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You talk a lot. Don’t worry, it’s not just you. People talk a lot, regardless of gender. That’s a scientific fact. James Pennebaker, the chairperson of the University of Texas at Austin’s psychology department, and his colleagues at the University of Arizona in Tucson collected data for over a decade which looked at how much people talk.
In one study published in 2007 in the journal Science, researchers sampled the talking patterns of 396 university students (210 women and 186 men) at colleges in Texas, Arizona and Mexico (345 Americans and 51 Mexicans). To do this, they used a device Pennebaker created called an EAR (Electronically Activated Recorder). It is a digital recorder that can be stored in a sheath similar to a case for glasses in a person’s purse or pocket. The EAR captured 30 seconds of ambient noise (including conversations) every 12.5 minutes for a day. The students in the study could not tamper with the recordings. Based on the data collected, researchers then estimated the total number of words that each student spoke daily, assuming they were awake 17 of 24 hours. In most of the samples, the average number of words spoken by men and women were about the same. The most economical speaker spoke about 500 words daily and the most verbose spoke a whopping 47,000 words a day. But, on average, it came out to be about the same: 16,215 words a day for women and 15,669 words spoken a day for men (a statistically insignificant difference).
People really do talk a lot… more than they realize. In fact, Dr. Rachael Tatman, who has a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Washington and is a data scientist at Kaggle (an online community of data scientists and machine learning practitioners which is a subsidiary of Google LLC), did a simple study about ten years ago that illustrates the point.
She did a large chunk of transcription, looking at speech data from four different people. Taking a random two minute sample from each of those transcriptions, the four subjects spoke 282, 257, 386 and 357 words in the two minutes, averaging around 160 words per minute. None of the people were talking faster than what would be considered a normal rate. They subjects were located in the Southern U.S., where speaking rates are actually slower than California or New York.
Why Do People Talk So Much?
Most people spend a LOT of time talking. This is certainly true during work hours because most jobs require it. Consider all of the departments and teams that must have ongoing communication. Sales. Customer Service. Marketing. Management. Human Resources. Social Media. Accounting. Compliance. Research and Development. Even the most introverted people usually have no choice but to talk at work in order to get their jobs done.
These conversations are primarily work-related discussions (with some social chit chat for connection and rapport). After all, most work requires dialogue. Collaboration requires an exchange of ideas. Cooperation requires some exchange about process. Innovation requires clarification and elucidation. Persuasion requires explanation. Updates often require question-and-answer discussion. Problem-solving necessitates a robust vetting of the issue. Management entails description of the needs, timeline and goals. Hiring requires detailed accounts of skills, training and experiences.
Even programmers, accounting professionals, graphic designers, writers, engineers, nurses, and statisticians – all occupations that require long periods of individual, focused work – must spend a lot of time talking to colleagues, clients or patients in order to do their work. For example, nurses must get a detailed Medical and Medication History of a patient and must review that with the medical team. Few jobs are done in absolute silence.
So talking is mission critical skill for most people in most jobs. And yet, so much of communication is misunderstood, falls flat or backfires. Conversations often go wrong.
Communication is Fraught with Misunderstanding
How people communicate differs from one person to the next, because language style is a learned social behavior. Part of it is cultural. How people talk and listen is deeply influenced by the culture in which they were raised. It is also geographical. People might think that their way of saying what they mean is natural and typical. But where they run into trouble is if they interpret and evaluate others based on their own style. That’s how conversations go off the rails… because of miscommunications, misunderstandings, misfires and misinterpretations.
One factor is linguistic style. Linguistic style refers to a person’s characteristic speaking pattern. It includes such features as directness or indirectness, tone of voice, pacing and pausing, word choice, and the use of such elements as jokes, figures of speech, stories, questions, and apologies. A person’s linguistic style is the culturally-learned signals by which we not only communicate what we mean but also interpret others’ meaning and evaluate one another as people.
These variables have an impact on how a conversation unfolds and how the information is received. And, in the workplace, these factors have a profound impact in how people are understood – or misunderstood. Ways of speaking affect judgments of competence and confidence, as well as who gets heard, who gets credit, who gets promotions, and what gets done. It also affects how well one person might be able to sell, help, persuade, influence or negotiate with another.
Add to that the fact that talk happens on two levels. Communication functions on two levels. The first level of communication is the actual message conveyed. This is where you say what you mean. At this surface level, choice of words communicates ideas. But there is also a second level of communication that is about how you say what you mean. This communication is indirect and is only marginally visible or understood. It plays a powerful role in communication. At this level, language plays a major role in negotiating relationships. Through ways of speaking, we signal — and establish —the relative status of the speakers and level of rapport.
Here is a simple example. If a speaker says “Get it done!”, that might signal that the he has a higher position than the person being addressed or that the two people are so close to each other that they can drop all pleasantries. Or it might communicate impatience if said with a harsh tone. If the speaker says “Just get it done!”, that might signal that trust in the person’s ability to accomplish the goal. If the person said “Let’s get it done”, that would signal team spirit and encouragement in working together to achieve a goal. Or, if the speaker asked “Can you get it done?”, it could just be a simple inquiry, or if emphasis on the word ‘you’, it might signal sarcasm and doubt in ability. And if the person said “I have no doubt you can get it done,” he is communicating either sincere confidence in the person’s ability or if the speaker sarcastically emphasizes the word “can”, it might communicate that there is doubt in the person’s willingness to do the job even if they have the ability. Each of these ways of saying the same thing—telling someone to make something happen—can have a vastly different meaning.
This demonstrates how choice of words and tone can deliver different messages and thus cause communication breakdowns. In fact there are many variables that can cause communication to fail, including:
- choice of words
- tone
- pace at which each person speaks
- pace at which the speaker gets to the point
- the rhythm of the conversation
- how loudly / softly each person is speaking
- intonation patterns
- misunderstood humor
- differing customs / cultural norms
- disconnects caused by different conversational styles (time between pauses; talking over someone; comfort with silence and pregnant pauses; etc.)
Next week, we’ll dive into more ways that these variables can affect communication and, if unchecked, can hurt businesses and careers. And we’ll consider how communication styles play a part in conversational breakdowns or success. Stay tuned.
Quote of the Week
“The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn’t said.” Peter Drucker
© 2022, Keren Peters-Atkinson. All rights reserved.
The post The Art of Conversation: Why Business Conversations are Fraught with Misunderstandings, Part 1 first appeared on Monday Mornings with Madison.