WORDS MATTER

Leaders realize that the words we choose, and use, matter immensely. This is as true when the words are being deployed for information, drama, comedy or some other use.

The exuberantly 'politically incorrect' comic, Bill Maher recently defined 'politics' in a way that provides a wonderful instance of this: 'Poli means many, 'tics' means blood sucking insects! Guffaw or grimace, those words certainly won't leave you neutral.

Leadership is about making an impact. The words we choose represent our style, our philosophy, our heart, our mind, our spirit, our convictions...all of it. Sadly the words many leaders seem to use today seem tired, hackneyed and overgrown with platitudinous overuse. Why would leaders with soaring aspirations and global talents, be content with the common rubble of banality? Why wade in the shallow end insofar as vocabulary and communication go?

Leaders need emotive power. Listen to Jack Welch reply to a question about whether he expects to go to heaven. We can imagine that the question must have taken him off guard. He even recounts this in his recent book, WINNING. Here's a part of his reply: 'So, as for heaven, who knows? I'm sure not perfect, but if there are any points given out for caring about people with every fiber of your being and giving life all you've got every day, then I suppose I have a shot.'

Imagine a more conventional leader replying: 'Well, I wouldn't like to comment, I'd like to think I've had an impact.' This delivered with the same excitement as you'd expect of a house plant.

Listen to my friend, Robert Holden, head of THE HAPPINESS PROJECT in the UK, speaking about the religious conviction that we all matter, that we're all special and perhaps even sacred, delivered days after 9/11 in the UK: (He refers to Matthew 5:14, 'You are the light of the world'): 'This is a categorical statement that appears in the same exact way in every Bible translation I have read. Nowhere does it translate to, 'Some of you are the light of the world'. There are also no qualifying statements after 'You are the light of the world', such as, 'if you had a happy childhood', 'if you haven't made any mistakes', or 'if you had an Immaculate Conception.'

Thank God he didn't say, 'You all matter. Everybody is important. Believe that, that's what our religious beliefs say too.' This said with the enthusiasm of a collapsing souffle. When Robert said what he did -- not only WHAT he said, but HOW he said it -- you could almost see the banners waving and the confetti flying from on high.

When Thomas Friedman wants to make a point about the 'flattening of the world', the topic of his own new book, he knows how to do it powerfully and potently. I'm paraphrasing what I heard him say on an interview: 'When I was young, my parents used to tell us to finish our plates, as there were starving children in India and China. Today I tell my girls, 'Finish your homework, as there are kids in India and China starving for your job!'

We can only groan as we imagine a corporate version of the above: 'The global situation is changing and we must be ready to change too.' Yawn.

Talking about our need to extol virtues like enterprise, education, discipline and innovation, Tom Friedman goes on to point out that when Bill Gates visits China, people hang from the rafters on his every word, people scalp tickets to hear him speak. Friedman delivers the punchline with unforgettable panache: 'The problem we have is that in China Bill Gates is Britney Spears. In America, Britney Spears is Britney Spears.'

Thank God he didn't say, 'We must value education and achievement. That matters more than appearance.' Imagine the hollowness and ennui!

For a different brand of leadership, here's former New York Governor Mario Cuomo, arguably one of the great orators of our time, speaking on Bill Maher's show ironically about his meeting with Pope John Paul II (Cuomo is an ardent Catholic as well as a tireless defender of other people's right to disagree with his beliefs): 'Well, he's what we was for the rest of the world. He was magnificently, radiantly, humane.'

Cuomo graced us by NOT saying: 'He was an impressive man.'

In another context, speaking of immigrants and some of what makes my beloved home of New York City so vibrant, Cuomo painted the following verbal portrait: "In New York, most of us have always preferred to think of ourselves as a mosaic that creates beauty by the harmonious arrangement of different fragments, instead of a melting pot which would boil away differences, producing some bland new stereotype. Now our mosaic grows more lustrous."

Heaven forbid he should have made do with: 'We are committed to diversity.'

Am I not being unfair by rolling out world-class comics, iconic leaders, extraordinary communicators, Pulitzer-Prize winning journalists, and powerhouses like Governor Cuomo as examples? Perhaps. But so what? But why set the bar low? Why should world-class leaders not benchmark world-class communicators?

And the examples above, are of leaders in their own fields, people whose eloquence comes from the integrity of their beliefs, from the heights and depths of their passion, and their willingness to express all that they are and all that they hope we will join them in being. That's what leaders do!

