Living Life as a Verbal Processor
Living Life as a Verbal Processor
Some are wired to understand only by talking through whatever they're thinking at the moment. It's a blessing and a curse.
“Verbal processors speak to clarify thoughts. Non-verbal processors think before they speak.”
Confession: I am a verbal processor.
Until I say something out loud, I don’t know what I really think. Talking through the ideas constantly racing around in my brain is my path to understanding. The only way to discover meaning within the disparate tidbits constantly competing for my attention.
The good news is my time in academia required a lot of verbal processing. When you’re paid to be an expert on a subject you teach and conduct research about, there are frequent opportunities and requests to talk about it. So you get the chance to quickly gain clarity regarding what you think and to test a lot of your ideas with people and see their reactions.
There’s also a lot of writing about the things you’re figuring out which for me became another path processing the thoughts in my head — but it was never done for me until I read the words out loud so I could audibly process them. (Hmmm…maybe it’s not about verbal processing, but about audible processing?)
Did you catch it? That was a glimpse into the world of the verbal processor. An idea pops in, gets a little attention, and a decision is made to dive deeper or move on. But the decision can only be made after the thought is verbally processed. [By the way, it’s also called external processing (random fact, thanks, brain).]
You may be wondering why I’m sharing this with you…
Because for a long time my verbal processing didn’t serve me well.
I dreaded bringing home my report cards from elementary school because the little comments section always said I talked too much. When I encountered teachers who didn’t know how to handle a student like me, I was assigned to write literally hundreds of sentences stating clearly “I will not talk in class,” or something to that effect.
No one understood I wasn’t trying to disrupt or distract. I was driven by a deep-seated need to understand, to figure out the unfigureoutable — something possible only when I heard the words and was able to sort out their meaning.
Although my handwriting was destroyed by writing all of those sentences (at the very time when I was supposed to be perfecting my cursive skills), the pushback served me well. It made me acutely aware not everyone processed things the way I did.
And that little discovery has served me well ever since.
There’s one lesson I’ve come to see as most valuable, and not just to me: the idea of reading everything you write aloud before you share it with its intended audience.
You see, if it doesn’t sound right when the words are spoken, it won’t connect in the same way. Many people hear the words in their head when they read, so perfection on the page can feel disconnected if it doesn’t sound right.
And that’s the real reason I shared this story with you today.
Today’s Action Advice
The next time you’re writing something — an e-mail, a proposal, an article, a thank you note, a performance appraisal — read it out loud before you send or share. You’ll be surprised how many times you’ll discover what you thought you had written isn’t what you hear.
And that opens the door to becoming a more powerful communicator in every situation.
Bonus Tip — If you really want to make sure what you’ve written says what you intended, start at the end and read each individual sentence aloud, working back to the beginning of the document. It is a great way to catch typos and mis-wordings we tend to miss when we’re reading what we thought we wrote instead of what we did write.
~~~~~~~
P.S. I’d be honored if you shared this post on social media or directly with a friend or colleague who might find it useful. All you need to do is click the button below and you’ll find quick links to make it easy. Thank you.