This past week, I’ve been traveling internationally to several of my company's offices and, as usual with international travel, I’ve been reminded of the importance patience plays in good communication. When you’re in a country where you don’t speak the native language, your ability to communicate your exact intentions is sketchy at best. Whether getting into a taxi or trying to arrange dinner reservations, your communication methods are shaky and require the grace and patience of those who you’re attempting to communicate with.
Throughout my international travels, I’ve found that nearly all human beings that I interact with are helpful and supportive when they realize that you’re trying to communicate without a language in common. However, there are those rare situations that illustrate what happens when patience is thrown out the window that truly illuminate how important patience is to communication.
In Stockholm, Sweden this week, I had just such an encounter. Much of my family is from Sweden, and I’ve always found it to be a kind and accommodating country. It helps that a majority of the country speaks English to varying degrees. However, I got into a taxi the other night and suffered a major communication breakdown.
When traveling in countries where I don’t speak the language, I always take the time to write down the address of my destination before getting into a cab. It keeps me from butchering pronunciations, which adds yet another barrier to communicating outside of my native tongue. As I hopped into the taxi and showed the driver the address, he nodded and then rifled off a few phrases in Swedish. I told him that I only spoke English. He clucked and threw his hands up in exasperation, but pulled away from the curb anyhow.
While his impatience with my language skills was discouraging, he seemed to know the address I was seeking, so I wasn’t too worried about it. A few minutes later, however, my assumptions that the ride would be uneventful proved terribly wrong.
The cab pulled over on a residential street and the driver indicated that we had arrived. Since I was looking for a restaurant, it was clear that we weren’t in the right place. I tried, to no avail, to indicate this to the driver. To make matters worse, there was no street sign close, so I wasn’t even sure if we were on the right street. I could see from the street numbers that we weren’t at the right address at all. Several times, I tried pointing to the number on the closest house and pointing to the written address to indicate that it was wrong. The cab driver quickly became irritated and kept pointing to the fare. I stayed calm, but couldn’t find a way to get through to him. After a few minutes his frustration escalated and finally got through to me with one of the few English phrases he seemed to know - "Get out."
On the street, I was dejected. I didn’t see any other cabs coming by and wasn’t sure I was even in the right area. I walked back towards where I'd come for a bit before I came upon a woman walking her dog. I approached her and asked if she spoke English. No such luck. I’d managed to find one of the only other Swedes who spoke no English at all.
This time, though, the situation was completely different. Right off the bat, she was kind and patient and seemed to be intrigued that I was American. After showing her the address, she motioned me to follow her. She turned around in the opposite direction she was heading and walked several blocks to a main intersection. She pantomimed “phone” handed me her dog’s leash and then popped into what must have been her home. A few minutes passed and she was back out, cell phone in hand. She mimed that she had called a cab, and touched her wrist (signaling "watch"), then held up five fingers. The cab would be along in five minutes.
When the cab arrived, she leaned in the front window with my address and told the driver where to take me. I thanked her and was off. The driver, it turned out, spoke wonderful English, and told me that she had said that I was a visitor and he should take excellent care of me.
Finally I arrived at my location, a few minutes late, but much the better for the experience I’d had. In just a few short minutes, I’d had two distinctly different interactions trying to communicate. The first interaction was frustrating and made me feel powerless, the second was uplifting and reaffirmed my belief in the goodness of people. I decided immediately to integrate those lessons into my life.
No matter how disparate the communication styles, it seemed there was no gap that patience couldn’t solve. As I’ve pointed out before on the pages of this blog, patience is not one of my strong points as an individual. I’m constantly fighting the battle to balance my natural instinct for urgency with patience and not come off like a warlord. I committed to myself that I would try to never make someone feel the way that first cab driver had made me feel.
I thought about the times back home where I get short because I don’t understand someone’s point of view. We may speak the same language, but that doesn't mean that we're communicating. I thought about how much better I would be at my job if, instead of losing my temper, I tried to help the other person make their point, or even involved other parties (like my dog walker had the cab driver) to make sure the communication was complete. I never want someone to feel helpless, hopeless or useless when trying to communicate with me. In the future, when communication issues arose, I would be more patient and more understanding of the way the other person must feel.
Ultimately, it took the kindness of a stranger in a foreign land to put the importance of patience in communication in such stark relief for me. For her, it may have just been an odd five minute engagement with a confused American. For me, it was a lesson I will keep with me for a long, long time.
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