If leadership matters, then leadership communication matters too. Communication is about more than words, but the words certainly have to play their part. Would we have honoured Winston Churchill if he had turned out to be a leadership fraud, no matter how glittering his eloquence? Of course not! But his leadership was expressed THROUGH his words as well as by his deeds. Not surprisingly, when honouring Winston Churchill, John F. Kennedy said: 'Winston Churcill took the English language and sent it marching into battle'. An extraordinarily fitting tribute!

Consider some of the areas and arenas where the words we wield make a difference. Take job titles. We called them 'Personnel Directors', which implied the administrative function this really was. Then we've migrated to 'Human Resource Directors' which still is impersonal and suggests these are passive 'assets' of a company. Today, many companies are calling them 'Chief Talent Officers'. Perhaps still not ideal, but a lot more emotive, a lot more reflective of what we're asking of these leaders. Namely, we want them to help identify, recruit, enable, guide, and develop talent.

It is being suggested that companies need a Chief Knowledge Officer. This is far better than just a Chief Information Officer in my view. Why? Information is just the passive presence of data -- perhaps its maintenance and protection. But 'knoweldge' implies applying information to enhance understanding. It might even imply ensuring that knowledge is SHARED.

We call them 'Chief Finance Officers'. Why not call them them 'Chief Value Officers'? Isn't that more of what we're really interested in? How about the Chief Executive Officer becoming the Chief Inspiration Officer as well?

Just semantics? No,rather a statement about what we feel is the most critical contribution of each role. Tom Peters suggested departments become 'professional service firms'. Note how his suggested nomenclature implies responsiveness, leading edge methodologies on behalf of our customers and more; while 'department' suggests something closed off and fortified. Such words and descriptions state our philosophies about who we are and the value we most seek to add.

Leaders today also face increasingly global constituencies. So an appreciation of words, their cadences and rhythms, their nuances and complexions, matters as we communicate across cultural divides. For example the French phrase 'joie de vivre' has no direct English translation. 'Joy of life' sounds wooden and conveys nothing of the spirit or effervescence embodied in the French expression. Similarly every British school child is brought up on the concept of 'fair play'. It seems almost intrinsic to the British psyche. However, there is no ready way to convey that concept in French at all! I have tried this out on countless French friends and they concur. This doesn't mean all Brits are joyless and all French people unfair, it just implies a different emphasis in the respective cultures and the need to communicate across different perceptions with greater imagination. This has to be a primary leadership skill or at least awareness to ensure what we convey and how it comes across, mesh.

In Japan, a dear friend of mine once complimented me for displaying what she called 'Biishki'. She defined it as a sense of beauty within. When I looked at her somewhat blankly, she explained further. 'It means there are certain things you won't do, because they would make you less beautiful within and therefore less able to appreciate beauty without.'

Wow! I have to tell you I was beyond flattered. At that time of my life I felt spectacularly 'unbeautiful' within. However this woman helped me by sharing what she had glimpsed within me, and what through our friendship, she felt I had revealed to her. The concept of someone struggling within to do what was right (however imperfectly) was clear to her because of this concept her language gifted her with. I had no such category to apply. By alerting me to this dimension of myself, even if objectively quite generous on her part (as I felt it certainly was!), she helped me summon more of it, she helped make it more true.

Similarly, leaders have to glimpse and draw out potential. That means they need ways of describing what they've seen in us so we too can relate to it, come to appreciate it, and thereby be excited enough to leverage it and further stimulate it. Again, as we engage people across cultures, we have to become aware of the concepts and ideas that resonate with them.

Part of the degradation of words and artful communication both in leadership practise and elsewhere, hails from the divide between rhetoric and dialectic. We have forgotten we need BOTH. Socrates and his pupil Plato had a mortal fear of rhetoriticians. They feared that these spinners of verbal webs, confounded people with conceptual gewgaws and verbal baubles. They felt a beach-head for rationality was needed at that time in human civilization.

And so Plato, and his own pupil Aristotle, who together have laid the foundations for Western philosophy, crowned logic and dialectic as our primary mode of communication, severing sense from poetry, and to some extent science from art. It hasn't worked however. Both are poorer for this estrangement. A restoration is needed.

Plato's own dialogues, are honoured as examples of literature as well as philosophy. He had rhetorical gifts of his own that he seems to have underestimated. Scientists that seem to connect best with us, speak and convey concepts evocatively and humanistically. Einstein was a wonderful example of this. His scientific insights were laced with allegory, parable, spiritual references, and readily accessible insight. Richard Feynman in even more recent times, charmed and bemused all of us by being such an extraordinary 'character' while simultaneously dazzling us with his scientific wisdom.

