TES Show 2024 - Why things get lost in translation

Why things get lost in translation

I had the best time talking at the TES show this year about not being heard.

I should have called it “ so you think you’re a good communicator and judge of character…”

I was able to share techniques and insights we use in our therapy room with the audience to help them understand why things get lost in translation.

We covered the hidden language of representational systems and how that effects how we learn and the messages we receive and I got the audience to do a simple test to identify their rep systems and then to invite their friends and families to do the same later so they could see and hear how we can presume we are saying one thing but its heard differently. I followed that through with another technique we use in our therapy room where I put a black and white photo up on the screen and asked them to give me a description an interpretation and an evaluation of what they were looking at. Just about everyone in the audience said something different, it was a powerful way of showing them how our unconscious bias can contaminate a situation.

We talked about communication, and the audience decided of all the ways we communicate verbal must be the biggy … No, it's only 7 % of how we communicate so we talked about tone, pace, pitch and body language.

I challenged some old-school beliefs such as 'look at me when I’m talking to you'. What if that’s not how you process?

At the end, I had lots of questions that I don’t think the audience knew they would have at the start and some awesome feedback and lots of hugs .. why? Well as one lovely said “ I’ve been in various talks today, the speakers identified issues but you’re the only one that gave insight and solutions!”

My organisation is about teaching and sharing the skills we use in the therapy room with teachers parents and anyone working with kids and teens, because if we can do that, half the young people we see  we wouldn’t have to.

Ali Knowles