Vernacular of the Working Dead
Everyday I have meetings or teleconferences or just phone chit chat in a professional sense. I have to say that these listenings of other people are starting to drive me insane. It's not the topic of the conversation or the impeding work etc... that may take place due to the conversation that makes me mad. It is the monotone, lifeless, numbing, couldn't possibly be emotional, could barely be construed as human, voices on the other end. I don't talk like that. I will never talk like that and today I was chastised for not speaking in that zombie tone.
I talk on the phone like a human. I talk as if I were a guy trying to help you do what you do. I talk to solve, not to patronize and deliver it to you as if we were going to write a report later on it or as if it were a deposition. I talk to people as if we were trying to solve a problem or reach a conclusion. I don't talk to people as to be subservient to some predestined "I am the boss/customer and you are my peon" role. That's how I am talked to. There is nothing more grating sometimes than when someone shows no emotion and yet still speaks to you in a condescending way.
On the flipside of that I find it very hard to understand how people can take such offense when I just try to speak to them as a human being. "You shouldn't say things like that." "You should be more professional." "You should understand what they want to hear.".
As if me calling someone "Buddy" or saying in a playful way "jeeze this is really screwed up." is such a hole in the armour of the conversation. I am often met with "Excuse me?". I honestly think if we could talk to each other like humans or at least like people who want to get something done as opposed to wanting to make other people feel how superior they are.
That is a really outdated and cowardly way to handle problems.
I have ideas. I have a job to do. I am not here to pose malice or cover my own ass. I am not here to lay blame or hide from fault. I am here to help and solve problems. If you are here to hide, cover, cower, and blame then I am sure you will take that sort of chess style conversation motif. You can play that game that consists of "I am professional" and "you are professional" and "we are both professional" and "we are talking about professional things in a professional way" and we say things like "Protocol, ROI, turn around, process, mandate, and emphasis on engagement". You can talk that way and you can cut your efficiency by more than a 1/3 or you can cut through the bullshit, not be a robot, and talk to me. We both make money and we are both professionals and have jobs to do. If I don't do my job, then I don't have a job. That's it. That's the bottom line. If you want to gunk up progress with "professional" jargon than I hope you find you have wasted your time, my time, and everyone else's time.
You know who I love to hear speak? I love to hear CEO's and CIO's speak. It's only middle management that talks like I have described above. It is only people who don't have the fortitude to stand by their own ability to deliver that hide behind their "professionalism". Real people get things done. Smart people make decision and don't have to be overtly polite and lawyerlike about it.
