
Giving thanks is a good thing, and receiving thanks is really nice, too, so it seems persnickety (frontier word alert!) to take issue with the way one does so. But returning a graceful effort with a graceful effort seems to be a good way to encourage continued graceful efforts. If our response to thanks is to suggest that the thanks is unnecessary, excessive, or assumed, or that the gift was given without thought or intent, or that the whole interaction of gift-acknowledgement is insignificant or boring, we may be doing significant damage to a basic cornerstone of communication! We might be discouraging not only graceful interactions, but gratitude and courtesy, and the getting of good stuff!
So let’s continue to reward those gentlefolk who give us thanks, and let them know that we consider them “well come” into our spaces. You’ll feel good about doing this, and you might thank me for it.
You are welcome.
Friend or Frog?
Agnes suffered a reprimand from her boss. Angry and embarrassed, she spent her lunch date with Lonnie blasting her unfair, unreasonable, mean, and spiteful boss. Lonnie felt her pain, encouraged a dessert, and reminded her of her wonderful qualities.
The next day she told Lonnie that she’d be late for something they had planned to do together, because her boss wanted her to work on a project with her. Lonnie said, “She just doesn’t quit, does she! Poor you with the boss from hell.”
Whoops. The voice of Agnes turned to ice and she snapped, “My boss is very good at what she does; I’m lucky to be doing this project with her. You don’t even know her.”
What just happened?
Lonnie says she knows better than to join the criticism when a friend vents about her spouse, or parent, or child, since the friend will recover from whatever caused the venting and then remember only the remarks of her traitorous friend! But a boss?
It seems that criticism of The Boss of Agnes can be seen as criticism of The Choices of Agnes. What kind of person is she if she stays in a job with someone so horrid?
What to do when your friend blasts a part of her life that you know is here to stay, at least for the nonce, when you want to be supportive but not trapped.
As is true in other areas of life, it’s a good idea to concentrate on the action and not on the actor. Criticizing only the behavior without commenting on the character, intent, motivation or hairstyle of the person can also help your friend to do this, which will probably lead to a more speedy recovery. If you label the offending action mean, hateful, spiteful, or unjust, the person committing these sins can much more easily move from foe to friend (albeit momentarily misguided….), and the actions can remain unacceptable, but now forgiven.
And you remain the wise friend who knows that even the fine people so (normally) revered by your friend can have a bad hair day.
Whew.
No Trust in Trash Talk
Your aunt is coming to town and you’d like to take her to dinner. You have 2 restaurants in mind so you ask a friend what he knows about them. He prefaces his positive statements about one restaurant with strongly negative statements about the other, expressed in absolutes that tip you off to exaggeration, since few things are “always” or “never”, and he includes statements about the intent of the other restaurant’s management (“they just want to take your money; they don’t care about food”), and he makes assertions that sound just weirdly unlikely (“they try to hire incompetent people because they’re cheaper; they have no respect for their customers”).
Courtesy Seengreenpbh_blogspot.com
Or a co-worker wants you to support his plan instead of Alphonse’s by saying “I care about the success of this project, and this company; he doesn’t. He just wants everyone to do more work than he does. There’s nothing in his plan that will work, and it’s all stupid, and he knows it”.
If you were hoping for some facts about which you could make a judgment, these comments probably aren’t going to help you.
I think we all do this at various times. Through exaggeration we express our displeasure, and we have ourselves a little giggle as we imagine The Other One being not only different, and not as good, but just wrong. However, when we do it, don’t we know that the listener understands that we’re exaggerating for effect- that we don’t actually believe that Alphonse thinks his project is stupid? Or that the restaurant management doesn’t care about food?
When we do this, we aren’t presenting information so that others can use it to consider different ways of approaching a situation, or to weigh the merits of one position or another; we’re just entertaining ourselves by being ridiculous.
I’ve been listening to a lot of politicians lately. What do you think they’re doing?
New Words for the New Year
Vocabulary improvement might not be one of the favorites of the New Year Resolution crowd, but for those who like words maybe it should be. Like money management and weight loss, two of the most popular resolutions, vocab improvement does a lot for one’s self-image and sense of satisfaction and control. And unlike money management and weight loss, it has a chance of actually succeeding.
A method of vocabulary improvement that I’ve taught for many years is called the Frontier Word Vocabulary System. Much has been written about this system, and it is mentioned in study skills books. All such references include good information and instructions on what to do with the words you are targeting, and how to study them, but I’m not going to say much about that because the beauty and the key to success of this system lies in the selection of the words in your study.
Let’s think about all the words out there and picture them in 3 layers. The bottom layer contains the collection of words you know and use all the time: work, candy bar, whatever. The second layer contains words that are in your listening and perhaps reading vocabularies: you know them well enough to understand what you’re hearing or reading but you wouldn’t venture to use them in your own speaking or writing. The words in this category will be different for everyone. The third layer is all the words out there that you don’t know, haven’t heard or seen, and will probably never encounter. The names of tiny airplane parts or methods of extracting grim substances might be in this group. This group you can ignore and pretty much forget about.
We’re going to consider the words in your second layer, which area we’ll call your Frontier. The Frontier is the area in which reside words that you could easily move into the first layer of your vocabulary, since you already encounter them in your communication. This is your hunting ground, and this feature is the key to making your resolution a reality.
Here’s what you do: For the next few days pay attention to words that show up in your reading or listening and note those words about which you’ll say “Oh yeah- that word!” These will be words that you won’t use yourself but you understand in a vague way. Or that you don’t understand but you think it doesn’t make a difference in what you’re reading or hearing. These words are candidates. From your candidates, the best words to pick for your project are words that appeal to you. Maybe the context in which it was used is one that you want to be able to say more about, maybe the word just sounds good or is fun to say (ubiquitous!), maybe you’ve heard it used in different ways and you suspect some inaccuracy, or you’ve heard it so often you’re tired of wondering what makes it so…uh…ubiquitous. Gather about 5 of these.
For each one you’ll need to do some of those Word Study Things that all systems tell you, but since you’ve selected the word yourself you might find these tasks less onerous (onerous? A great word). Do as much of these things as you can stand:
- Write the word and its definition on a file card. With the definition from the dictionary, try to write a meaning in your own words too.
- Write a sentence using the word. Best would be the sentence in which you heard or saw the word used.
- Using the original sentence as a model, try to create a few sentences using the word. Make sentences that you would actually say.
- If you can fit all of that on one side of the card, you can put just the word on the other side so you have a flash card. Or put one of the sentences on the second side if you want.
Now for the next few days try to slip your new word(s) into as much conversation as you can. If you find that it doesn’t suit you for whatever reason, drop it. There are plenty of other words to work on. Dropping the ones that aren’t fun is another key to success, as you’ll only be working on words that you like.
Another tip is to deal with just a few at a time. If you’re facing a stack of 10 words this project will be over soon.
So- Here’s the New Word Resolution plan in a few easy steps:
1. Instead of buying a word-a-day anything, make your own target word list from the words that are swirling around you already.
2. Capture the sentence in which you encountered the word so you can use it as a model.
3. Use your word a lot.
4. If it doesn’t suit you, drop it and find another one.
And finally: let us know how you do! We love to know what words are interesting to others. And maybe they are Frontier words for us, too!
