Do you ever feel like we're more connected than ever but actually communicating less effectively? We all struggle to some extent with this apparent paradox of a world of hyper-connectivity and communication failure and we grapple with how best to help our students, their families and our schools. This edition is inspired by a recent group conversation between language school leaders and from recent personal experience.

Managing in TEFL is a fortnightly companion for language school leaders written by Simon Pearlman and brought to you by Active Language Teacher Training. Subscribe on LinkedIn or here.

There's emails, corporate WhatsApp and social media, there's posters in our centres, maybe even letters stuffed into students bags, so many ways to communicate, it should be easy for students and their families to know what's going on. Additionally in this age of AI and automatation, we feel like it should all be super-efficient, fast and effective. But somehow it isn't, somehow it seems to be getting more difficult than ever, somehow it doesn't work. The answer might lie in acceptance it and working with it, assuming nothing, keeping it simple, going multi-modal and providing the personal touch too.

People don't know how to read

“I don't think some parents know how to read”, joked one school owner recently. They were exasperated, in this case, by a failure of a parent of a B1 candidate to read the instructions sent by the exam centre and hadn't realised that photo identification was required. Then ensued an amount of strained conversation, frayed nerves and some fast driving to remedy the situation, very stressful for all concerned, including the bemused 15 year old candidate. Thankfully they took it in their stride and they felt they did ok in the exam despite the furore. They'll get the results in a couple of months, watch this space! The parents then complained to the school that they hadn't been told despite going through the standardised process of sending through the information, checking it had been received and a box ticked confirming it had been understood. “Of course we signed it”, they said, “but no-one really reads all that stuff, right?”

We're all familiar with this kind of situation, we've communicated but the message doesn't always get through. What are we supposed to do? How can we guarantee that communication happens effectively?

Can we ever be sure?

The short answer is that we can't, we can never be sure if people have really heard and understood. We see the same thing in class, we know that we should ask concept check questions, we know we shouldn't ask “Do you understand?” (a question that generates a nod but leaves us no closer to knowing if the student really has understood), should we do something similar when working with administrative clarification too?

We know, both from classroom experience and through observing ourselves and others, reading is hard and getting harder. We tend not to read articles in their entirety (if you're still here, congratulations!), instead we often read the first paragraph, skim some more, often stop reading, move on to something else. Our reading habits and techniques have changed, there just too much to read, too much to do, not enough time. We can blame social media, politics and the vagaries of modern society as much as we like but our business depends on good communication. We need to accept that communication is imperfect and make our plans around that.

At this time of year, we’re communication heavy, there’s a lot going on; end of year reports, exam sign-ups, student renewals, new students for next year. And that’s just us in our language schools, there’s so much more going on for the majority of the students and their families, we’re just part of it. It’s not surprising that people don’t read everything in detail, they can’t. We need to help them.

Don't Assume; it makes an Ass out of U and Me.

The ramifications of the fallout myth of communication are important. Firstly, people assume they know what's what, they assume they've received the message and understood, they assume it’s all ok. “People” here refers to both them, the customers, the students, their families, and “us” the language schools. We need to not assume that people have got the message.

How many times do we hear, “Well, I told them”, yes, we told them but did they hear, did they understand, are they clear on what’s next?

K.I.S.S; Keep it simple, stupid

K.I.S.S. is a classic motto, perhaps from the 80s, and it rings true, we’re guilty of writing too much of trying to communicate too much, we need to keep it as simple as possible. While we’re not in the business of ignoring nuance or complexity, and we’re definitely not into MAGA-style three word slogans, we do need to learn to keep it simple. Is this article too long? Could it be more concise and easier to read? Almost certainly “yes” to both. Focus on exactly what you need to communicate and keep it simple.

Let’s go multi-modal

In the classroom, we talk about multi-modality, about using different ways to get our message across, the same should be true of of our business communication to groups of customers. We can’t be confident that any one particular method is going to work, we probably need to do all of them; we need to send the email, send the whatsapp broadcast, do the social media post. If we use all channels available, the message has a better chance of getting through.

Personal touch, know you're customers, take nothing for granted.

And still, despite using all channels, we know that some people will always come into the centre to check in person, we know there are some customers who could do with a phone call, so let’s do it. We need to make sure that our systems work and that they include notes on the database about these personal things so that our colleagues can easily see what’s needed and also, importantly, so we don’t need to carry all that information around in our heads.

These personal touches, this is customer care at its best, this is what separates businesses that really care from those that don’t. It’s not “efficient”, it has a cost in administration hours, it’s an investment. These are moments that build the precious commodities of trust and loyalty in our school.

So, the myth of communication is real, communication is getting harder despite all the amazing tools there are out there. The answer then is perhaps in accepting it and working with it, assuming nothing, keeping it simple, going multi-modal and providing the personal touch too.