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Archive for the ‘Communication’ Category
Do You Have a Mandolin Mentality?
Jul 30
We got a mandolin at our shop. There’s Steph strumming away. You can see the smile on her face — the mandolin is a happy instrument.
Here’s what’s cool about it: When the mandolin arrived, everyone tried it out. We have lots of musical instruments here – but the mandolin is the first one that everyone’s taken a shot at. Why?
Do You Have a Mandolin Mentality?
“It’s because it sounds like a toy,” said Sarah when we were talking about peoples’ willingness to make mandolin music.
You see, no matter whether you know three chords or three hundred, the mandolin sounds pretty cool. It sounds happy. You can strum it and it sounds like music. People can play. (Heck, Steph wrote a little song about Furley’s new mansion five minutes after we took the instrument out of its case.) And there’s no worry about doing it wrong.
So…what’s your “mandolin” at work? Is there something that people can do that makes everyone happy? That you’re willing to let people mess around with and have no judgment about it?
Here’s an icebreaker idea for you: Buy a mandolin. Get each person in your next training class to write and strum a little ditty. They’ll do it and they’ll remember. Yeah, “two truths and a lie” is dead. The word I think of rhymes with “ditty.”
The Elements of Communication: Lawyerium
Jul 19
General
Named for its tendency to resemble the complex language of legalese, Lawyerium is one of the most devious elements of communication. It’s most commonly found in lease agreements, formal contracts and in PowerPoint presentations where the presenter simply uses big words and long sentence to hide the fact that they don’t actually understand the subject. Unfortunately, the tendency for Lawyerium to creep its way into otherwise “non-legal” communication materials is quite prominent.
It’s easy to spot this unnecessarily perplexing element of communication. It’s much harder to eliminate it from your communication materials. Here we’ll show you how to identify and overcome the use of Lawyerium.
Characteristics
- High use of archaic phrases such as “heretofore,” “hereinafter,” “hereby,” “hereto,” “aforementioned” and “whereby”
- Equally high use of “fill phrases,” such as “when in the event of,” “in whole or in part” and “at that point in time”
- A stylistic tone that remains uniquely in the passive voice
- An average of 10 semicolons per page, and “a,b,c” lettered lists that frequently end in the letter “s”
- No use of contractions
- Tendency to write in the complete third-person point of view, often using “one” instead of “you”
- Haphazard capitalizations of implied proper nouns, such as “Company,” “Act” and “Policy”
- Prolific use of big words for no apparent reason
- A general sense of redundancy, both in the big picture and among individual sentences
Prevention
The best way to avoid Lawyerium is to write how you’d actually hold a conversation. But sometimes it’s not that easy. Check out how we’ve diffused the Lawyerium in each of these sentences, then try the last one for yourself. Post your revision in the comments section below. We’ll see who’s the best at decoding Lawyerium.
- Despite the predicted event of malice, frustration and general discontent as a result of the mandatory weekend assignment, it is vitally important for each individual to maintain his or her composure throughout this period of time due to the fact that this time of year is incredibly busy.
- This new Policy provides that, within one month after its enactment, appropriate HR Team members must issue rules prohibiting any type of on-line social media usage that (a) encourages inappropriate risk to the Company, either through defamation or otherwise inflammatory remarks, or (b) could lead to monetary loss through the informed disclosure of any such privileged information.
- Hereinafter, one may be amused to realize that, when merely reduced to syllogistic form, the aforementioned sentences need not incorporate such a plethora of variegated text.
Suggested fix: We understand that some employees may be frustrated about having to work on the weekend. But remember—this is our crunch time, and we all need to stay positive.
Suggested fix: We’d like to minimize the risk or having privileged or inflammatory company information appear on the Internet. Because of this, we’re asking all of HR to remind employees about appropriate social media usage.
Suggested fix: You tell us! Join the conversation below.
Volunteer for Wellness
Jul 14In the July issue of IFRACTAL’s Buzzworthy, we featured an article about how you can work toward a healthier mind and body by spending time with animals. If you don’t own an animals, there are plenty of places where you can volunteer. We don’t thinking wellness is only about quitting smoking or how much weight you can lose. We like to think of wellness as your mind, your body, your financial situation, and your community at work all working together and being healthy.
Does your company sponsor volunteer programs? Take this quick, 6-question survey.
HR Communication Advice: Forget Editors; Think About Your Audience
Jul 12“I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.” ~ Bill Cosby
You know how it happens; You write something that has a voice. It speaks to your employees. Then the amateurs — and I count the company lawyers among them — sand off the edges. They edit. And re-edit. They mess with the order of the writing. And pretty soon you have soggy oatmeal.
Listen to Bill Cosby. Forget trying to please everybody. Think about your audience.
And if you really want to learn about audience, I recommend The Audience Conference. It’s not an HR conference, which means you’ll actually learn something. It takes place on August 14, 2010 at Caroline’s on Broadway. (Yeah, that Caroline’s.) You can buy tickets here. I’ll be there. Please say hi when you’re there.
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