I’m going back to one of my favorite coaching topics in this essay:  the importance of learning to speak as many “languages” as you can.  Why is the word “languages” in quotes?  Because I’m not talking about English and Spanish and Mandarin, although it would do most Americans well to learn to speak another language with some fluency.  I’m talking about, from a business perspective, learning to speak the “language” of other areas of the company:  finance, manufacturing, logistics, sales, research.  This topic is another of my famous “Tom-isms”—lessons I learned from one of my first (and still favorite) managers.  But like all Tom-isms, I have realized that this is a life lesson, not just a business lesson.

I spent about three quarters of my career in R&D, either at the bench or managing other researchers.  Here is a typical conversation I might have had with a sales person from my days developing resins for use in high performance paints:

Sales:  Hey, Sherri!  Customer Blah Blah really likes XF1234!  They’ve put it into one of their formulations and really like its performance!

Me:  That’s awesome!

Sales:  They like the pot life, hardness and scratch resistance of the paint and it performs really well on their corrosion resistance testing.  They just….

Me: (Uh oh)

Sales: ….need it to dry about 50% faster.

Me: (left eye begins twitching uncontrollably)  How about I give the customer a call and talk about formulating options to get them there?

Sales: (look on face that says they were dreading this response) They don’t want to change their formulation.  Can’t you just make the resin dry faster?

OK.  A few things about industrial paints: 1) they “dry” by reacting with moisture in the air or with a second chemical that is mixed in just before use; 2) paint formulations can contain 50 ingredients, most at well less than 1% of the volume, which means formulators never want to change their formulations; 3) change one thing about a resin to change one property like dry time and it affects pretty much everything else about the paint (see item 2); and 4) someone whose job is selling one chemical to a paint formulator typically knows very little about items 1-3.

Here, also, is a conversation I may have had with people from manufacturing:

Me: (speaking with excitement about my new development) Hey, we’ve got a new product we want to take into the plant!

Ops guy:  (silent, as he remembers the last product I introduced to the plant)

Me:  (looking at my calendar a week or two out) When do you think we could work it in?

Ops guy: (Wondering if this product will be able to be made in any of the plant’s systems) Do you have the spec sheet?

Me: Oh.  Well it’s just like XR6789.  Sort of.

Tom taught me that the frustrations work both ways.  Sales may not understand what research has to do to develop a product but research usually has no clue what is required to scale a new material from 100 ml to 1000 gallons.  We all just expect the other functions to do what they need to do and, hey, how hard could it be anyway? (See: If Something Looks Simple, It Means I Don’t Know Enough About It)  Learning to speak the “language” of the other functions has two major benefits.  First, you can explain ideas and issues in verbiage that will be understood.  Second, a healthy respect for their job will not only endear you to them (ensuring better response to your needs) but also allows you to take their needs into consideration in your own work—which just makes everything easier all the way around.  Whether your workplace employs 10 people or 10,000 people, you need this understanding of what others face in their roles.

As I introduced this lesson into my coaching sessions with younger scientists, I began to see the broader applicability.  What we are really talking about here is developing a sense of empathy.  Seeing the world through another’s eyes.  Walking a mile in another’s shoes.  After I “came out of the closet” at work, I got more deeply involved in Diversity and Inclusion efforts.  This concept of speaking many “languages” was equally useful in the context of trying to understand the microinequities that people can face—whether you are a woman, gay, Jewish or perhaps all three.  I have a lot more to say on Diversity and Inclusion, so I won’t belabor that topic here.

It leads us, though, into the discussion of how developing this sense of empathy is such a vital tool in navigating the world outside of the office.  Look, I know that the word “empathy” evokes candles, incense and eye rolls with many people.  And many also associate pleas for empathy with weakness at best and a stifling political correctness at worst.  That all misses the point.  In my opinion, very few people are truly naturally empathic.  I believe that many people have the capacity for empathy, but to really understand another person takes work and intention. 

The point I am laboring to make, here, is that it is incumbent upon all of us to actually ask questions of those whose life experiences are different from our own—be it a department in the corporate world or someone who has grown up with a different set of privileges.  If I wanted to “speak the language” of operations so as to smooth my working relationship, I actually had to go talk to someone in operations!  I had to spend some time at the manufacturing plant and learn how they do what they do.  If I want to better understand and “speak the language” of someone who grew up poor in an inner city, instead of a comfortable middle class suburb, I need to seek people out and listen.  I need to ask the questions that bust the assumptions that I inadvertently make about what their life has been like.

It seems these days that everyone wants to be understood, but few recognize the need to understand others.  We have no prayer of resolving differences if we won’t try to understand those with different points of view.  Remember the comment about work and intention? It takes no work at all to demand to be heard.  It takes a lot of work to listen just as I want others to listen to me.  And isn’t that what we all want?  We want to be heard, hopefully understood.  Not dismissed.  Not minimized.  Not “assumed” away.  This kind of learning is an active process and you will find yourself tripping over incorrect assumptions every day.  Don’t aim to be perfect.  Aim to be aware.  Be aware that there are many “languages” out there that you don’t yet speak.  But there is nothing stopping you from learning them.