Why does the New York Times write at a 10th grade reading level when the majority of its readers are college graduates and 80% have at least some college?[1] Because simple sells. By keeping it simple, they capture less educated readers without losing the higher levels.
You should do the same when you speak or write. You probably work with people who have at least a college degree, so you might think you could get away with speaking to their education level, but think about what that means. Every time they listen to you, they have to exert the highest level of effort of which they are capable. It gets tiring, and people simply don’t want to make the effort, at least not all the time. Everyone wants to get the information they need without having to work too hard.
We make people work too hard to understand us when we use any one of these three forms of language:
- Smoke
- Fog
- Friction
In this and the next two articles, let’s examine each of these and figure out what to about them.
Smoke
Smoke is language that’s deliberately puffed up to try to make us sound more intelligent or our topic more important.
When talking to others, there’s a sweet spot for word choice. Make it too simple and people get bored or feel like they’re being talked-down to. Make it too complicated and people misunderstand or check out. Most of us fit comfortably in that middle ground when we talk to our friends and work peers. But something seems to happen when we address a group, or someone we are trying to impress. We switch to more formal and even pretentious language, probably because we think it elevates us our subject matter in their estimation.
That’s why we say “Please extinguish illumination before vacating the premises,” instead of “Turn out the lights when you leave.” In one study, 86% of Stanford undergraduates admitted that they tried to make their papers more complex to appear more intelligent—and I think the other 14% were lying.
But inflating your language to make yourself appear smarter is wrong for two reasons. The first reason is obvious but might not convince you: if you make yourself look smarter but your listeners can’t understand you, you have not added any value. You’ve put your goals ahead of your listeners’ needs.
The second reason is somewhat surprising, and should convince you. Despite the old saying many people will conclude that where there’s smoke, there’s no fire! According to the same study that asked the Stanford undergrads about their writing, bigger words actually make others judge you less favorably. Why would that be? There could be a couple of reasons. First, it’s human nature: if they don’t understand what you’re saying, they can either conclude that you are smarter than they are, or you don’t know what you’re talking about. Which do you think is more likely to happen? Also, if you’re speaking with people who know what you sound like in real life, you will come across as fake, or like you’re hiding something.
How to Pop the Pretentious Bubble
The best way to impress others with your intelligence is to make your points clearly, and familiar words are your best tools for the purpose. Good writers have known this for a long time. As Churchill said, “Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all.”
Big, unfamiliar words are not necessarily bad; sometimes you need a special word to be precise about meaning or a certain nuance. If you’re speaking with an audience that is as clued-in to the topic as you are, let them fly. With economists, for example, it’s OK—even advisable—to say disintermediation instead of cutting out the middleman. But big words are bad when they are used to try to impress, rather than to express.
Smoke is the easiest of the clarity problems to avoid. First, be yourself and be conversational, even when you’re giving a formal presentation. Imagine that you are talking to a good friend over a beer. Second, know your audience, to know what they know. If you have to use an unfamiliar term, define it the first time you use it, and give an example.
Next: Clear the FOG
[1] http://www.people-press.org/2012/09/27/section-4-demographics-and-political-views-of-news-audiences/
[1] http://www.impact-information.com/impactinfo/newsletter/plwork15.htm
In my previous post, I asked the question: how direct should you be? My answer was that you should be as direct as you can be, but I left a lot of wiggle room depending on the situation. In this post, the wiggle room for candor is almost nonexistent.
What’s the difference? Directness and candor are close cousins but are not exactly the same thing. You can be direct without being candid, and candid without being direct. When Richard Nixon said “I am not a crook”, he was being direct but not candid. When you tell someone, “you might consider a different outfit”, you are candid but indirect.
The difference between directness and candor is the difference between how and if you say something. Directness is a quality of communication style: when you decide to say something, you choose how to say it. Candor is a decision about content: should you say something or withhold it?
