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Nonsense
side-tracks
you from your work,
tricks you into wrong decisions and trips you short of your goals.

Nonsense
stops you from

being successful.
 

November 2007

Leaders choose words carefully

Allow me to remind you how I ended last month’s Nonsense-At-Work Newsletter: “You don’t need binoculars or any other special equipment to see nonsense over there. Nonsense is actually right here, in front of you. Until next month, y’all try not to trip over it, you hear?”

Oops! I blew it. I did not choose my words carefully and I wasted at least one reader’s time (see the feedback at the end of this newsletter). But my real sin is that I did not practice what I preach. Here is what I preach in my book "Make the Nonsense at Work Work for You":

“Leaders who make their intentions clear don’t waste their followers’ time. I admit that there is a small problem with this statement. Let me explain.

A leader can never not lead. You lead by what you do and you lead by what you don’t do. That is what it really means to lead by example, whether the example is ‘good’ or ‘bad’. But we cannot lead with intentions because intentions are not ‘visible’ examples – until acted out, they are unfulfilled promises. Words are the next best thing for expressing our intentions.

However, words can be ambiguous, assuming a different meaning in the mind of the listener. For example, what does ‘bi-monthly’ mean? ‘Twice every month’ or ‘every second month’?

Wise leaders are deliberate in their use of language. They choose words carefully, selecting specific words for the exact meaning they wish to communicate.

The problem is that we have allowed slang, jargon, and our innate human laziness to shrink our vocabulary. The gap of misunderstanding is increasing between what the wise are saying and what we are hearing. And as we become tone-deaf, intentions remain unfulfilled.”


After having written that, I should have remembered that slang, especially slang which is still foreign to me, will always get me in trouble. Here’s what happened seconds after last month’s Nonsense-At-Work Newsletter starting circling in cyberspace. Dan Bryant complained that I should not have used the expression ‘you hear’. According to him, ‘ y’all ’ should be followed by ‘ ya hear’, not by ‘you hear’. Dan is a VP at On Hold Marketing and I assume these ‘marketing message’ people know how to get their message across. Read Dan’s explanation and decide for yourself whether he makes sense (or nonsense):

“Now only a hillbilly like me would call you on this, but us hillbilly's like our english either all wrong... like we say it... or proper like we see it in the newspaper. You have inadvertently mixed hillbilly or "southern" slang with "the proper"... and it's like fingernails on the blackboard. In the sentence “Until next month, y’all try not to trip over it, you hear?” you used the hillbilly "y'all" just fine, until you got to the "you hear" which is the "proper" form of Southern (or hillbilly) "ya hear". These two forms shouldn't be in the same sentence. Here is an example of correct use of the "improper" Y'all/ya relationship: "Y'all come back now, ya hear?" (this would be the correct form of the "improper" being used consistently.) The "improper" or slang is further exacerbated by some in Texas who would connote specific and exclusive meaning to the various forms:

*

you'all.... you and your friends
*

y'all... .all of you folks...used as singular and plural
*

all y'all....all of you... and most everybody you know or have eaten with in the last week (I think this is pretty much only used in Texas as it refers to whole hell-of-a-lot of folks....more than can reasonable be encompassed by a simple y'all)"


Thanks, Dan. Until next month... oh, forget it..)
 

Welcome to our side of the nonsense divide.