The Power of Words

"Words are, of course," Rudyard Kipling once wrote, "the most powerful drug used by mankind." The video in this article shows that words can make the difference between a good business and a great business, between mediocre and transcendent leadership, between making small change and making real money. Communication is the best investment; but most of us use language poorly or not at all.

Check out the video below. It shows how your choice of words can make all the difference between making small change vs. making a ton of money.

 

Alas, most managers, and indeed most human beings, communicate poorIy. In his famous 1946 article "Politics and the English Language," George Orwell did an experiment. "I am going to translate a passage of good English into modern English of the worst sort. Here is a well-known verse from Ecclesiastes:

"I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all."

Here it is in modern English:

"Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account."

 

Of course the modern translation is a parody. But how much bland prose do we have to endure on a daily basis?

 

Orwell gives six simple rules that can save you from using language blindly, and instead use words as an instrument of leadership:
 

(i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

(ii) Never use a long word where a short one will do.

(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.

(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous."

Leaders go far beyond using communication merely to acquire information (“Want fries with that?”) and to convey it (“Yes”). They use communication as a vehicle for generating action. 

 

In the 1940s, during the Chinese revolution, Mao Tse-tung told his comrades that Chiang Kai-Chek and his Kuomintang forces were an outwardly strong but inwardly weak “paper tiger.” This image of the paper tiger became so real for Mao’s followers that it gave them the confidence to bring about Communist victory in China.

 

What the football coach says to his players in a huddle can shape the play that results in a touchdown. Revolutionary leaders mobilize their troops through communication. 

 

And when I consulted to the retail team of a multinational energy company, we worked on upgrading communications with the gas station owners. The result: the company produced 0.74 Euros more per customer (i.e. $74 million additional revenue).

 

As I put it in my book Communicate or Die: Getting Results Through Speaking and Listening, "if properly harnessed and skillfully used, communication (yes, mere speaking and listening) is the biggest bang for the buck, the highest-leverage return on investment in any organization - for the simple reason that it is also one of the most under-researched and under-utilized levers for breakthrough results."

What do you think? Which words have power, which do not? Are you using words effectively or unconsciously? What story do you have about the difference a right or wrong word can make?I look forward to reading you on http://thomaszweifel.blogspot.com/.

P.S. For a free copy of my new e-book Leading Leaders: The Art and Science of Boosting Return on People (ROP), go to Leading-Leaders.