Blick?

Some years ago I crossed from Canada into northern New York State, and just a very few minutes after the border crossing stopped at a coffee shop. Everything seemed familiar enough, the coffee smelled good, so I ordered a cup. The sweet young thing at the cash took my order cheerfully and said, “Blick?”

I looked at her stupidly, and turned to my travel companion for help, but he looked equally confused, so I questioned the young lady, “Blick?” She looked at me for a moment with something between pity and amusement, and rephrased her question, “Do you want your coffee blick, or with cream and sugar?”

Suddenly the scales fell from my eyes and we were now on the same page. And from the look on her face, I suspected I was not the first Canadian to be baffled by such a simple question. But I was on her turf, in her shop, and I didn’t speak her language. Fortunately, the translation was easy and before long we were joking back and forth.

More than once I’ve had clients across the table who looked at me with exactly the same expression I must have had in that New York coffee shop – utter bewilderment. That’s because I was either speaking a strange language (Legalese) or using English in a way they’d never heard before. Either way, I was talking and they weren’t hearing.

As a professional trying to deliver important, perhaps life-changing, information it behooves me to speak the language of my listener. Ditto if I’m a teacher, a clergyman, a physician, or anyone who needs to “be on the same page” as the client. Perhaps that’s everyone, and perhaps that’s you.

All this means that a professional needs to be “multilingual”, that is, adept in the languages of their various audiences as well as their professional community. So while in the courtroom the lawyers and the judge can throw around autrefois acquit, res ipsa loquitur, and the like, when they’re talking to real people, they need to translate into “normal” English.

If the doctor tells me I have “fractura spiralis P2 D3 sin”, I have every right to stare at him like he has two heads. All I know is that my finger hurts like blazes and is massively swollen, and he’s not being a bit of help.

Speaking the language of your audience is not only efficient, it’s respectful. It’s fundamental to effective communication. What’s the point of delivering a message which is not received by both the mind and the heart?

And there it is in blick and white.

And also, by the way, I help people communicate effectively. Feel free to check in.