Dancing In Language
Before we get started, if you find today’s email to be useful please forward it to some friends. Also, if you know anyone who has had a particularly tough year (it might be you), please share this offer with them.
The warm weather that has been creeping its way into the Cape has got me feeling all floral.
Two weeks ago I shared Nic Bladen’s botanical sculptures with you. Today, Lee-Ann Heath’s work Blom is sure to make you feel warm and summery. If you’re feeling like spoiling yourself, Bladen has also released a jewellery range based on the Cape Floral Kingdom.
Now, let’s move from feasting our eyes to dancing in language…
/ STRATEGY
I have been reflecting on the Michael Eisner’s quotation in last week’s email that “micromanaging is underrated”.
I’ve been puzzling over how at times being ‘micromanaged’ can be an amazing experience, at other times destructive.
At university, I was privileged to be taught by the late Peter Hudson.
Essays would come back from him with pages of copious notes. I would then set up an appointment. He would pour over the essay with me, showing how a different word, a sentence placed in a different part of the essay, a sentence structured differently would have been more effective.
He was detailed in the extreme and yet all I remember is the sense of wonder, gratitude and the ambition to do better the next time. In his rigour and generosity, he opened new possibilities for me, new ways of understanding and communicating.
In my professional life, I have seen how this detailed approach can be incredibly empowering. It can show care. I have also seen it be destructive and watched highly skilled people exit businesses in frustration at being second-guessed.
Ultimately, it comes down to who is the person giving the feedback (have they built trust?) and how they’re giving the feedback.
Both are affected by language, so I thought I’d share some insights from Matthew Budd and Larry Rothstein’s You Are What You Say.
They say, “When you speak, you are literally joining two worlds” and they urge us to remember that “coordinating action in life is like dancing in language.”
They identify ten ‘lingustic viruses’ that cause communication failures.
They are:
- (1) Not making requests; (2) living with uncommunicated expectations; (3) making unclear requests; (4) not observing the mood of requesting.
- (5) Promising even when you aren’t clear what was requested; (6) not declining requests.
- (7) Breaking promises without taking care.
- (8) Treating assessments as the truth; (9) making assessments without rigorous grounding and (10) making fantasy affirmations and declarations.
I have always struggled with making requests, so this formulation helped me:
“…requesting doesn’t imply weakness. A request simply invites another person to participate in your life. Take this as a way to honor others, not to burden them”.
Requests are not only about asking for help, they’re also a way of sharing your life and creating partnership.
So often I have seen how time and money is wasted because of unclear requests.
They say, “to coordinate successfully, your requests must be precise and detailed. You’re not insulting the listener is you make detailed requests. You’re setting up the possibility for mutual satisfaction.”
The implementation of any strategy, be it organizational or personal, is mediated through language so think about which one of the above might apply to you and what adjustments you could make to how you communicate.
If you’d like more details on the other 8, drop me an email.
/ SELF
To dance in language you need a partner, you need to be listened to.
We forget the power of listening, yet it is inscribed in our language.
“If only he could hear himself.”
“I felt so heard.”
“She really listens.”
We use listening both as approbation and as celebration, but we forget its power. We forget to present in our conversations, to listen with the intent to understand and yet deep listening enables conversation.
The author Ursula K. Le Guin, in a wonderful piece entitled Telling is Listening, says “Listening is not a reaction, it is a connection. Listening to a conversation or a story, we don’t so much respond as join in — become part of the action.”
Indeed, she describes conversation as two amoebas having sex.
As you know amoebas can reproduce on their own, but occasionally the need to create a bit of genetic diversity moves them to connect.
Le Guin writes, “amoeba A and amoeba B exchange genetic ‘information,’ that is, they literally give each other inner bits of their bodies, via a channel or bridge which is made out of outer bits of their bodies. They hang out for quite a while sending bits of themselves back and forth, mutually responding each to the other.
This is very similar to how people unite themselves and give each other parts of themselves — inner parts, mental not bodily parts—when they talk and listen.”
The next time that you’re in conversation and you find yourself more worried about what you’re going to say, or the email that you’re expecting, or the fact that your phone’s screen has just lit up, remember the amoebas.
(Maria Popova has written a great essay distilling the core parts of Le Guin’s message)
/ SOUL
Telling stories is humanity’s primary way of connecting to our history, to our souls and so it is essential that we have stories in which we can see and understand our own possibilities.
Brittle Paper describes itself as “Your magical funhouse of African literary culture.” It connects us to an African imagination, to African possibilities.
Founded by Ainehi Edoro, Assistant Professor of Global Black Literatures at the University of Winscosin-Madison, it is a consistent source of inspiration.
A few weeks ago, they launched The Decade Project on their Instagram account to celebrate their 10th birthday. It has been an ongoing source of fantastic interviews with the luminaries of African literature and culture. Search for #TheDecadeProject.
I loved this quotation from Ben Okri;
“Literature speaks to the dreaming part of us, the part where change begins.”
The stories we tell ourselves enable and disable us. Literature helps us to dream, to visit new possibilities, new ways of being.
I leave you today with these questions from Okri;
“How can we make real in our lives and in our art, the finest possibilities of the African spirit? How can we unleash our genius for the betterment of Africans?”
Best wishes for your week. It’s November!
Karl
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(This letter was first published on 1 November 2020)