Have you seen Guardians of the Galaxy yet? If no then stop reading this and go to the cinema…….

Right – the only ones left reading have seen it – excellent – wasn’t it great!  Gushing over, there’s a bit early on when Rocket explains to Peter Quill why Groot keeps introducing himself – ‘I am Groot’ – explaining that he isn’t introducing himself, he just can’t ‘vocabularise well’.

At the start this is a problem because only Rocket can tell what Groot means, but as Peter, Drax and Gamora get to know Groot they develop the ability to understand the wide and complex messages that Groot is imparting so that by the end of the movie they are having complete conversations – and we the audience understand too.

The reason I’m mentioning this is that it highlights perfectly the difference between good communication skills & knowing lots of impressive words.  Employers ask for excellent communication skills on job adverts because they want the role-holder to accurately and efficiently get their point across to their clients, team mates and manager. Groot is an extreme example of why someone with a limited vocabulary can operate seamlessly in a team, and also explains why so many teams in City institutions have a huge variety of accents & levels of proficiency in English and can still operate smoothly.

Groot is a role-model for all of us with funny ways of talking and limited vocabularies.