Are You A Zoner Who Speaks To Aardvaark’s?
January 24, 2008
Effective communication is important in business. Get it wrong and you could have a disaster on your hands.
Here’s a few common communication mistakes you must avoid; and a few tips on how to deal with some of the worst communicators on the planet.
Do You Think Aardvaark’s Speak? Do you speak as though you chowed a thesaurus? If so, you might as well be having a conversation with an Aardvaark, because they can’t talk back either.
And you’d have to be pretty dumb not to want the other person to understand you right? So, in conversation, or letters, avoid the use of long unnecessary words. And always watch for signs that the other person understands what you have said. If not repeat the question so it’s easier to understand; and don’t be condescending.
How To Deal With Aardvaark Speakers:
a) Stop them at the regular intervals and ask them to explain what they’ve just said in simple terms.
b) Apologise for not being bilingual.
c) Try this: One anonymous man was tired of a group of Aardvaark speakers who littered conversations with “big words” and quoted huge paragraphs from obscure books; so he came up with a plan.
At their next meeting – he spoke to the Aardvaark Speakers in a secret language. He simply made up words himself, and they nodded in agreement and delighted at his every word. Then he quoted a book, which he’d made up too, and asked them if they’d read it. And the Aardvaark speakers loved this book. Best thing they’d read all year.
I don’t know how he kept a straight face. Aren’t Aardvaark speakers the dumbest people you ever met?
Are You A Spamalot? Do you send people emails, when you really don’t have anything to say? If you’re a lover of the send key; consider whether you’d bother typing the same letter and mailing it. If not, resist the temptation. Nobody wants to turn email reading into their full-time job.
How to Deal With Spamalots:
a) Just don’t reply at all.
b) Send them a blank email in response.
c) Go to the Guttenberg Project and copy and paste a huge chunk of “On Nothing and Kindred Subjects”; in your response and hit send.
Are You The Fat Controller? Do you put PLEASE RESPOND BY RETURN at the end of all your letters? If so, do you ever stop to consider how insulted the recipient might feel? After all, if it was important, you would have called them wouldn’t you?
The fact is, most people prioritise, so they can work out how urgent your letter is for themselves. And if you do this often enough – you might wind up at the bottom of the pile, or worse still, in the trash.
Dealing With Fat Controllers:
a) Put the letter in the trash.
b) Call them straight away and ask why they need your response so urgently.
c) Respond with a letter asking 10 questions related to their original letter and ask them to respond by return.
Are You A Zoner: Remember, listening is just important as speaking. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be called a conversation – it would be called a speech. Always pay attention to what the other person is saying. And show them you understand by paraphrasing (repeating back in your own words) what they just said.
And don’t, whatever you do fall asleep. Believe it or not, I know a guy who regularly falls asleep in meetings, then wakes up just in time to give his own pre-prepared speech. How useful is that?
How To Deal With Zoners:
a) End the conversation abruptly – there’s no point speaking to someone who isn’t listening.
b) Make them speak instead. Keep asking if they understand. And ask them question after question on the topic you’re discussing. This should force them to concentrate.
c) If they’re falling asleep in a meeting, in an extra loud voice, tell them you hope the meeting isn’t disturbing their nap.
Do you know any Aardvaark Speakers, Spamalots, Fat Controllers, or Zoners. How do you deal with them?
Comments
13 Responses to “Are You A Zoner Who Speaks To Aardvaark’s?”
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The Aardvark Speakers remind me of the Friends episode where Joey has to write a recommendation letter, and decides to sound smart by using the thesaurus to replace every word. He changes “big hearts” to “full-sized aortic pumps” and “Joey” to baby kangaroo!
Hunter Nuttall’s last blog post..Consider Having A Blog, No Matter Who You Are
One of my first job out of school was working for a tech support line. Every Saturday we would come up with a list of 10 Nonsense phrases and work them into the conversation. So many people called in to here themselves talk, that it was, I guess, just AArdvark Bait!
Great Post!!
RacerX’s last blog post..720 FICO and Beyond
Hi Hunter – I remember that episode – it was so funny.
Hi Racer – I bet that was hilarious – but I bet it was difficult not to laugh.
Hi Catherine,
We know a few people who like to get long winded, and feel it’s necessary to tell a story from start to end, just to get to a simple point, now we just say, “Just give me the short version”.
I agree on the Spamalots….I hit “Delete”.
Don’t’ you just love the emails that say, “send this to 10 people within 2 minutes, or else you will die/or whatever. Yeah!
I’ve heard, that’s why God gave us two ears and one mouth, meaning we should only talk half as much as we listen.
Barbara’s last blog post..Can Feng Shui Improve Your Blog
We win an awful lot of clients with plain speaking.