This dessication of communication has rendered all kinds of disciplines, from management to history, tedious. Will Durant, who wrote the monumental STORY OF CIVILIZATION, was a wonderful exception. For example he explained memorably how there are two types of history. One takes place, metaphorically, in the 'rivers' of history, where battles are fought and great events take place. The other happens on the 'banks' of history, where families connect and love one another, and everyday people display ongoing heroism in caring for each other and taking their lives forward. The rivers of history overflow with blood, while the banks of the river allow life to progress and to retain meaning. Will Durant pointed out that historians are such pessimists because they focus exclusively on the rivers and ignore the banks.

Imagine if he had said: 'Yes history is bloody, but there is another side we have to consider. There 'are' good people out there taking care of their families.' About as evocative as a stale marshmallow! Said in Durant's way, it is an important point that has stayed with me for over 20 years, and applied in a different way has even informed and enhanced my consulting practise.

So let's return now fully to the leadership arena. Imagine leaders seeking to convey various messages. I'm beholden to Bluepoint Leadership for a few of these examples which I've adapted and extended.

"We need commitment." Ho hum. What if we said, "This is something we have to promise each other. Do I have your word of honour? I commit to having the courage to make this happen, and I'm willing to sacrifice. What about you?" Notice the emotive words, feel the electricity.

"Our vision is to be the best company in this field." Zzzzz. How about this: "This is what we see. We want to be the best in serving our market. But what will it take? If we really win, what will it look like? And are we willing to place our bets here? Is this what we're excited by, believe in, and will personally be accountable for?" Can you imagine the engagement this conversation would engender?

"We are an ethical company." Monotonously self-evident (we hope). How about, 'We musn't deceive each other, we musn't betray each other's trust. We need to pledge ourselves to a way of behaving that we can be proud of, that will allow us to help each other win. Do we trust each other? ' Feel the power of this gauntlet being tossed.

"Do you have any feedback?" Predictable and almost threatening. How about: 'Please share anything that may stop you from leading this team to success, from giving your own personal best. Let's make any requests of each other that we want to. And let's ask for forgiveness and understanding where and if we need to. Anybody is welcome to begin, or else I'll be happy to.' By not falling into cliches and delivering them at half-mast, we energise and enliven the interaction.

The above are all crucial leadership conversations. If we all agree they are or at least 'can be', they deserve more passion, imagination, and more blood flowing through them (through our use of direct and captivating language), than we usually get when we just recite the homilies of the day picked up from the business press.

During a recent Leadership Journey we led, the night before the closing, this once fractured team came together in an evening of celebration and good fellowship. Their regional leader particularly went wild. Considered a quiet, and more retiring type, people were pleasantly taken aback.

The next morning, as we finished, he didn't say: 'Well, it was a successful session. Let's see if we can take it forward. I'm sure we can. We'll get back to you shortly on next steps.'

Instead, allowing emotion to visibly well up inside him, he said: 'Well, I know some of you were shocked at my exuberance last night. Well that was the real me, without the mask on. I let myself go, so you could see who I was. I was happy to see many of you do the same over the course of this Journey in your own ways. I hope you'll continue to do so. We'll have to trust each other on that and call each other on it. We've proven we not only appreciate each other but can also challenge each other, and still be friends. Part of my letting loose, was that I was cheering inside. I was WILDLY celebrating inside, that the baton had been truly passed to a new generation of leaders.'

You could have heard a pin drop as these jaded leaders stood there almost entranced, smiling and supportive, in communion.

So much leadership is communication. So first and foremost, let's make it real. Our teams have to see us model it. But then let's share who we REALLY are and find words and phrases and emotion that do justice to the magnitude of what we feel and dream of. Let's make it matter by engaging others emotionally. Let's have the courage to truly come across and connect. The word 'courage' comes from the French 'coeur' meaning 'heart'. Let's have the heart for real leadership!

It has been said that when certain orators spoke (this is variously cited relative to both Cicero and Demosthenes) people 'marveled'. Yet when Julius Caesar spoke, people 'marched'. Leadership is NOT about having people mindlessly marvel or even swoon. We're not trying to encourage flowery windbag utterances bereft of meaning or practical application. We're talking about leaders subjecting their words to the crucible of their experience and belief, so that they and their words glow with power and credibility, so that those words catalyze and inspire action.

As a leader, you and I have to find our own voice, chiseled from the leadership lives we're leading, and then we have to share that voice with everything we've got as our way of building the bridge from aspiration to action.

LET'S MARCH!

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