“So…”

First, I noticed it in conversations a year or two ago. Then I noticed it more, especially over the past several months. And then to my horror, I noticed I was doing it myself. Now I catch myself saying it often and I frequently try in vain to reel the little conjunction back, hearing echoes of the neonatology attending who once said to me after I made a particularly dumb comment on rounds, “Did you ever say something that you wish you could get back?” I nearly always regret starting a sentence this way:

“So…”

I am not the only one making these observations, and there seems to be a fair amount of heat being generated by the over-use of the word “so;” a little verbal pause before the answer to a question or response to another’s statement.

Another trend that seems to be happening with increased frequency in public discourse was pointed out to me by a colleague recently: the up-talk epidemic. It is the tendency to end sentences with an upward voice inflection as though asking a question, which according to one pundit is a decade old tendency that has now become so common in speech that it goes without notice.

It is a challenge these days for student-clinicians who often have to learn to use more definitive language in talking to patients about life and death matters: “Well, we think you have cancer?” It impacts other disciplines as well. Consider the financial advisor speaking to a client, “I think that this might be a solid basis for your financial plan?” the corporate leader providing feedback, “We think that you’re not meeting the standard?” or the combat leader speaking to his (or her) soldiers “I want you to take that hill?”

We teach leaders to attend to their inflection (pitch), amplitude and rhythm when speaking in public. And specifically to pay attention to verbal ticks or habit words, like “like” or “um.” The conjunction “so” has  come seemingly out of nowhere and now presses to overcome the habit-word pack in frequency as well as annoyance. And the unconscious tendency to up-talk undermines the leader’s ability to communicate definitively and with confidence.

Both of these trends reflect a fundamental change in the way we communicate with others. They are the spoken equivalents of the three little blinking dots on the iPhone text-message screen; a conversational manifestation of the tyrannical “iPhone ellipsis.”

When you’re in the middle of a text message “conversation,” and you see those three dots, you know that the person with whom you are communicating has something more to say. The verbal equivalent of this ellipsis is the word “so.” It is an inoffensive conjunction that merely communicates that more is coming. I now have the floor and you should wait for me to finish my next comment.

Up-talk, or the upward inflection of my voice at the end of a sentence is the rhetorical equivalent of the three blinking dots. The upward tone of my voice implies that I am not finished speaking and you interrupt at your own risk; there is more to follow and you may miss something interesting.

According to a 2014 Gallup poll, texting far outranks phone calls as the dominant form of communication among millennials (18-29 year olds) with 68% saying that they texted “a lot” in the previous day.  Among 18 -24 year-olds texting more than doubled between 2008 and 2010, from 600 to over 1,400 texts a month.

We should not be surprised that such a pervasive, newly ingrained cultural habit like texting should affect the way we communicate with one another. Texting was essentially unknown to communication prior to 2000 and only surpassed the number of phone calls per month within the last decade. We are only beginning to realize the impact of texting and the “short message service” (SMS) on our culture and organizations.

So… how do we coach our leaders – young and old – that these new habits might not be the ideal way to get across what they’re trying to say …?

Chuck Callahan Henry V 4.3 – Lead from the Front      https://henryv43.wordpress.com/