subject: Whining And Connection Theory [print this page] Weather-wise, it has been an unusually bad summer; it either rains or it is too hot or too humid. And because summer doesn't last very long, this makes matters worse. On top of that, gas prices go up on long weekends, and don't get me started on the Canadian Dollar. I lost a huge amount of money last summer on my big summer LAB Profile trainging program when the Canadian dollar hit + 10 % against the American greenback.
Hey, doesn't this sound Canadian? To the outside ear, this may sound like whining, but what do they know? This is how Canadians connect! And connecting is important, right?
A couple of weeks ago in Berlin, I greeted the general manager of the hotel where I was working. "Guten morgen Herr Ronald. Wie geht's?" He smiled, looked uncomfortable, mumbled something and left.
My local meeting planner Annemarie said, "Shelle, did you really want to know how he is?" "Of course not," I replied, "it's just that in Canada we need to exchange at least two sentences." "Well in Germany we only need one."
Okay then! One sentence. I can do that. But what about the traditional German need to be perfect? "I must be perfect at all times and so must the speaker.I need to connect with my audience and get rid of the Perfect Directive. How do I do that? Through a translator? Without losing my credibility? In only one sentence?
I gathered up my courage. Briefed my interpreters. Walked to the front of the room, smiled warmly and proceeded to screw up my attempt to use a traditional German greeting. My interpreter, standing beside me, screwed up her translation back into English, right on cue. We paused, looked at each other, both shrugged a "so who cares" kind of Gallic Shrug and continued.
With one sentence we had lowered the expectations from perfect to human, made people laugh, and didn't entirely destroy my credibility. Something was missing. I still had to connect to my group.
"Isn't it amazing how bad the weather has been this summer, even for northern Europe, especially when the summer doesn't last very long?", I commented to my group. Everyone nodded their head in agreement.
That's it I thought! And I gave birth to The Connection Theory on the spot:
1. Each culture has a topic of conversation, to be discussed in a particular number of sentences or duration in time for the precise purpose of connecting rather that communicating specific information. One needs to match the topic and the required duration of conversation in order to connect.
2. Each culture has a precise "order of business" in their places of work wherein a specific number of minutes is taken for greeting, working, informal chit chat, smoking breaks (where still legal), etc., in a particular order. This order of business ensures that a personal connection will take place.
But you know the problem with theories. They don't always work in practice. So what do you do when in doubt? Whine about the weather of course. The Canadian Connection Strategy may just be the Universal Connector. There is only one way to find out, n'est-ce pas?
