More thoughts on Language and Leadership
Have you ever thought about how we develop ways of communicating that are more and more efficient? Everywhere I work there are abbreviations for standard terms and acronyms for processes or parts. We create these so that we can be more concise and efficient when understanding technical information. However, what happens when we encounter new things and there are no acronyms or shortcut words? We quickly make more!
And what happens when the people working on the “new stuff” try to communicate with people who haven’t learned about the “new stuff?” It sometimes creates two groups, the “old” group and the “new” group, who can’t communicate because they each have their own language. Sometimes you can’t explain new language in terms of old language. As leaders, we have to keep an eye on when to bring the “new” language into mainstream and require people to learn it.
Think about all the terms used in the evolution of computers, the internet, and mobile devices. While I understand some things about computers because I remember the old days of DOS and programming with punch cards, operating today’s computers require no need of that knowledge. I put off writing a blog for a long time because I wasn’t sure what it was or where to start. I hadn’t acquired the language to understand it, but I finally dove in and got started. What are you holding back on in your business or in your leadership because you haven’t acquired the language?
