Be Careful What You Say!

It is a couple of days after Christmas and I like most others are suffering from the excessive eating of turkey, stuffing: and in our family, Montreal smoked meat, perogies, veanies (vine leaves stuffed with rice and other great stuff) and hummus.  These are the casualties of a multicultural family composed of Polish, Egyptian and Canadian heritage.  Christmas is also a time customs and rituals.  Christmas mass, stockings hung by the fire place and the “In-Law Shuffle” between Montreal and Barry’s Bay to keep peace on both sides of the family. It is a simple 4 hour drive unless it is a typical Canadian winter.  Extend that time line to 6 to 8 hours. 

Driving back from Barry’s Bay to Montreal, I was thinking of some of the lessons I have learned over the years regarding the use of technical jargon and its level of appropriateness in presentations.  During my last eight years of corporate life, I co-authored a dozen technical papers in the area of efficient separation of oil from water.  Our target market was the upstream oil and gas and industrial market sectors.  The majority of the audience often included PhD’s and scientists along with industry consultants and oil company gurus in the field of water treatment with a sprinkling of the occasional investor and curious bystander. 

I learned that each technical term needed defining regardless of the audience sophistication.  In the oil/water separation business, an oil/water mixture could be termed as an emulsion.  In the industrial market sector the meaning of an emulsion was water contaminated with oil.  In the upstream oil and gas market sector, an emulsion was understood as oil contaminated with a bit of water.  Claiming your technology treated an oily water emulsion could have two completely different meanings based on the audience’s background.  Not knowing the difference in the meaning could damage your professional credibility and communicate a confusing message.  One way to remain safe was to define the term oil/water emulsion every time the presentation was made.  This would put everyone on the same page and reference point.

However, as I was into hour number three of my drive back to Montreal, I began recalling a series of presentations I made when I was in my final year of high school.  I was the student council president and during autumn, the high school put on a “Fall Festival of the Arts” which included performances from several bands of the music department, several plays performed by the students, student art exhibitions along with exhibits from the stamp club and photography club.  One of my responsibilities as the student council president was to visit the  primary feeder schools in the area and promote the festival to the primary school students and provide hand-outs for each of them to take home to their parents so everyone in the local community would be updated on the upcoming events.  I recall being in a class room of grade one students.  I was presenting the events that were to take place.  As I was distributing the information hand-outs I asked that each student take the piece of paper home to their parents.

I remember a small boy (we’ll call him Johnny since I do not recall his real name) putting up his hand to ask a question.  When I acknowledged him he stood up and said, “But I have no parents“.  Time suddenly stood still.  I had lost my father at the young age of 6 and here is this poor little boy and he has no parents!  And to make it worse, I just reminded him that he has no parents in front of his classmates.  My eyes started to swell with tears.  How do you respond to a statement like that? 

Just at that moment, the teacher interrupted and said, “Johnny, he means your mommy and daddy.  Take the paper home to your mommy and daddy.”  Johnny replied, “Oh I have a mommy and daddy, one of each”.  I looked at the teacher with an expression of great relief and gratitude for her understanding that my technical jargon, (the word “parents”) was not understood by the grade one students.

Lesson Learned:  Always define every technical term.  And the definition of a technical term is defined by the  age and level of the audience’s familiarity of the topic of your presentation.

Hang in there.  Effective presentations are a life long journey.  All the best to everyone over the holiday season.

M.J.

Tags: communication, jargon, presentations, technical jargon