Choice of words

14 min read

Language is another topic that fascinates me, in all its possible dimensions including body language and visual language. If you know me, you will know that I love to talk about the language of comics and the power of metaphors, but today I will focus just on narrative and choice of words. The words you choose to write, speak and think will influence how people interact with you and how you experience life.

Some words may evoke power (boss, rule) or maybe helplessness (permission, brittle). Words are not completely innocuous. Some words have a loaded meaning for a group while being clean for others.

A person can say “I’ve been assigned this project” and “they’ve thrown this project at me” describing the same facts, but will feel very differently about it.

“Words are, in my not so humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic, capable of both inflicting injury and remedying it.”
— Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2

Organisational culture and language

In the book Tribal Leadership [1] the authors suggest that it is possible to tell the level of collaboration of a group by the words they use and the relationships they create. They suggest five stages.

At stage one the main theme is “life sucks”. People at this stage use the language of gangs and prisons and they share a sensation of despair and hostility. Only 2 per cent of American professionals operate at this stage, according to the authors.

At stage two the sentiment changes to “my life sucks”, and it is shared by 25 per cent of professionals. Scott Adams’ Dilbert and The Office exhibit this culture. People are disconnected from organisational concerns, show passive-aggressive behaviour and sarcasm and cynicism are prevalent.

Stage three, according to this model, is the dominant culture in 49 per cent of the working population. “I’m great” or, more fully, “I’m great, and you’re not” is the theme. Performance is measured individually and there is a belief that knowledge is power. Employees at stage two have bosses at stage three. The keywords “I”, “me”, and “my” exemplify this individualistic culture.

At stage four, in 22 per cent of the workplace population, the theme is “we’re great”, or “we’re great, and they are not”, as there is always an adversary to beat. The idea of “the common enemy” is also encouraged in Ray Immelman’s model described in Great Boss, Dead Boss [2]. There is “tribal pride”. People see themselves as a tribe, with a common purpose and shared core values. There is a language of “we”, “our”, “team”, “them”, and “commit”.

Stage five is in less than 2 per cent of workplace tribal cultures. They have the sentiment of “life is great”. The language is around infinite potential and making history —not to beat a competitor. This is a stage of vision and inspiration, but it is an ephemeral stage that quickly returns to stage four.

The authors suggest that you cannot move more than one stage at a time. You cannot go from stage two to stage four without going through stage three. They provide practical coaching advice to influence the language in use so that people can operate from stage four, and aspire to have periods of stage five if possible.

Leadership is language

Another author, David Marquet, emphasises the importance of language. He was a US submarine captain who prepared himself to command a nuclear submarine, learning all the technical details of that specific ship, but was assigned to a different one at the last minute. He found himself commanding a ship with a demotivated crew and he could not give orders, because he didn’t know how things worked there. So he decided to stop giving orders. In Turn the ship around [3] he describes how he asked the crew to voice what they were about to perform, instead of asking for permission or waiting for an order, using the formula “I intend to…” You can watch his story and the explanation of intent-based leadership in a beautifully animated short video [4].

He realised the importance of language and has been investigating and consulting since then. He collected his findings in his second book Leadership is Language [5]. Marquet affirms “changing our words changed our world”. He says that they succeeded by replacing the following elements:

• A reactive language of “convince, coerce, comply, and conform” with a proactive language of “intent and commitment to action”
• A language of “prove and perform” with a language of “improve and learn”
• A language of “invulnerability and certainty” with a language of “vulnerability and curiosity”

They focused on achieving excellence, not avoiding errors. On “getting better”, not “being good”. This is similar to the attitude Brandy Agerbeck takes to practice and improvement when she replaces the saying “practice makes perfect” with “practice makes progress” in The Graphic Facilitator’s Guide [6, p. 268]. And to Kent Beck saying “perfect is a verb” in Extreme Programming Explained [7, p. 28].