Even more than directness, candor may require courage, and lack of it may be the principal reason people do not speak up when they should. In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell tells the story of an Avianca flight that crashed in New York in 1990 after it ran out of fuel. There were a series of errors that led to this seemingly easily avoidable mistake, but one incident in the story is chilling. Because the flight had been forced to circle several times due to air traffic control problems, it was obvious even outside the cockpit that something was wrong. When a flight attendant opened the door to check to see how serious the situation was, the flight engineer pointed to the empty fuel gauge and made a throat-cutting gesture with his finger, but neither one said anything to the distracted pilot![1]
Candor is extremely valuable in business today, where information may be diffuse, constant change makes it imperative to be open about problems as soon as possible, and because the internet makes it very hard to hide information anyway. When lack of candor blocks the flow of vital information, inside an organization, it can be as damaging as a blocked artery.
How many meetings have you been to where there seemed to be general agreement on a decision, only to find out that the real discussion went on after the meeting, in hallways and small groups? When candor is absent, things don’t get done, problems don’t come to light, and grievances fester.
Candor is a no-brainer when it’s safe; why wouldn’t you speak up to improve a situation or avert a problem when there’s no cost to you? The problem is that candor often takes courage because it’s risky.
In the Avianca case or the far more common business meeting example, it’s easy to fault the person who did not speak up for their lack of courage, but how often is the problem made worse by the very fact that they need courage to speak the truth? In a HBR interview, Jack Welch says, “Above all else, though, good leaders are open… They’re straight with people.” He then goes on to say, “…we don’t understand why so many people are incapable of facing reality, of being candid with themselves and others.”
When Welch said he didn’t understand why people weren’t more candid, he perhaps wasn’t being totally candid himself, as this quote from a Fortune article tells us: “Welch conducts meetings so aggressively that people tremble. He attacks almost physically with his intellect—criticizing, demeaning, ridiculing, humiliating.”
These two perspectives point out that leaders who want to foster a culture of candor must make it safe—or at least not job-threatening—for employees to speak their minds. They can’t have the attitude that Henry Ford had, when he lamented that every time he hired a hand, a head came with it.
But even when it’s unsafe, (maybe especially when it’s unsafe because no one else will speak up), if you want to be more than just a hired hand, you have a responsibility to contribute to the good of the organization or the larger purpose.
Candor is about responsibility: taking responsibility to speak up when it will improve a situation or avert a problem. In lean communication terms, the first rule of communication is that it must add value. When you are aware of an opportunity to improve the situation but don’t take advantage of it, you are not adding value, and you may even be subtracting value.
So, I do believe candor is non-negotiable in most situations, and I feel qualified to say that because the only time I was ever fired from a job was for my candor. When the bank where I was running the management training program got into financial trouble, they made plans to lay off 90% of the trainees upon the completion of the program. But they cautioned me one morning not to say anything because it would allow them to choose from the best. At an all-hands meeting that afternoon, one of the trainees asked me what the bank’s condition would mean to them, and I advised them to make sure their resumes were up to date. I was unemployed 24 hours later, but my conscience was intact.
If you do work in a culture where candor can be dangerous, it does not absolve you of the responsibility to speak up when it’s necessary, but you should definitely be smart about it. First, make absolutely sure you have your facts lined up to support your position. Second, be smart about how you speak up—that’s where style comes in. Unless the situation is imminently critical (such as when your plane is about to run out of fuel), it’s OK to be less direct to make what you say more palatable to the audience. If they don’t take the hint, you can become more direct.
But let’s not dwell just on the potential costs of candor. It can also be a valuable tool for persuasive effect. For example, the Q&A after a sales presentation is the best chance for the audience to see the genuine, unscripted you, and candor will make them see you as trustworthy, open and approachable. During your presentation, pointing out some of the disadvantages of your proposal can make the advantages look even better. Being candid about what you don’t know can bolster the credibility of what you do know.
