How to be Strategic with your Vocabulary
Arjun Buxi
Executive Communication Coach & Strategic Leadership Consultant | COO @ AAWP | Senior Lecturer & Communication Coach to MBA Students | Author, Speaker
Are you conscious of your vocabulary when speaking?
Not a week goes by without someone asking me how to improve their vocabulary for professional situations.
Till the late 90s, having a complex lexicon was a way to outshine and even intimidate colleagues at work, perhaps impress clients and establish your brand, if you will.
Somewhere around the 2000s, simplicity became en vogue, or more fashionable, with bestselling business books like Who Moved My Cheese? making waves, books so simple and brief they could be completed during a layover waiting for your flight.
Leaders like Steve Jobs and the ever-famous TED talks in the 2010s moved this trend further along, delivering simple yet profound insights using 8th-grade vocabulary, quite effectively.
As a result, people are now impressed by your ideas more so than your words.
Does that mean vocabulary doesn’t count?
Not necessarily – what used to be an emphasis on difficult words now becomes an emphasis on interesting words.
Key point – Don’t use words your audience doesn’t understand. Use words they DO understand, but don’t hear very often.
More importantly, use words that are poignant, meaning they perfectly suit the situation and are well-suited to describing the idea or emotion.
This is being strategic with your vocabulary.
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For instance – an easy starting point is shades of colors that are more precise, so instead of light blue, we say ‘sky blue’, or even ‘azure’.
Regarding emotions, we might replace ‘very sad’ with ‘despondent’, or ‘very happy’ with ‘elated’.
Going a step further, try to paint a picture of not just what happened, but why it matters.
“It was mission-critical for us to complete the transaction on time, so we maintain trust with the client and delight them”.
Think about it - we switched out common words like 'important' and 'happy' with 'mission critical' and 'delight', but also focused on a key deciding factor - trust.
This is a cherry-on-top of the simple but effective point we just made.
Best of all - we used a minimum number of words in the sentence, and the sentence itself was bifurcated into two equally long, equally important parts. No run-on sentences, no fragments.
Take away – your words aren’t just descriptors of a happening, they’re reactions to a feeling and exemplify your values, what matters to you and guides your choices.
In sum - Our words show who we are.
I enjoyed this article and find it helpful, Arjun Buxi.
Senior Product Compliance Lead | MBA from SJSU | Diane Malane & Carolyn B. Hayes Business Scholarships | Ex-Amazon & Wipro | B.Tech in IT | Process Improvement | Incident Mgmt | Software Testing | CI/CD | Data Analysis
7 个月Dear Professor, your article insightfully captures the shift in communication preferences since the 2000s, highlighting how simplicity has gained prominence in business literature. The distinction you make between using difficult words and interesting ones is both practical and insightful, encouraging clear and engaging communication. ??
"Team Orientated Business Development/Training Professional Delivering Excellent Service and Outstanding Results"
7 个月Great article, giving food for thought on how to communicate. This approach works in a world where less is more when it comes to communication. Well written and thought provoking. Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us. I am going to use this approach when corresponding with colleagues and management.