Say it Better

When is a Stultifying Speaking Style Helpful?

When you are delivering bad or - at best - ambiguous news to a powerful audience in a high-stakes situation, does it pay to “ah” and “um”?

Could it actually be beneficial to speak in an obfuscating fashion when you seek to:
1. Sidestep controversy?
2. Avoid being frequently-quoted?
3. Mitigate the impact of sometimes hostile questioning?
4. Prevent an “audience” from taking decisive action?

I am referring to the recent (not past) testimony on the hill by Ambassador Ryan Crocker and General Petraeus. It is difficult to be on the hot seat. Jargon and doublespeak are, too often, the norm in politics and in academic and corporate life.

Can it actually be smart to speak so that people do not understand what you mean and get tired of trying?

Even and especially in dire and/or controversial circumstances and with the four “avoidance” goals listed above, I’ll bet most communication experts would advise straight talk.

With his blunt and humorous response in The New York Times, Dick Cavett has stirred excellent commentary from Bert Decker and others. Bet Bob Sutton, Mark Halperin, Arch Lustberg, Peggy Noonan, David Brooks, and Dan and Chip Heath would concur.

For one thing, not speaking clearly and compellingly means your opponents' comments may become even more memorable in contrast. Rep. Ackerman noted, for example, that Petraeus was “pushing rocks uphill.”

Who Says You're Not Smart?

What if you faked your way into a classroom, pretending to be an expert on how behavior indicates ability to achieve? Then, you “tested” the students, to identify for teachers, which children were the potential achievers and which were the non-achievers.

Then you returned to those classrooms only a few months later and discovered that you were right. Or rather the teachers fulfilled your prophecy by treating each group differently. But you might have anticipated this result. This really happened back in 1965 except the “fakers” were actually researchers. They, and several subsequent researchers have proven the power of the Pygmalion Effect.

Acting “as if” something is true and creating a self-fulfilling prophecy has wide application. Luca Baiguini believes that, "this can explain why some people seem quite unlucky in their relationships." Perhaps like you, I have a personal interest in this effect. In fourth grade I snuck into the school administration files to discover that, as a daydreamer who was bored with school, I was labeled by the school counselor as “phobically shy.” That may be why several teachers treated me as if I was fragile and would lean in close to speak slowly with wide, cheery smiles.

Here’s the good news. As Rick Warren observes, "If you expect people to be receptive, they will be. People are not hard to reach." My thoughtful colleague, Loren Ekroth of Conversation Matters describes how you can use the Pygmalion Effect, however temporary it may be, to bring the best out in others. Peter Senge calls this concept Reinforcing Feedback. Then move onto the art of asking questions.

Why Do You Like Certain Faces More Than Others?

For example, are you undecided about who you most want as the next president of the United States? Want ot know how their faces influence your choice?

Smart Mobs author and Stanford professor, Howard Rheingold has notes that, "researchers morphed subjects’ faces into the photographs of political candidates. Without knowing that their own faces had been incorporated, potential voters who either weakly favored one candidate or had not yet made a decision decided to choose the candidate that subliminally resembled themselves — even though they were not told about the morphing until after they made their choices.

This same research probably influences who you choose to marry. Read more at my other blog, Moving From Me to We.

Popular Travel Writer's Smart Peace Plan

The whole world's a stage. Yet even in this internet-connected world many Americans may be missing some vital scenes, stories and characters by not seeing them first-hand. And in a topsy turvy time, wisdom can come from some apparently unexpected places. Like Rick Steves.

Rick's insight, passed on by inveterate reader and world traveller, Ben Casnocha:

"I think if the world knew what was good for it, it would establish a fund to pay for Americans all to have a free trip for six weeks, anywhere they wanted around the world upon graduation. It would be the best investment the world could ever make. Because right now an America that is threatened by, fearful of and misunderstands the rest of the world is a costly thing on this planet."

Pass the word. Try "travel as a political act" (or lesson).

Why Do We Cling to Blatantly False “Facts”

1. The side effects of getting a flu vaccine shot are worse than the flu.
True or false?

2. Only older people need flu vaccine.
True or false?

Both of these statements are false. They are also common myths.

Much to the shock of the folks at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more people believed this folklore AFTER they had read a CDC educational flyer about the facts than before.

Within a half hour, “older people misremembered 28 percent of the false statements as true.” Worse yet, “ Three days later, they remembered 40 percent of the myths as factual,” according to social psychologist Norbert Schwarz in a story by Shankar Vedantam at the Washington Post.