What about wiggle room; are there times when you don’t have to be candid? It depends on the responsibility you have. You don’t have a professional responsibility to try to improve every situation—when it’s none of your business, it’s none of your business. Or, if being candid will only hurt the other person without improving the situation, it’s best to keep quiet.
[1] Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers, chapter 7.
I personally do not like Donald Trump at all, but a lot of people do like him, and when I ask them why, they tell me it’s because he speaks his mind. Although I have my doubts about whether he means what he says or just says things for effect, when everyone else is carefully choosing their words to avoid offense or to appeal to the greatest possible number of potential voters, someone who speaks plainly and directly can command attention.
As management professor Jeffrey Pfeffer says, “We secretly like the confident, overbearing people because they provide us with confidence—emotions are contagious—and also present themselves like winners. We all want to associate with success and pick those who seemingly know what they are doing.”
So, does that mean we’ll all be more effective communicators if we emulate Trump and speak as directly as possible?
Lean communication is generally direct communication, taking the shortest distance between two points. Directness is lean because it strips out waste. Directness is persuasive because it shows and inspires confidence.
Early in my sales training career I learned how important it is to be direct. I was coaching to a salesperson who had just completed an awful role play, and I tried to soft-pedal my feedback to spare his feelings. After I finished, another participant spoke up and told me I was not doing my job. Very directly, he told me in front of everyone that his colleague had done a poor job on the role play and needed to hear very clearly from me what he had to improve, or the entire session was a waste of money and time.
Directness is especially helpful when you’re asking for something, which is just about every time you’re making a presentation. For example, putting your request right up front in your presentation makes it easier for the other person to organize the incoming information and makes you appear much more confident. Many people think that direct requests are pushy, but when you need help from someone, research has shown that direct requests are about twice as effective as you might predict.
Directness can even save lives—airlines have developed a training regimen called crew resource management because numerous crashes have occurred as a result of co-pilots’ reluctance to speak directly to alert the captain to a problem.
But being too direct can be just as bad, as I learned in tenth grade, when a classmate was standing in front of my locker. I was a lean communicator even then, and I simply said “move”. The punch in the mouth I got was useful feedback, and I’ve since learned to be more tactful. In fact, most of us have learned that a little bit of indirection can make communication more effective, when it makes it likelier that the message will be well received. “Would you mind if I just squeeze by for a second to open my locker, please?” is sixteen times as long as “move”, but infinitely more effective.
From a lean perspective, excessive directness can reduce or even negate the intended value of the communication, so the indirect path may actually be shorter than the straight. The reason that being too direct is not lean is that communication between two parties requires both transmission and reception. Directness is all about transmitting what is in your mind as faithfully and as efficiently as possible, but if reception is impaired because the other person takes offense or refuses to listen, no value has been transmitted.
Effective communication is not a matter simply of transmitting ideas—it’s also about negotiating relationships. According to Deborah Tannen, in any exchange, both parties are exquisitely attuned to signals regarding relative status and rapport, and the degree of directness or indirectness is one of the strongest of those signals. People expect to be treated right, as has been demonstrated in many studies involving an ultimatum game have shown where participants will reject offers that will leave them better off if they perceive them as unfair.
Tannen goes on to say that “indirectness is a fundamental and pervasive element in human communication,” so you ignore it at your own risk.
So right now you’re probably thinking: “You want me to be direct but not too direct. How do I do that?” There is no formula, because it depends on the culture, situation, the listener, and the relationship between the speaker and the listener. You have to know what the culture—whether it’s national or corporate culture—expects, what the situation calls for, the listener’s own preferences, and the relative status and rapport between you and the listener.
It’s a complicated calculus that’s simplified through two tools: intention and attention. Intention refers to the value you are delivering in your communication: your purpose stated in terms of what’s in it for your listener. People will accept a lot of direct communication, even bluntness, when the intentions of the speaker are clearly benign. It’s the difference between being assertive and being aggressive: assertion is standing up for yourself while taking the other into consideration, while aggression ignores the interests of the other or even actively intends harm. Attention is what you pay to your listener to gauge their response to your message, so that you can adjust your level of directness upward or downward as necessary. In effect, it’s about taking responsibility for reception as well as transmission.
