My challenge to you: only speak like a human at work

Companies are talking ‘professionalese’ to keep customers and colleagues at a distance, when what people crave is openness and honesty, argues Daniel H Pink.

…The plane sat on the runway there for four hours – without air-conditioning, food or water – as babies wailed and adults anguished in the darkened cabin.

Jason Fried, co-founder of the American software firm 37 Signals and co-author of ReWork: Change the Way You Work Forever, finds the language of that statement almost as inhuman as the problem that prompted it.

Not too long ago, Fried saw a similar, though less calamitous, disaster in a Chicago cafe. A woman had just purchased a large cup of coffee. On the way to sit down, she tripped, and spilled the entire contents all over another customer.

Here’s what she said: “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

“If someone is really, truly sorry,” says Fried, “that’s how they respond.”

But in business we rarely talk like that. Instead, we resort to a weird and inadvertent bilingualism. We speak human at home and “professionalese” at work. And that might be hurting our businesses more than we realise.

Read full article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/businessclub/7897347/My-challenge-to-you-only-speak-like-a-human-at-work.html