Is what you say what you mean, or is what you don’t say what you mean? In seminars and by coaching, my partner Nick Parry and I spend a lot of time explaining to our direct language business clients — Germans, Swiss Germans, Austrians and Scandinavians — why they hate us. It’s simple: we don’t say what we mean. And we mean what we don’t say. We like to leave the interpretation of what we are saying to the listener. This coded speech, described as “beating around the bush,” being “woolly,” vague or indirect always has a deeper second meaning, which unless asked about will be interpreted as being clearly communicated by the person communicating. This drives literal, direct language people — for whom “yes” means “yes” and “no” means “no” — crazy.[Source: HuffPost]

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