You say tomato, I say tomato

Today's New York times had an interesting column written by Verlyn Klinkenborg titled 'Watching the Full Moon Rise Over the Northeast Corridor'. Verlyn wrote about taking the Acela up the Coast from Washington D.C. to New England, something I am familiar with. Though the column's focus was the rise of the full moon during that trip, the first paragraph is what truly caught my attention.

'Riding on the Acela I was surrounded by the sounds of business—the young women whose voices ring out like high heels on marble, the false laughter of a young executive talking to a headhunter on his cellphone. (He makes 175, going up to 200 in December, and is happy to relocate.) Everyone around me was speaking managese, that strange dialect used among the shepherds of other humans to communicate an enthusiasm for communication.'

Well said. Especially that last sentence.

I write in this blog often about being authentic. Yet, communication is simply so much more complicated. Your words can be profoundly authentic, but if not heard that way by those around you, miscommunication will reign. There is so much more to our communication, and to sharing knowledge, than simply telling the truth. We must also consider the listener, the receptor. Where are they in their own experience? Can you be heard, at that moment? Is there a way to describe what you need to say in the language of the receptor, instead of your own language? Is there a more opportune time or location to share what it is we need so desperately to share?

Our work, as knowledge sharers, as communicators, as humans on an authentic path, is complex. We need to identify what it is that is critical to share or to illuminate, how to do so, where the listener is, what language they use, how the message might be perceived, risks involved, risks involved in not sharing and how the information can be shared more broadly. And even this list is simplistic.

We expect much of ourselves and others. Yet, we can not give up. We must strive to clearly communicate, to seek first to understand before being understood, to drive towards sense making. We are the Shepards Verlyn refers to. Let us never stop being the best we can be at what we do.