I explained to the class that my response to my pastor, who is white, was: “Pastor, I don’t ever want to hear those words come out of your mouth again!” It turns out that was a cultural ‘oops’ on several accounts, as my friend Jeff told me later.  

First of all, many of us in the white community don’t hold our pastors in the same high regard as our black brothers and sisters do. To hear a white guy say something smart like that to his pastor was probably shocking and knocked down my credibility, my friend said. After he told me that, I remember that while my wife and I were attending our little black pentecostal church (before we moved here to Georgia), I really never would have addressed our pastor that way.

Many of us white Americans value casualness above all. Don’t give me any stiff relationships or formal clothes or ceremonial nonsense. Let’s make everything casual, including our relationship with authority. For many African-Americans, the authority structure in their backgrounds is observed with a little bit more formality. At least it used to — it’s lamentably changing now, according to Bill Cosby in his book “Come on People.” (I will write about this book when I finish it, it’s very thought provoking.)

But I made another cultural ‘oops’ in my statement to the class. I used the word”shouting” with horror and disdain. I was exaggerating, of course, I would never tell my pastor to never shout again. I was simply letting him know that his method of generating interest in a new program was not strategic commmunication. But in many black churches, ‘shouting’ is a cultural element of the service. I had not done my homework and thought through the language and customs of the people to whom I was communicating.

The great thing about my experience was that it happened at all. I was engaging in cross-cultural communication, which is an opportunity many people don’t, or won’t, experience. I asked the class in an e-mail to pardon my communication errors, (they were very encouraging) and have ammended my script to be more culturally aware.

What cross-cultural mistakes have you made?

Some people think using humor is beating around the bush. I disagree. Humor is very effective in delivering a tough message, like the proverbial “spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down.” If you’ve ever heard a black comedian like Chris Rock talk about race issues, you can understand what I’m saying. He takes both white and black folks to task, but you’re so busy laughing, you don’t have time to get offended. Later you think about it and say, “Wow, he was right. I really do that.”

The church leader e-mailed me (without humor) to inform me that I had missed the “irony” of the message in question, and that to him the point of the thing was obvious. Message — I am stupid. Instead of firing back at him that I’m usually pretty attuned to irony, and that everyone I talked to had misunderstood, I sent him a message paraphrasing Steve Martin’s line in that icon of the 1980s — the movie ”Roxanne” — I said, “Oh, irony. We haven’t had that around here since 1982.”

Why use humor? So that you will be heard. Some people use an encouraging word along with a negative message so that they will be heard. The important thing is that your message reaches the brain of the recipient without immediately getting bounced because of defensiveness.

Yes, sometimes humor can make communication strategic. Make a mental objective, what you want the person to do when they hear it, then design the message to reach that objective. It’s simple, although not necessarily easy.

Say you’re going on a job interview. Your mother says to you over the phone, “Just be yourself!” and a friend says to you, “Tell them what they want to hear.” Which is it, be yourself, or put on a show you think they’ll like?

Neither.

The correct response is, “Try and achieve your goal susing communication during the interview.” What are your goals? That’s a good question. The obvious answer is, “To get the interviewer to hire me.” Notice I did not say, “Get the interviewer to LIKE me.” That’s what most people think when they walk into an interview, so they waste the interviewer’s time with chat about the weather, or they try and impress the person with how much information about the company they’ve memorized from the web site, or if they’re a guy, they try and talk sports right away.

Making goals will keep you focused and “on point” in an interview. I believe you’ll have several goals to work for. So before you go the interview, you write down your goals — “To get the interviewer to believe my credentials are solid.” Another may be “To get the interviewer to hire me.” Now you’re focused like a laser during the talk. You don’t need to be liked, you don’t need to schmooze, and you don’t need to “control” the interview. You have to back up your resume with real knowledge, and you have to convince the person across the desk that you’re going to help the company be successful.

You will also want to define your target audience, but that is another topic for another day.

I can see whey people are upset; the author basically calls us deluded idiots who aren’t mentally strong enough to handle the freeing reality that there is no supernatural power in the universe. That’s offensive to people who’ve spent their lives believing in, and depending on, a God they believe loves them and helps them.

I have a sneaking suspicion that many Christians won’t read it, not because they are offended, but because they are afraid. Afraid that their faith will be shaken. That’s a valid concern, because Dawkins brings up a lot of questions that we wrestle with ourselves — the problem of pain, the problem of silence, the problem of invisibility, and many others. Many Christians don’t have a solid intellectual or experiential basis for their faith, so perhaps they should be afraid to read it.

I’m reading the book because my neighbor gave it to me. Our neighbors, whom we like very much, are devout atheists (or “evolutionists” as she explained in one of our early conversations). In my quest for strategic communication (yes, even with our neighbors) I wanted to understand them so I could “speak their language.” I am only one-quarter of the way through the book, but I can already see why it turns on so many people who are looking for fodder for their non-belief. He’s very convincing in some areas, and not very consistent in others.