Adds Vedantam, “Younger people did better at first, but three days later they made as many errors as older people did after 30 minutes. Most troubling was that people of all ages now felt that the source of their false beliefs was the respected CDC.”

It seems that the very denial – debunking false advice and urban myths – has a counter-intuitive effect. From many peer-reviewed studies, such attempts to educate people simply deepen people’s belief in the original myth.

As Vedantam points out, that’s probably why so many Americans still believe that Iraq was directly involved in the terrorist attacks on September 11th. Or why many Arabs believe the Jews were behind the plane attacks on the World Trade Center.

Such deeply-held beliefs seem familiar and stick in our mind, as Dan and Chip Heath point out in their popular book, Ideas That Stick.

Perhaps we cling to myths because they seem intuitively right - and they become ever more vividly familiar than the truth when they are repeated, even in an attempt to "educate" us. Learn how you might be mislead or otherwise manipulated by reading the best book on the topic (in my humble opinion), Influence by Robert Cialdini.

"Strange" map alters view of world

See this captivating “strange map” of the United States that shows each state renamed for a country with a similar GDP. Suggests Dan Pink, “Based on this re-framing, maybe the U.S. should invade Alabama instead of Iran. It's closer. Everybody speaks English (sort of). And it has pretty much the same sized economy.”

"As matters stand now, a private who loses a rifle
suffers far greater consequences than a general who loses a war."
- Lt. Col. Paul Yingling on the lack of accountability among top American military brass in Iraq
(Source: Armed Forces Journal via The Economist)

Make Smarter Choices Every Day

Unwittingly, we all make less than optimal decisions, based on what we hear first.  For example, we instinctively compare all options offered to the one we see or hear about first.  Thus that first option skews our thinking. 

Suppose you are shopping for a hammer and the first model the clerk shows you is $39 and the rest are less?
You are more likely to spend more on a hammer than if the first one offered was, say,  $12.  That’s because you were influenced by “anchoring, adjustment, and contamination.”

Other heuristics or “mental shortcuts” that bias our thinking are “Scope,  “Hindsight” and “Confirmation.”  Read more on how we warp our thinking in this concise summary by Elie Yudkowsky from the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence who I met through my friend, Ben Casnocha. For extreme examples of warped reactions read Shankar Vedantam’s story on how the heat of passion deeply alters behavior no matter how smart, rational or well-trained we are. My favorite book on everyday decisionmaking is Smart Choices.

Remembering a life-changing movie scene

Billy Crystal, in one of his most famous movie moments (written by Nora Ephron) as Harry, tracks down Sally (Meg Ryan) on New Year's Eve and tells her: "I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible."

Becoming Top-of-Mind

At IABC’s annual conference this month, cultural anthropologist, Jennifer Jame’s ever-brash ideas on becoming an adaptive leader provided a natural segue to my session later that day on how to become sought-after in a rapidly-changing world. (Thank you Valeria Maltoni!)

Who labels your cause?

“We learned to chant, ‘I used to date a beauty queen. Now I date my M-16.’” You could get court-martialed for losing your weapon, and here they’ve lost 14,000!” said former Army captain in Iraq, Patrick Murphy. This after he heard that 14,000 weapons that the U.S. military gave to the Iraq military were missing - and probably being used to shoot at American soldiers.

He’s now a "Bue Dog" freshman representative to Congress from Pennsylvania. Murphy wants the U.S. out of Iraq and focused on Al Qaeda. He sees himself as a hard-liner on the real threat. He is direct, thoughtful and articulate in the interviews I've heard.

Who ever most vividly characterizes a situation
usually determines how others see it in their mind’s eye,
feel about it, talk about it and act on it.

In short, the one who sets the context usually wins the hearts and minds of others. However you feel about the war, please read on to see the power of labeling to create an opinion-forming context on the issue that matters to you.

Jonathan Alter, writing for Newsweek, feels we need a new context, “War critics desperately need a new bumper sticker, a way to commit to withdrawal without looking like surrender monkeys.” Yet I agree with Steve Benen that the majority of Americans already want to get out. They are frustrated that the Democrats folded on funding.

I also agree, however, with Alter’s point, “To get a sense of how inept Democrats are at framing the debate, imagine if 9/11 had occurred under a Democratic president. You can bet that Republications would go on the floor of Congress (and on cable TV) and say, ‘This is day 2,110 since 9/11 and the man who ordered the massacre is still at large.’ The next day, they would say it again, and again the day after that.”

Even and especially the complex issues need to be characterized in simple and stark terms so people will care enough to learn more.

Is your description of your favorite cause, product, organization – or person the vividly credible characterization that’s most frequently adopted by others?