@snarlatron you are such a smartypants!!! (Best name calling I could come up with, as I agree!!)
@snarlton I am in the real world. I am a professional. People pay for skills. They really don’t care how you look or whether you use the word “like”. I hope my kids understand that
@collegedad13 you have to admit it depends on the job. For most jobs, there are enough skilled people to allow an employer to be choosy. If the job never requires you to be see or heard by clients, then super. But somebody has to bring in the clients, buyers, people who pay the bills, and those who must interact with them need to have THOSE skills.
So is the term “well-spoken” now obsolete? Or code for an “-ism”? I am on a search committee right now and one of the job requirements is strong oral and written communication skills, so I don’t know what world some of these posters are living in.
@HRSMom I think the question is what are those skills. In hiring a a doctor isn’t it more important to have a MD do a really good job at figuring out what is wrong with you or prescribing the right meds. Bedside manor can only take you so far. Does anybody really care how a surgeon speaks?
Yes, I think many probably do.
I don’t think most patients are in a position to judge how good a surgeon is, unless something goes so horribly wrong it results in a malpractice suit. So I think patients mostly evaluate their doctor on their bedside manor. How hospitals do their hiring is a different story.
I’d want both. But then, I’m the client. Now If this was the doctor that examines, not me, but my scans from the whatchamacallit machine, and develops a plan to cure me and mixes the med protocol, then I really don’t care. He can be a total introvert wearing a bunny suit. As long as I don’t see him.
Too many doctors have no bedside manner I think.
A better example perhaps a programmer? If I’m the client, I want X. A person with good communication skills is sent out to get my specs and sell me on your delivery. I don’t care who delivers, what she hears or how much he upspeaks (is that still a word that way)?
So I see your point, but you must admit, sometimes you may need the soft skills too.
I had shoulder surgery and I spent alot of time and checked out the Drs. reputation before he did the surgery. One of my kids needs to see a specialist and we actively checked out the specialists reputation before the appointment was made. When my dad was sick and dying for many months I spent a lot of time in the hospital questioning doctors and checking out their reputation.
I think a lot of this is just a fad. Nobody says groovey or twenty three skeedoo anymore, right?
@Hrsmom I do agree sometimes you need the soft skills.
Last summer one of my kids was at a major tech company as an intern. Most of the people on their team could barely communicate at all. However they were great coders. There is no easy answer
Based on what do you research a doctors’ reputation? It’s controversial how much a famous medical school or residency matters for clinical practice, especially for routine surgery. Most doctors I know seem to think all the online rankings are worse than useless, and nurses aren’t qualified to judge them clinically.
My body is a giant game of whack-a-mole when it comes to diseases. I’m up to something like 8 major diagnoses in the last year. I have a team of many doctors and I have let some doctors go because I didn’t feel comfortable with them.
You know what I don’t give a lick about? How they speak or their bedside manner. Frankly, if you can figure out what is wrong with me, you can speak and act pretty much however you want (of course, there are some extreme exceptions).
I know there are lots of people out there who want their doctor to fit some specific mold or another- US educated, no accent, very friendly, etc- and that’s fine for them. At this point though, I’m way beyond caring. I’d accept a freaking Klingon doctor and medicine if s/he could figure out what was really wrong with me. shrug
“If it does, it’s dumb and self-defeating. If you’re turning away potentially awesome employees because of such superficial biases as “like” and uptalk, you’re a bad manager and employer. Great employees are hard to come by, and very, very few companies have the luxury of only hiring people who exhibit all the same social signifiers as they do.”
Since great employees ARE hard to come by, the advice of “it doesn’t matter” doesn’t apply to the average employee at all. Of course, employers will make an exception for the genius type whether it’s a genius portfolio manager or genius coder. But, as stated, they ARE rare, so very few employees have the luxury of not paying attention to details that matter in their particular industry - speech, clothing, and behavior patterns being among those details. The job market for most people isn’t so robust that it can be ignored.
"Last summer one of my kids was at a major tech company as an intern. Most of the people on their team could barely communicate at all. However they were great coders. "
And they’ll remain coders. Which is fine if that is what they want to do but they won’t be groomed for anything beyond that.
I mostly agree with what has been said about “like,” but the comments about upspeak are surprising because I’ve seen many instances of people being viewed positively while using upspeak, with the upspeak seemingly helping (maybe it makes them seem friendlier). Every time I’ve been to a career fair, the students and representatives were upspeaking to high heaven. Some people do it to a truly extreme extent where it’s grating (and I’m guessing some people think all upspeak is like this because they don’t notice the more subtle cases), but IME people do not perceive the “normal” level of upspeak in a negative way.
I’ve only seen it mentioned once early on in this discussion but, to me, vocal fry is much, much more irritating than upspeak.
Communication is interaction. Why should I have to slog thru what another says, to get the message? Why should I like statements presented as questions? Why does it have to be the listener doing the work? Can’t the speaker make an effort to be clear?
www.psychologytoday.com/blog/caveman-logic/201010/the-uptalk-epidemic
“Like you’re not quite sure what you’re saying is true.”
There’s a difference between a doctor saying, “We aren’t sure” vs “Like, your blood count is, um, down**?**”
It is interesting how different people view uptalk. I hear uptalk as an attempt to connect with the people to whom one is speaking–in effect, to ask in a brief and polite form, “Do you understand what I am saying?” When I hear it, it does not come across as doubt.
I have attorney friends who are very negative about uptalk. In their profession, it is clearly a disadvantage, and I can see that this would apply to physicians as well.
In my part of the country, uptalk is much more common as a speech pattern among young women than among men. I don’t use it much. However, I have noticed that I do use uptalk if I am speaking to an almost entirely female audience.
Either vocal fry is not very common in my area yet, or I have heard it without having it identified to me. I don’t know what it is, really.
In the random-yet-somewhat-related-complaint category: The increasingly common substitution of “shtr” for “str” in pronunciation of words by the newscasters, analysts, and interviewers on NMR really annoys me. If they were German, I would cut them slack, but they don’t seem to be German.
@lookingforward Brilliant Example. I have had several instances where a colleague was on the phone with me and a client and used endless likes and upspeak… The client called five minutes after the call to complain and demanded to remove the colleague from the account because he found his speaking style annoying and juvenile. This speaking style is akin to a bad sauce that can ruin a great dish.
Why cahn’t everyone speak proper BBC English? 