In an informal conversation, one of my clients told me he was filtering a lot of his thoughts before spelling them out, both at work and at home. That makes sense to him, which I respect. I am only concerned about what his interlocutors miss out on, and I am one of them. Do I have to guess because he is trying to be polite? I first thought my divergent approach was cultural: it is \u201ceasy\u201d to hide behind a stereotype, yet it makes me fall into what I work on staying away from. And believe me, my being French has brought me a myriad of remarks over the years.<\/p>\n
So, what is the deal if I want (and likely expected) to contribute to the people I work with\/for? I am familiar with social\u00a0rules, and what some call \u201ccompany culture<\/a>“. Although it is interesting to point out the fact that most of these are actually difficult to find in writing, anywhere. How can I guess what is in the back of my client\u2019s mind if s\/he does not lay it out fully in a language that we both speak?<\/p>\n I am frequently asked to\u00a0think out of the box<\/a>\u00a0and bring creative ideas or strategies to the table, which I do. Then, when presenting them, I get the look: it feels like I am wearing the ugliest holiday sweater to a party I was not even invited to. It is the season, is it not? I checked everything though and introduced possibilities to the board of deciders. What have I missed? Was the Pantone 199 red the preference the main investor never shared, assuming everyone knew? Or was the 032 C the last idea?<\/p>\n Here I am, standing with my reddish holiday sweater, trying to understand where the shift in thoughts came from. Where the two-way-street communication switched to a one-way, now leading to a slashing dead-end, with a jingle bell wreath, a glitter snowflake and some candy cane? Now we are both lost with mismatching styles and ideas. Which box was I supposed to think out of again?<\/p>\n It sounds simple to speak eloquently enough to be understood: it does indeed. Maybe too simple, and we (I am as guilty, and working on not being anymore, or less anyway) still make it complicated (I heard it is a human tendency) for some strange reason. To look good? To impress? I am not sure what drives it. All I know is that I am happy to wear an ugly holiday sweater outside of the \u201cproper setting<\/a>” (speaking from experience too) as long as I get to cheer and celebrate the latest contribution to a project I am part of. And the person I am speaking with agrees to be specific and genuine with her\/his words and intentions, so I can contribute and share the best way possible in return. There is no need to wait to wear a funny holiday sweater to actually say what we mean when we want to build and create.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In an informal conversation, one of my clients told me he was filtering a lot of his thoughts before spelling them out, both at work and at home. That makes sense to him, which I respect. I am only concerned about what his interlocutors miss…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[86,24,83,117,7,109,19,64,4,116,47,41],"class_list":["post-385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-item","tag-brainstorming","tag-communication","tag-feel","tag-holiday","tag-judgement","tag-label","tag-perception","tag-project","tag-relationship","tag-rule","tag-strategy","tag-values"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/orangefroglogistics.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/orangefroglogistics.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/orangefroglogistics.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orangefroglogistics.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orangefroglogistics.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/orangefroglogistics.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/orangefroglogistics.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orangefroglogistics.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orangefroglogistics.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}