The jargon IS the message or �� communicator, hear thyself!

Q Why is it that the professional communicator is often the first to miscommunicate?

A Because, observes the cynic, the communicator doesn't listen to his or her own counsel.

Q Or, put in more familiar vernacular, why is it always the shoemaker's children who go without shoes?

A Because, quips the same cynic, the shoemaker is so preoccupied doing for others that he forgets to do the same for his own. A true case of irony, no?

Which brings me to the point of this article: We communicators are failing to win over the audience most crucial to our ultimate success - business decision-makers - because we aren't heeding our own advice to "think and talk like our target audience thinks and talks." That failure is hurting our credibility and our cause more than we realize. In turning a deaf ear to our counsel, we've turned into the very people we're quick to criticize for sending self-defeating, "do as I say, not as I do" messages.

First, a little background. Then I'll explore the issue further.

Numbers Tell the Story - Partially, Anyway

This revelation didn't come to me out of the blue. It emerged as a subtle, yet profound, finding from a 1996 study of MBA program administrators' attitudes toward and uses of communication education. The survey, a replication of one colleagues and I conducted in 1991, included 215 business school deans, associate deans and MBA faculty members throughout the U.S. (see p. 35)

The research team included Professor Donn Silvis, M.A., ABe, IABC Fellow, of California State University, Dominquez Hills; Robert Rayfield, Ph.D., APR, professor emeritus; Mu-Chen Chang, M.A., of California State University, Fullerton; and me.

The objective of the study was to determine the extent to which MBA curricula are adequately preparing the next generation of business managers for the increasingly communication-driven role demanded of them - a role substantially unlike the one expected of their predecessors. Today's executives, business prognosticators and employers tell us, need to be as proficient as advocates and coalition-builders as they are interpreters of balance sheets. The days when a top dog could count on the formal authority of title and office to gain stakeholders' commitment and loyalty are relics of a recent past.

Unfortunately, as was true in '91, we were not surprised by what we found in '96: Most MBA programs require relatively little, if any, business communication education and what is required tends to be almost exclusively basic writing and verbal skills training. (see p. 34) Rare is the MBA program that insists students be exposed to strategic communication topics/issues, such as persuasion, issues management, customer relations and employee communication. Usually, such issues are incorporated as modules into elective courses, which are easily avoided by those who probably need them most.

Teaching communication skills without also teaching communication strategy (i.e., the rationale) is like telling a joke and forgetting the punch line. Nothing makes much sense. Richard West, former dean at Dartmouth and New York University business schools, explains why skills alone aren't enough: "Management communication education should be not only committed to improving students' skills, but also to making them more sophisticated about the overall process of communicating."

Cause for Hope

Although the picture painted by our data is somewhat gloomy, there are several patches of blue among the clouds that nevertheless suggest things are getting better. In 1991, for instance, 70 percent of respondents said they required no communication education whatsoever; five years later, "only" 52 percent said the same. Still not good, but better - and presumably improving. The most promising indicator of things to come, however, may be B-school administrators' warming attitudes toward the value of business communication training - which moved from a "who cares?" response of 5.3 on a 10-point scale in 1991 to an "I believe!" of 7.6 in 1995. From belief is likely to come action, right?

Okay, then, let's review the situation. Most MBA students get barely a teacup's worth of communication training. Most of what they get is Comm 101 speaking and writing skills. Yet, B-school decision-makers' perceptions of communication's educational worth are improving. Overall, then, should we feel encouraged or discouraged?

We weren't sure, so we did the next best thing: We asked more questions. Why do MBA administrators perceive value where they didn't before? What's changed and why? Are these "new" attitudes real, imagined or merely politically correct? Do they spring from marketplace pressures to conform or a genuine belief in communication's expanding role in management?

Again, no instant or easy answers surfaced. The study findings unswervingly pointed out the problem, but less so a solution. Unfortunately, the whirling dervish nature of the global marketplace waits for no man or woman, or MBA program.

So we burrowed past our statistical tables and into the soul of the data in search for meaningful explanations. And before long, we saw it - put simply, we were talking apples and the business educators were talking oranges. The culprit was our divergent perspectives. In a word, jargon. Or definitions.

Definitions Matter

It's perplexing how something so plain to one person is so invisible to another. We concluded that the bulkiest obstacle to convincing B-school administrators of communication education's merit is, well, in a word...language. Yep, word choice. Jargon, if you prefer. And one word more than any other: communication.

Communication. A concept without boundaries. Used by everybody, grasped by few. Fraught - and blessed - with a kaleidoscope of meanings, depending on your perspective. Like the chameleon, the concept changes colors to fit the situation. A constant in everything we do and are, yet as elusive as fog. That elusiveness, or flexibility if you prefer, is at once its most enduring strength and most crippling weakness.