Besides these tools, here are some helpful ideas based on circumstances:
- Know what’s acceptable in the culture. National cultures vary, with Asian cultures tending to be more “high-context”, paying more attention to implicit than explicit meaning. I’ve also found that corporate cultures can be even stronger than national cultures, and an internal coach can guide you as to what’s expected.
- Know your listener. Drivers and expressives are more comfortable with direct communication, but you might want to scale it back with amiables and analytics, for example.
- Gauge the balance between task and people orientations. When there is a lot at stake and there is imminent risk from miscommunication, be as clear and direct as you can possibly be.
In summary, be as direct as you can be, but never let efficiency get in the way of effectiveness.
Have you ever had the experience of having someone hang on your every word, giving you their full attention in a sincere effort to profit from what you’re saying? Feels great, doesn’t it? But how often does that happen?
We all know that time is money, but I would submit that attention is worth even more. Getting time on a busy person’s calendar is hard enough, but getting their full engagement during that time is much harder; the temptation to multitask, to glance at their email or to be distracted by more pressing concerns, is extremely tough to overcome.
With all the world’s information seemingly at our fingertips, and with the crazy and ever-growing demands on our time, attention is one of the scarcest resources we have. As economist Herbert Simon said, “What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”[1]
Here are a few disturbing statistics:
In 1968, the average length of a political soundbite on national news was 43 seconds. By 1988, it was down to 10 seconds and down to 7.3 seconds in 2000, although it has since ticked slightly upwards from there.[2]
We all know that doctors are under heavy time pressure, but it’s still disturbing to know that the average length of time that a doctor will listen to a patient before interrupting is only 18 seconds, according to one study.[3]
Most people nowadays go through life in a state of what Linda Stone calls continuous partial attention[4], where they are constantly scanning their environment for more information, stimulus or novelty. (So far, in writing this article, I have already checked my email twice, refilled my coffee twice, checked the weather and the Wimbledon TV schedule, and answered the phone once.)
You can’t influence if you don’t get heard, so if you want to be influential within an organization or be successful in selling, the most important currency you can have is the undivided attention of your audience—and they won’t give it to you without begrudging every single second of time and cognitive effort.
So how do you compete in what Thomas Davenport calls the Attention Economy? When quantity is unlimited, quality is more important than ever. In this buzzing confusion, your only hope of capturing and sustaining attention is to use lean communication to deliver maximum value for minimum effort, or increase the Return on Time and Effort (RoTE). Put another way, you can either increase the payoff from attention, or reduce the cost.
You increase the payoff by focusing on the listener’s needs above your own, and showing them how you can improve their outcomes in some way. That means that you must prepare carefully, taking the time and making the effort to understand your listener’s needs, to view the situation from their perspective, and to give them a compelling reason to not want to miss a word of what you say.
You also have to reduce the cost of attention by reducing their expenditure of time and effort. Time is the first and most obvious cost, so you want to ensure that you craft and deliver your messages as concisely as possible, and make sure you deliver your main point first while attention is still fresh. But just as important as time is the mental effort you require from your listeners. Make it easy for them: do the work of gathering, analyzing and interpreting the facts so that they don’t have to.
All of this takes hard sustained effort on your part, but the investment will definitely pay off for you in the long run. As you build a reputation for delivering value, you will be like the old E.F. Hutton commercial: when you talk, people will listen.
[1] Cited in The Attention Economy: Understanding the New Currency of Business
[2] http://www.cmpa.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/prev_pres_elections/2000/2000.09.28.The-Incredible-Shrinking-Sound-Bite.pdf
[3] Jerome Groopman, How Doctors Think
[4] http://lindastone.net/qa/continuous-partial-attention/
