The Serious Business of Small Talk by Carol A. Fleming

Author:Carol A. Fleming
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.
Published: 2018-03-22T04:00:00+00:00

PROFESSIONAL TITLES

Your professional title will have meaning to people in your organization but can completely baffle others outside the group. I have found this breach to be especially common with young people in the Silicon Valley tech industry who appear baffled or irritated that the layman does not understand what a data scientist is. Or a UX designer. Or a growth hacker. Then there are those who will look you straight in the eye and tell you they are a developer. A developer of what?

You can do one of several things to clarify your title: briefly (!) describe some aspect of what you actually do in concrete terms that most people can follow, or fashion an explanation that is suited to the particular person with whom you are talking. I’ll use myself for this illustration.

Perhaps I’m at a women’s health fair and some people want to know what I do. I might well say I’m a personal communication coach. Now, I could stop right there and let them play guessing games.

Um, a speech therapist?

Do you work with opera stars?

Do you work in a school?

That’s like theater training?

Do you help stutterers?

That’s corporate-level public speaking, isn’t it?

How on earth should they know my work just from my title? I have learned to say something more like this: “You know how a lot of people just cringe when they hear their own voices on a recording? Well, I’m the one who helps them sound better and feel better about the sound of their voice.”

If you are a business person, I am likely to say that I work with the speech, voice, and language problems of men and women who must represent their businesses to the public. If you are a six-year-old child, I might ask, “Are there boys and girls in your class who don’t talk as good as other children? Well, I’m the kind of teacher who helps people talk better.”

You can detect a bit of marketing there. Because my work is so varied these statements (and many more) are all completely true. They are merely shaped for the particular person I am talking to.

If this material applies to you, do some thinking about how you are going to rescue that “title orphan” with an illustrative companion for the sake of a more genuine communication. Here are some tips:

• Develop a sensitivity for the people outside your language world.

• Build a bridge that makes you meaningful to the other person.

• Find out how their life makes meaning in the world.

In the example I gave using my own work, I used a concrete image that most people seem to understand with ease. Can you work out a description using ordinary words that lets the average person get a sense of what you do? Remember, this is about small talk, not about giving technical lectures. Keep it light and brief as well as clear. Good luck.

GREG: And what do you do?

JERRY: I’m a systems analyst.

Imagine Greg’s puzzled look. Let’s give Jerry a do-over.

GREG: And

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