The Ciphers and Riddles of the Words

Ellin’s love­ly com­ment on my post, “The Prac­tice of Lead­er­ship,” helped me think about the ways we use lan­guage to either reveal or cloak our­selves in our con­tacts with oth­ers. This has noth­ing to do with being a native speak­er; in fact, being one may make some kinds of com­mu­ni­ca­tion more, not less dif­fi­cult. I believe it has much more to do with the pos­si­bil­i­ties of being deeply gen­uine with one anoth­er with­in the con­straints of imper­fect human rela­tion­ships and human lan­guages. Yes, by all our heart we want to get through, to be heard, and rec­og­nized — seen for who we are, understood.

And there the “ciphers” (mes­sages in code) and “rid­dles” (mys­te­ri­ous puz­zles) of words stand square­ly in our way. We work to light just the right can­dles, but each can­dle also has its shad­ows. And it is often more in a look or a smile or a tone, a pause, a “res­o­nance” (a qual­i­ty of rich­ness) that comes with or between the words that accen­tu­ates cer­tain mean­ings, that cre­ates the trust or kills it. What is real can­not be man­u­fac­tured. As Ellin points out, becom­ing too good with the words can also become a destruc­tive force. I’ve seen that hap­pen when lan­guage is used more to “man­age” oth­ers than hon­est­ly con­nect with them.

I remem­ber a room full of man­agers and the head of the divi­sion dis­cussing a major change in oper­a­tions that would soon be announced. One of the man­agers asked that a script be pre­pared so that all the man­agers could say exact­ly the same thing to their employ­ees and so they might “all speak from the same page.” On the sur­face this sound­ed good to many in the room. The divi­sion head star­tling­ly replied, how­ev­er, that this was the last thing he want­ed to see hap­pen. “I’d rather have some inac­cu­ra­cies and con­tra­dic­tions in what we say and our mes­sages more unre­fined any day of the week. It’s not that I want con­fu­sion, but this isn’t about pol­ish,” he con­tin­ued, “it’s about shar­ing your per­spec­tive about the rea­sons for change from your gut, not your head. Would you believe any­thing you heard if you knew it was a script?” In effect, he was sug­gest­ing each man­ag­er have a real dia­logue, not just a mono­logue of infor­ma­tion sharing.

Many years ago, before I had even begun my career as a con­sul­tant, I remem­ber read­ing Chris Argyris’s great arti­cle, Skilled Incom­pe­tence in Har­vard Busi­ness Review. It changed my work and my life. In it, Argyris pos­tu­lates that we as lead­ers can become such skilled com­mu­ni­ca­tors that we can avoid any top­ic we want to. It was the first time I’d come across words like “undis­cuss­able” and “self-seal­ing” to describe cer­tain uncom­fort­able or threat­en­ing top­ics and the orga­ni­za­tion­al cul­tures in which they per­sist unaddressed.

So give me raw, frag­ment­ed, imper­fect lan­guage — it mat­ters lit­tle beside the plain­ness and hon­esty and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of the heart com­mu­ni­cat­ing. Then there is res­o­nance and truth, although per­haps some strug­gle and pain to get the points across. Maybe real frus­tra­tion, maybe some tears, but with the imper­fec­tion also the poten­tial for new, gen­uine under­stand­ing, and maybe even for some laugh­ter and joy in the connection.

As I read your com­ments, Ellin, you — your heart — did come through your words. And isn’t that, indeed, what com­mu­ni­ca­tion is all about.