“Some things are just known in ways that I can’t explain. Some things have no verbal equivalents. Actually, lots of things have no verbal equivalents. We labor under the illusion that if we don’t have a name for it, it doesn’t exist.” (Bear, 2002, p. 92).
Language is developed in our organizations so that we can share a common reality. But does it help us to understand the unknown? So much of what we fear we simply do not have the language to describe, and therefore make sense of. Communication that is alive and which continually refreshes itself is absolutely vital to the well being and identity of an organization.
“What we have no words for, we cannot understand; it does not fit into our view of what is real. And if we stumble upon it . . . we may be taken by surprise, and frightened. On the unknown places on their maps, the ancient cartographers wrote, ‘Here there be dragons.” (Kornfield, 2000, p. 62)
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