I spoke data. My boss spoke stories. Every time I needed something from him, I would speak data, and I almost never got what I asked for. The more I worked with him and got to know him, I could almost predict the moment his eyes would glaze over in our conversations, and he would completely tune out. It was like I was speaking another language. For all intents and purposes, I was.
Over time, I learned that to get what I needed, I had to try something else. What I was doing clearly wasn’t working, and continuing to do it would only leave me with the same result. I finally realized that I had to try something different, and I was finally successful when I understood the language my boss spoke and started speaking that same language. My boss spoke stories, so I started speaking the language of stories. Instead of giving him the numbers on all our clients as I normally did, I started sharing stories about the clients and how what I was asking for would impact that client. Sure enough, everything changed after that. We were finally speaking the same language.
When it comes to communication in the workplace, the language each of us speaks is layered and complex. There is the language of communication style and confrontation style. Values and motivations. Personality and temperament. Process and method. Culture and upbringing. Each of us brings our own individual preferences, tendencies, and challenges with us as we communicate with others who bring their own preferences, tendencies, and challenges with them. It is not surprising that our communication is so fraught with problems.
A large contributor to these problems is our own propensity to want people to speak our language without making the effort to learn theirs. We may even be so presumptuous as to tell them how they should be communicating with us without offering any reciprocity in how we may more effectively communicate with them.
The secret to communicating effectively is to be willing to learn someone else’s language. Everyone else’s language. No easy feat, to be sure. All the nuance, all the effort, all the trial and error… it is a commitment and a time-consuming one at that, but the results are worth it. Not perfect, but worth it. Once you are able to effectively communicate with someone- with everyone- the rest of the work becomes so much easier. Not perfect, but so much easier.
A central focus of this must be learning the language of what people care about. If your boss is only ever focused on money, then speak the language of money. If your colleague is only interested in results, do not spend your energy speaking the language of process. If your staff speaks the language of contentment and continuity, do not speak the language of climbing the proverbial ladder. Learn what everyone cares about and what their motivations are and speak to that.
As you think of the people you interact with the most at work, think of those you communicate with easily. Why is that? What about your languages are in sync?
Now think about the people you struggle to communicate with. What is causing the struggle? What about your languages are currently at odds?
Like in your personal relationships, communication with some of your coworkers will take far more effort than with others. Sometimes your languages will be similar and other times seemingly opposite. To become a more effective communicator, you will need to continue working on learning everyone’s language, including the more challenging ones.
Once you approach your relationships and communication from a place of understanding rather than demanding, you can start to learn more about how to speak the different languages more fluently.
Don’t just complain that others do not speak your language. Commit to learning theirs, and watch your relationships and your work get better and better.
