While growing up, I was taught that how you say something matters more than what you actually say. In the past 10 years, I have encountered more and more people who have told me that it doesn’t matter how you say things as long as you can deliver. This got me thinking, and I started analysing how often those people delivered what they were saying compared to people who took the time to know their audience and tailor their speeches accordingly.
I feel like I’m in that joke I learned as a kid. I will try to translate it here, even if the jokes are not as funny when translated.
The son asks his father how to impress his new girlfriend, and the father replies that he should look into her eyes and tell her: “Time seems to stand still when I look into your eyes”. Later that evening, the son comes home upset and tells his father that his idea was bad because the girl dumped him after taking his advice. The father then asks the son to tell him what he said to the girl, and the son replies: “My watch stops when I see your face”.
At some point, I raised the issue of efficient communication and being aware of active vs passive voice uses with my current teammates. While trying to find an article describing the Active and Passive voices to present to my teammates, I found that most articles were hard to follow. I eventually settled on an article I presented to them, but I soon realised it was not enough. There was so much more that I wanted them to understand, and I couldn’t find that in one article. This gave me the drive to start writing my own article.