People who were sick to the back teeth listening to IT nerds explaining bits and bytes, IP addresses, port forwarding and firewalls etc.
Why not just say a firewall is like a security guard checking you’re on the list of people allowed to go through?
We spent an awful lot of time translating techie stuff into language people could understand.
Then we realised something else – most small business owners (not all – some are geeks too) aren’t even interested in that. They just want it to work.
Mind you, we had to build trust first, and now if we need to do something for them, they just let us get on with it.
Ian Denny’s last blog post..Paperless Office? Then Why Is It Magnetically Drawn To My Desk In Mountains?
Hi Barbara – that is so funny and probably true.
I get those emails all the time. One friend was particularly offended when I mentioned that I sometimes read the funny jokes and attachments she forwards.
But she sends loads and it’s not as though they’re from her personally. I just don’t get time to read them.
Ian – I totally agree on the techno jargon. Definitely what most business owners want to know is what it can do for their business and how much it costs.
I definitely had a problem as a kid with a huge reading background and conversations with parents who talked to me like they would to adults. I thought long complicated words were just normal…it took me a while to find out otherwise.
I also have to fight zoning. Particularly, one of my bosses is really really repetitive. She’ll take me aside 3 or 4 times in the day to tell me the same thing. Which can be really long or really short. I’m working on listening graciously and trying to find a nice way to tell her that she’s already told me that. Haven’t found an unsubtle enough one yet that works. And I don’t want to be completely blunt…
Mrs M – that is a tough one as I suppose you don’t want to tell her. I would just say yes, I remember you telling me that. Thanks for reminding me.
Or something like that anyway. Hope it works!
Mrs Micah,
I have a confession. I may be guilty of doing that at times.
I’m simply not the best manager around.
So I’ve stopped doing it. Instead, the people who are better at communicating tend to implement stuff.
Sometimes though, could it be chemistry between people?
I find it very easy to communicate with some, but struggle with others.
I can have very short conversations with some colleagues, and we understand each other. And depending upon who is instructing who, we get on with it with complete understanding.
I’ve found in the past, that sometimes the chemistry between and intermediary and the person I want to communicate with is far more effective.
And I’ve had a couple of challenges like that with clients!
In one case, we simply didn’t get on dealing with the business owner! He couldn’t instruct us in the most simple thing without shouting.
We now get on fine. Instead, everything goes through someone else in his company, and things are going really well.
Could there be a chemistry problem?
Is there another potential intermediary that could help in getting the message across more concisely and just once.
Just a thought!
Ian Denny’s last blog post..Struggling Or Going Bust? Traffic Lights To Turnaround And Success
Ian – why did the guy shout. Was he a bit deaf, or just one of those people who shouts at everyone?
One thing we forgot to ask Mrs M was this: Is it work things this woman keeps repeating, or non work related stuff?
Maybe she is lonely and has nobody else to talk to? (Not Mrs M – the boss) Or she could have the early stages of alzheimers?
She could even be a closet lesbian with a crush on Mrs M and can’t think of new things to tell her, so she repeats herself?
Or maybe she just likes telling people what to do?
No, he wasn’t deaf. He’s actually an okay bloke. Outside of work and outside of dealing with IT problems, he’s great to get on with.
His profession requires extreme attention to detail. Everything needs complete scrutiny. But when he was dealing with us, absolute perfection was required. We often got lengthy letter detailing things that were done and fixed, but not in the right way if that makes sense.
Taking him out of direct contact with us and instead dealing with someone else really helped.
Strangely, there was chemistry and an ability to communicate well in different contexts. When it was work-related, we struggled. When it was anything else, there was no problem.
I think some people assume others are stupid. They have trust issues – perhaps she didn’t think Mrs M understood. Or has trouble articulating things and compensated with repitition.
One thing is for certain, she has a problem, not Mrs M.
Ian Denny’s last blog post..Struggling Or Going Bust? Traffic Lights To Turnaround And Success
It’s all work-related stuff. Like she keeps asking if I’ve had a tour of the library (yes, twice), or if I’ve met this person, or if I know about how this works. I think it’s that she can’t really keep track of everything, so she does it over and over again to be on the safe side. The tough part of that safe side is that it’s hard to get through to her that yes, thanks, you told me this already..
Mrs M – It might not be any of the above – I hope. Maybe she has had problems with new people in the past and she didn’t spend enough time with them. Perhaps she is scared of getting it wrong again?
It sounds like a difficult situation. I suppose you could always tell her that you’re grateful how quickly you learned things from her, because she’s been such a wonderful mentor. Anything is worth a try I suppose.
Catherine Lawson’s last blog post..3 Business Ideas To Die For