Good Communication 101: Mirroring; Jargon; Hifalutin Words | Alan Alda Video Lecture | Understanding the art of Public Speaking: Become a better speaker - Self Help Learning

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
with 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.”
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 you 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 the 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.
That's jargon for a 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 hifalutin-ness that 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's an interesting example of that.
One of our medical students who we were training
to communicate better was on rounds with a
supervising M.D. 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 says, "Okay so I'll talk
to you later," or whatever he said and left,
and the young 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 in 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't protected against this barrage
of impersonal communication that the other
doctor had been giving her.
And what he said, what this young the doctor
said to us—this medical student—was that
it brought him back to one of our basic exercises.
It was a mirroring exercise where he had to
mirror the movements of another person.
And when that happens, well, you get in-sync,
and he said, "I was mirroring her and she
began to mirror me—because 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 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.