Speaking Secret 4: You’ll Fail Your Way To Success

Communicating is a fundamental survival skill, the first one a baby will exhibit once out of his mother’s womb. He will cry out loud to let her know he is alive and to indicate that the support system on which he used to rely has been dangerously disrupted. He will articulate his need for help through a series of improvised sounds and screams loud enough to impart the urgency of his predicament. Until he is fed, sheltered or both, he will commit his voice, his limbs, his entire little self in a life-and-death effort to interact with his new surroundings.

We are all, quite literally, born communicators. But we don’t always get it right. In fact, we almost never do. The very fact that we must rely on artifacts such as words to impart our meaning bears testimony to our limitations. As instinctive as it is, speaking still needs to be learned.

It takes an average infant about two years to become barely conversant in the dominant language around him. It is a time-consuming and at times frustrating process of trial and error. Failure is to be expected and encouraged as the only way forward.

Later in life, a similar process will be set in motion again as one attempts to develop a new skill, learn a new language or get in front of people to share insights or convey ideas that will hopefully inspire others to act. The imperfections inherent in language — plus the embarrassment typical of a rookie — will steer one’s shots further away from the bull’s eye.

There is no way around it. Regardless of the task at hand, you will fail your way to success. Yet speakers — and interpreters, for that matter — spend too much time in denial. They tend to dwell on absolutes. They are pulled to words like perfection and gravitate away from sensible terms like excellence. Flirting with best they despise better.

A perfectionist interpreter will often replay in his mind a totally acceptable rendering of a sentence while beating himself up for not arriving at a better solution — usually one that occurs to him hours after the fact. And many an inexperienced speaker will feel miserable when he’s just a couple of reviews shy of a stellar assessment.

One could say of a speaker that she is engaging, effective or inspiring. Yet labeling someone perfect will always be a figure of speech, at best. The sooner we come to terms with, the faster we will advance. Acknowledging the limitations of communication makes us more adaptive and aware of the need to always do our best and try harder at each new presentation.

You will not get it right every time. But you will get better at it every day. Keep at it and keep your spirits up. Learn to accept your imperfections and make them work for you.

In every masonry work there will always be at least one or two misplaced stones. Rather than tear down the wall in frustration, an experienced bricklayer will refer to those bricks as ‘features’ and charge a couple hundred bucks extra for them.