To those of us who labor in its varied vineyard and savor its sweet nuances, communication sweeps deep and wide, seamlessly meandering into every facet of business, from annual report writing to media strategy to team-building. But to those in the executive suites and business schools, the pedestrian term "communication" is unequivocally precise and limited. When they hear the word, they "see" images of sharply scribed memos and crisply delivered presentations. And that's where it stops. To them, that's business communication, period.

Think about their background. They were reared in an educational culture marked by tight formula thinking, literal interpretations and a worship of numbers. As products themselves of MBA curricula devoid of communication training, they learned to see the term as something narrow and finite. As, essentially, message transmission. One-way, top-down message transmission.

In my studies of CEOs' changing leadership roles, I found this to be true - top dogs primarily perceive "communication" as a tool for sending out their words. The more enlightened CEOs see it as a two-way exchange of words, but rarely do they see communication as a complex process designed to build constituent relationships or manage an organization's public reputation. To them, communication is one thing; to we who live in its expanding world, it is many things.

So, when we suggest to folks who were programmed years ago that communication is one thing to now suddenly accept it as something else, their inclination is to resist, to question. To construct confining perceptual obstacles. Obstacles which, if we overcome, can become golden opportunities.

The Obstacle Is the Opportunity

Just how do we remove these perceptual barriers to understanding and thus expedite integrating communication education into MBA programs and eventually into business executives' thinking? Simple, really.

By returning to our conceptual roots. By listening to our own good counsel. By recalling the prime directive in any communication campaign: Figure out what makes the audience truly tick, then craft messages in terms it knows and understands. That doesn't mean changing or manipulating the message to mean something it doesn't. That would be not only dishonest, but also counterproductive.

It means adapting the language, not the underlying concept. It means being sensitive to others' frame of reference, invariably different from yours. It means mentally walking in the other guy's shoes, thinking his thoughts, feeling his feelings. It means tinkering with your insider's vernacular. Most of all, it means communicating intelligently, not egotistically.

In this case, it means thinking the way hard-nosed Business school administrators and faculty think. Which means crafting language that doesn't automatically trigger the raising of perceptual barriers before the deeper message is even presented or heard. Which means that instead of over-relying on the unwieldy and ecumenical term "communication," we get more precise. Maybe ban the term "communication" per se. Instead, require a qualifying modifier at all times, like written communication or oral communication or mediated communication or employee communication. That's one way to go.

The Jargon Is the Solution

A more direct approach is to replace "communication" terminology with reasonably synonymous "business" terminology. More familiar terms, while rarely perfect substitutes, can nonetheless forestall receivers' minds from instantly slamming shut when presented with "fuzzy," easily misinterpreted or too restrictively interpreted communication jargon.

Crafting an alternative vocabulary is not nearly the headache it first appears to be. Rather than say "ongoing communication efforts," for instance, when describing two parties' persistent attempts to reach agreement, say negotiation. Or instead of using "rectifying miscommunication" to depict efforts to resolve differences between target audiences, use conflict management. In place of "persuasive communication" to describe pressing for acceptance of the organization's position, try corporate advocacy. Rather than "message formation and channel selection," try media strategy. Stakeholders, not "audiences." And so on.

You might pooh-pooh this as an ineffectual word game. But I know you know better. Or you might dismiss it as tantamount to selling out the cause. Again, I know you know better. What's really important is not whose vocabulary we use, but that the parties discover the common ground on which they can understand each other's messages...and believe them. From such belief emanates credibility, the mother's milk of trustful management and leadership.

Adapting our language to the business educator's or executive's frame of reference doesn't betray or abandon the cause, it furthers it.

A Basic Principle Lost...and Found?

Listen closely and you can probably hear yourself beseeching a client or colleague: "Adapt your language so the target audience will understand your meaning as you intend them to." It's basic, fundamental. At the heart of every elementary communication theory and model. Analyze the audience thoroughly - cognitively, behaviorally, emotionally - then shape your message, and the clarifying rhetoric, to its mind set.

Skills/Tactics Topics
In Communication Courses                          '91           '95

NUMBER OF STUDENTS POLLED                          51           215

Management presentations                           43%           35%
Public speaking                                    39%           35%
Visual aids                                        25%           32%
Writing business letters                           33%           32%
Writing reports                                    33%           30%
Memo writing                                       37%           30%
Meeting management                                 29%           22%
Writing resumes/cover letters                      22%           22%
Business job interviews                            27%           15%
Writing business plans                             12%           14%
Performance appraisal interviewing                 16%           11%
Media interviewing                                  6%           10%
Media writing                                       8%            7%

COPYRIGHT 1997 International Association of Business Communicators
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group