Words do matter—and you might be using them all wrong

Jargon gets a bad reputation for good reasons

But there's something good about jargon, and I think it should be explored because jargon

hangs on, I think, in our speech because it has a usefulness

When people in the same profession have a word that stands for five pages of written knowledge

why say five pages of stuff when you can say one word

And if the other person understands it exactly the way you understand it, then jargon has usefulness

The trouble is we develop such specialized words that they're not understood by people at just a little distance from our expertise

For instance, even show business, which you wouldn't expect to have a technical jargon

or you might not expect it, even show business has it, movie making

Take this gobo and put it on the Century over there and hurry up because this is the martini shot

And while you're at it, bring me a half apple. Well, that's not understood to most people

And it's crystal clear to somebody who's been on a movie set for a while

I guess I have to explain it or people will be writing your letters saying, what does all that

mean? A gobo is a thing that blocks out light. A century is a century stand made by the century

company many decades ago and their name is on the stand. It's a stand that holds up a light or a gobo

The martini shot is the last shot of the day before you go home and have a martini And a half apple is a box half the size of an apple box that you can put things on like people who are too short So that jargon for the

movie set. But jargon has another evil use aside from separating us from one another

And that is that when we want to use it to make ourselves look really smart. I'm smart

I talk like this. You can't really talk like this. So you're not as smart as me

A lot of us do this unconsciously and it's not necessary. We get more done if we open ourselves

up. It's really fun to be on the verge of saying something that is probably not going to be

understood by the other person and to say, wait a second, how can I say this in really plain

language. And if we do that, sometimes we learn more about the jargon than we thought we knew

We humanize it. We reduce it to the simplest concepts. What are the concepts that really

matter in this? And then the jargon sometimes gets cleaned off and polished of some of the

luster of highfalutinness that doesn't help. It doesn't help the jargon be helpful

choice of words does matter. It matters a lot. But I think that it's important to remember

that if all we do is get the right words in our head and the right order of words

and think that that's going to make all by itself good communication

I think we're missing the boat. Because really effective communication is not just

because I have something perfect to say to you It really occurs when you understand and internalize what I have to say and are able to make it your own to remember it and that kind of thing Here an interesting example of that

One of our medical students, who we were training to communicate better

was on rounds with a supervising MD. and the doctor who was in charge was talking to a patient and he had to explain to her that she had

incurable cancer and she was going to die. And he was talking to her and as he was telling her

all this really hard to take information, she wasn't asking questions. And you could tell by

the look on her face, or at least the medical student could tell by the look on her face that

She wasn't understanding it. She was just listening with kind of a blank expression

And the lead doctor said, okay, so I'll talk to you later, or whatever he said, and left

And the young doctor, the medical student said, do you mind if I stay for a few minutes with her and talk to her

And he was given permission to do that. So now he sat down right opposite her and took her hand in his

And he started to say many of the same things that the other doctor had said, but he didn't

use the same words. So the words changed. He didn't say metastasis

He talked in simpler terms, but he was making contact with her

He was looking at her eyes. He was opening himself up to her as he talked to her

And little by little she started to cry and she started to ask questions And finally she understood she was going to die And he helped her through that understanding He helped her get that understanding because she wasn protected against this barrage of

impersonal communication that the other doctor had been giving her. And what he said to us, what this young doctor said to us, this medical student

was that it brought him back to one of our basic exercises, the mirroring exercise

where he has to mirror the movements of another person. And when that happens well

you get in sync. And he said, I was mirroring her. And then she began to mirror me because she

she helped me be a better doctor because she responded with tears to what I was saying

which let me know she really understood me. He was so moved by the experience that he began

to cry himself in the experience. And I don't think he was crying because

he felt her pain at the awareness that she was going to die. I think he was moved because

that this connection had taken place. And he realized that the movement he had made during the workshops

to be able to make this kind of contact with another person was a profound experience

And he said that he would never forget the experience and how it came from the simple mirroring exercise

So that was a wonderful experience for us to hear about because it was a personal way of letting us know

that people can be changed by this