The look I'm trying to achieve is refined elegance. Clean, professional lines. Business-like - but from the Chairman's office - not the sales manager's. Classy - but not over-done.
Subtle, discreet and high-tone - but without being pompous or arrogant.
Subtle, discreet and high-tone - but without being pompous or arrogant.
In hindsight, this was the start of the problem, and should have been a red flag to me from the outset. The developers were Chinese. English is their second language. The subtleties and nuances that native English speakers take for granted are lost on people who don’t use English in their homes and their non-working lives. The Account Manager didn’t grasp what I really wanted. The engineers with even poorer English had no chance.
It was interesting that they didn’t seek clarification. I suspect this is a ‘face’ issue. They couldn’t come out and say they don’t understand, without feeling embarrassed about it. Instead, they simply ignored the bits they didn’t understand, and ploughed on regardless. This was a pattern that repeated itself where I sent tables of corrections needed. For example: ‘centre vertically and left-align horizontally’ resulted in centralisation on both dimensions, despite repeating the instruction. In the end, a picture was needed to get the required outcome.
Lesson: An ability to comunicate does not imply a corresponding ability to comprehend. There are degrees of language fluency. People may be verbally communicative, but have poor reading skills. Others may be able to understand the written word, but not speak it well. Those who have learned a language academically, but who don't use it in their homes, in their businesses, in their everyday lives, are unlikely to understand the nuances of meaning that native speakers take for granted. It is precisely this "taking for granted" that sits at the heart of the dilemma.