The words and the story

It is not only the choice of words but also the stories you build around the things that happen. In front of the same event, of the same objective situation, we can create multiple stories. These possible narratives are options we can take.

David Marquet also talks about the importance of the mindset, as described by Carol Dweck in her book with the same title, Mindset [8]. Dweck, a researcher in the field of psychology, found that the view you adopt of yourself affects the way you lead your life. Mindsets are just beliefs and you have a choice. You can believe that your abilities are fixed in you and cannot be changed much (fixed mindset) or that your abilities can be developed and changed (growth mindset). In the fixed mindset, failure can be transformed from an action (“I failed”) to an identity (“I am a failure”). Recognising effort instead of success and learning from criticism instead of avoiding feedback are some traits of the growth mindset. In her research, she found that people influenced by the growth mindset (remember that it is a choice), performed better.

In an episode of the podcast Coaching For Leaders [9] they invited Andrea Wanerstrand who leads the global coaching programs at Microsoft. She said that the main focus there was to cultivate the growth mindset.

Words to create identity

In a biblical story, the Ephraimites and the Gileadites had a great battle. The Gileadites defeat the Ephraimites and set a blockade in the Jordan River to prevent the Ephraimites from returning to their territory. To identify and kill these Ephraimites, the Gileadites told each suspected survivor to say the word shibboleth. As in the Ephramites dialect there was no sound sh, they were unmasked and slaughtered.

In modern English a shibboleth is a linguistic distinctive, jargon or way of pronouncing, that allows to identify another as a member or not-member of a group. The purpose is inclusive (feeling of belonging) and also exclusive (telling who is not part of the group). You can read the Wikipedia entry to find multiple usages of shibboleths throughout history.

Beware when your efforts to create a sensation of belonging isolate the group.

Another sign to watch is dehumanising language, an usual predecessor of human atrocities [10].

Self-talk

Some of the explanations we build will stay only in your head, in your internal dialogue, your self-talk. Don’t you have conversations in your head? (“No, I don’t have them”. Yes! That conversation.) That conversation you have with yourself shapes how you perceive the world, and the good news is that you own it. You have relative control on the things that happen around you, but you can control how you think about them.

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response.
— Viktor Frankl¹

Daniel Pink, author of Drive, The surprising truth about what motivates us, in his book To sell is human shares some research that suggests an interesting strategy to improve our efficacy: interrogative self-talk [11, p. 82]. Instead of positive or affirmative self-talk before tackling a challenging task, ask ourselves whether we will succeed or not. It seems that asking questions forces our brain to be actively seeking for answers. It works better for our motivation and lasts longer than encouraging ourselves. Interrogative self-talk may also inspire intrinsically motivated reasons to perform the goal, something that does not happen with declarative self talk. Why not try this?

Practical advice

In our feedback training there is a lot of good advice on how to give and receive feedback. Now that we are aware of the influence of the choice of words, we can be more mindful when receiving a message and listen beyond words. In particular, not to be trapped by a particular word.

Be careful when you say “I need”, “I have to” or “I must”. Do you mean what you say? And be cautious with “should”, as it means obligation.

When giving feedback, prefer “you have done” over “you are”, because qualifying someone may be perceived as an aggression. Even worse if it is not directly to the person. No need to gossip.

Avoid absolutes like “never” and “always”. Probably they are not true.

Consider adding “yet”, like in “I can’t do it… yet”.

Watch for the “but” that hides a “no”. As Tyrion Lannister was reminded, “nothing someone says before the word ‘but’ really counts”. If you can, prefer “yes, and” over “yes, but”. “And” builds.

Words, words, words

Words are important.

Can you think without words? For how long?

Can you be exposed to some written text in a language you know and not read it?

You own your choice of words. There are multiple angles to tackle the problem of being more conscious about the way we explain things to ourselves: mindfulness, cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT), stoicism, neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), non-violent communication (NVC).

It is your choice.

Toni Tassani — 23 May 2022

This article was originally published on 3 May 2021 on the company intranet.