I think it’s going to be a good read. I’ll have more to say in the coming weeks. Have you read any books outside the normal reading list that made you think or helped open your mind to some things?

What are your favorite commercials from the Super Bowl? I bet you can only name a few from this year, they weren’t that memorable. The beer commercials were the funniest, as always. The beer companies spend an unbelievable amount of money trying to get you to not only TRY their product but IDENTIFY with it.

Some ads are just funny, but don’t get you to change your behavior. It’s questionable how effective these commercials are. There’s one company that is doing a great job of creating ads that make people not only want to drink the beer, but identify with it. Miller High Life commercials are very strong.

You know the ones I’m talking about — the truck pulls up to a restaurant or convenience store and the strong, confident, Everyman-truck driver walks in and checks out the joint. If he finds it a haven for the common man, he puts up a blazing neon sign, “Certified Purveyor of the High Life.”

What happens if the hamburgers are too expensive or the establishment is snobby? He takes his product OUT of the store! He tells them they should be ashamed of themselves. Since when do companies picture their product being pulled from the shelves? When it creates a community and a strong desire to be part of a certain group, that’s when. I don’t want to be known as a rich snob, or someone who’s lost touch with my roots. I want to be a common hero, a go-to guy, a part of the crowd.

I love that. You can have less filling or fewer calories or even better taste. This is the beer of the American common man. They’ve been communicating this for years (remember the ones that took pot-shots at the micro-brew rage by talking about “It’s time for a beer brewed in vats the size of Rhode Island”?) but these ads are particularly strong.

As you can see, I don’t equate clever with effective. It’s the same in any communication, whether by companies or churches or Dads. Effective communication considers its audience and its goals and does its work without fuss and frills.

Here’s to a good commercial– clink! Let me know your favorite commercials and why you like them.

Here’s a case in point.

One of the phrases my wife remembers her mother saying is “Use your head for more than a hat rack!” To this day, she struggles with confidence sometimes, although she is a respected and accomplished ob/gyn physician. Unfortunately, her mom died when my wife was 21, so they never developed that relationship where you explain all those childhood misunderstandings and form a close friendship.

 Now, does the use of that one phrase, which she probably only used a few times, the sole cause of self-doubt in my wife? Of course not. Every attitude and challenge has a complex history and a plethora of ingredients. But it’s a shame that of all the wonderful things my mother-in-law (whom I never met, unfortunately) said, that playful put-down has a prominent place, even today.

 That’s why, two days ago, when I felt that phrase rising to my lips to chastize my 8-year old daughter, I thought of my goal — to raise a woman who has confidence not only in her beauty but in her intelligence — and rephrased it to “Honey, God have you a wonderful mind, now use it!” Is it a playful put-down? Yes, probably. But is it also affirming? Hopefully.

You don’t have to script everything you say to make your communication strategic. You just have to make some goals and figure out what messages will help you and your kids get there, then figure out how to deliver them regularly. I will have more to say about this in the coming days and weeks, but it’s something to think about.

What phrase or words do you want your kids to remember if you were to die before you got to know them as adults?

He laughed. This is a racial joke, a slur, coming from a white person. Now, invoking CPT, or Colored People Time, is a phrase normally only used by an African American to another African American, it’s sort of a taboo subject for white people to broach. However, because we are good friends, he gives me grace (and because he feels sorry for my wife, also African American) he allows me to make fun of cultural stereotypes.

Oh, and he can give it out, too.

He said to me the other day when I asked him to go see the Atlanta Braves with me, “Why would I want to go watch a bunch of white guys stand around for three hours?” It’s a kind of ritual with us — sometimes we’ll use a non-derogatory racial joke as a way to break the natural tension of coming from different backgrounds. Cross-cultural communication is fraught with road blocks, and we work hard to keep the convo open, friendly and honest.

 One time my friend joked, “You? Sing? I’d like to see that. Next you’ll tell me you dance, too.” This was bringing up an old stereotype that white folks can’t dance or sing. I do both, but I let him have his fun. This is one of the ways we break down barriers — by using humor to bring up and tear down old walls between us. Although we’re friends, we don’t kid ourselves into thinking there’s no tension or ancient, subconscious prejudice. We both hang on to early-learned pre-judgments and feel the sting of two hundred-year-old wounds.

We’ve learned that there are areas we don’t joke about. I don’t refer to “the time he spent in prison” (he never has) and he never refers to those ancestors of mine who abused his people. Those are just unnecessary, dangerous areas to go into. So you have to be careful, and only use humor with someone who knows you’re not judging or tearing anybody down. And you have to be honest with yourself — is your joke revealing an inner prejudice or attitude you have?

The important thing is that we are communicating across the tracks, so to speak, and that we continue to work hard getting to know each other.