Language You’ll Understand: Business
Whilst amongst French friends a phrase was required but missing from known vocabulary to convey appreciation of their generous hospitality. Having later obtained the missing phrase it was repeated to the accommodating hosts during a car journey. The car came to a grinding halt as the French host, agitated, reverted to fluent French. Any knowledge of French or English vanished, completely sealed away as both sides swayed towards panic and hysteria simply because someone had thought it would be humorous, whilst we thought we were paying a compliment, for us to exchange a vulgar and corrupted phrase. Needless to say, after the discovery was made and some laughter exchanged, the phrase was used again, along with a few more familiar phrases, when the one who’d divulged it appeared.
The point is that, if you want to aim for success, there is no escape when learning a new language, you have to be prepared to take a risk. Living in the land of business is no different because businesses don’t have a universal tongue. Have you ever been in the situation of hearing a foreign language and understanding some of it but not quite knowing how to speak it? That’s how business operates. Elements of business include some of the same vocabulary; work ethic, aptitude, understanding the functions of business and employees, personnel issues, use of resources, marketing and profit. But improving business skills takes effort, awareness and repetition, as with any language acquisition. Understanding your businesses’ language is just the start of an ongoing process because it may seem that businesses talk the same language, but they don’t. That is why successful businesses are always prepared to immerse themselves in a new language and talk to the natives.
5 Key Tips for Minding Your Businesses’ Language
1. Start Over : It’s easy to forget how much we each know about our businesses and easy to forget that others speak a different language. Go right back to basics and look at the business from outsiders eyes. Think in a new language and don’t forget just as language has dialect, so too does business. Keep things simple and don’t try to overcomplicate things. Identify your core vocabulary, add some basics that are required to run your business such as cashflow, and profit margin, then build on those. Don’t fixate on your ideals listen to your customer ‘s needs to reinforce your model.
2. Share Experiences : When business is the common ground there are many areas and practices that can be shared which will add value to yourself, those you are sharing with and, ultimately the customer. Learn from each other’s mistakes. Rarely will those businesses be direct competition and exchanges can become strengthening. Go with the flow and absorb the things that you are comfortable with rather than feeling you have to know everything. Open up to conversation otherwise you’ll be talking to yourself. You don’t need to learn the language to try the conversation.
3. Talk : It may seem too obvious but if you want to learn a language the best way is to try to speak it. Fear can stop us from wanting to communicate but most businesses enjoy learning from each other. Communicating isn’t just talking your business needs to be able to intonate and be aware of its body language to make itself understood. Communicate with other skilled and experienced experts or businesses, get to know their language. Sometimes business isn’t aware of other cultures.
4. Ask questions : Be inquisitive. Those who want to talk will, and those who don’t, won’t. Conversing and interacting with other businesses extends the back to basics and, although your specific culture might not be mutual, there are many things that you’ll have in common as being in business is your root commonality, just as so many languages have a root commonality. There are many business thoughts, ideas, media, books that are not product or service specific. Perfection isn’t the key to communication.
5. Just do it : Best practice makes perfect, seek out opportunities. Making mistakes is all part of developing your business, obviously costly ones need to be avoided but networking is all about extending your community which in turn extends your skills. Not many are lucky enough to visit every country in the world to learn a language and business is no different. It’s better to be very skilled in one specific area with fluency as the objective remembering it can take many years to be fluent in a second, or more, language. Try to enjoy the journey, enjoy the learning.
(Image credit: cogdogblog Article credit: Copyright SUF)
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