Leader's language and integrity

I was recently asked to present on language to a group of military leaders (more on this to follow, when I've checked if I'm allowed to talk about the occasion).

I was asked a beautifully provocative question: how should a leader use language to represent themself with integrity and agency, while also representing their Government's or organisation's views?

My thoughts are below. Please - share your thoughts with me as I think this is a worthy topic for further discussion.

Background: The talk featured Verbal Identity's "3 levels of every voice" model for using credible, consistent language that can also flex to suit different audiences - linked here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1yAbtZsc7M

Setting: I thought this was relevant because there's good evidence that there's no one ideal message that works perfectly in all situations with all audiences and in all channels. Instead, the effectiveness of the message depends on its flexing to suit the audience and the channel: important for leaders who don't want to seem wooden.

Challenge: What are the other linguistic methods a leader can use?

My thoughts: The questioner described how an Ambassador had been persuasive when representing sometimes unpalatable news by effortlessly switching between 'my Government' when stating official policy and 'I' when seeking to build trust around the policy.

This is good. They were avoiding sounding distant, out of touch, inflexible - which is where some people end up as they race to hide behind the cover of officialdom ("The organisation has decided...". Or, as I experienced on a note left on my windscreen the day I moved to the Cotswolds, "The village doesn't like...").

"The village doesn't like..."

What else can an effective, persuasive leader do when representing unpopular positions?

That rush to hide in language thickets is common and isn't just about using 'The organisation' instead of 'I'. When people are unsure or trying to be tricky, they use longer sentences which are more complicated.

Tip 1: To convey integrity, keep your sentences short.

When a person is trying to obfuscate or is uncertain, they rest on jargon.

Tip 2: Avoid using jargon except with people who you are sure will definitely understand the jargon.

Perhaps the greatest danger for leaders who represent an official body is located upstream of language, where the critical part of their brain has switched off and they're thinking in unexamined cliches, and start projecting unexamined cliches. There's something very moving about this in the "Language and Integrity Project" where the author describes how Hannah Arendt perceived Eichmann:

"In?Eichmann in Jerusalem,?Hannah Arendt is in no doubt that this kind of unthinking speech is connected with Eichmann’s evil. In a series of observations about the banality of Eichmann’s speech, she presents him as a man who spoke only in clichés:

[O]fficialese became [Eichmann’s] only language because he was genuinely incapable of?uttering a single sentence that was not a cliché. . . . Whether writing his memoirs in Jerusalem or in Argentina, whether speaking to the police examiner or to the court, what he said was always the same, expressed in the same words (Arendt 1964, 48–49)"

The author of the piece goes on to say that the problem with cliche isn't just aesthetic. "Eichmann uses language in a way that made no claim on his attention".

This is valid in benign cases as well, of course. But where the thoughts are represented only in unthinking cliche, then it implies the recipient should have no cause to think deeply about it either. (I keep hearing Theresa May's voice saying "Strong and stable leadership" again and again.)

Tip 3: Never use cliches.

So far, I fear, so predictable. What else?

By coincidence, the Harvard Business Review has just published a paper on How Great Leaders Communicate.

Personally, I'm underwhelmed by it. But for completeness and in case of my bias against HBR, the advice is:

1. Use short words to talk about hard things.
2. Choose sticky metaphors to reinforce key concepts.
3. Humanize data to create value.
4. Make mission your mantra to align teams.

I've talked to people who have a tougher job persuading people: they work in Customer Service. They sometimes reject the notion of adopting a corporate voice. Yet they know they must represent the official line. What advice did I have?

The metaphor I've used was thinking of themselves as a Radio 1 or Radio 2 DJ: they'd have a distinctive voice but would somehow be seen to be more suited to Radio 1 or Radio 2. Back in the day, when one of my clients was a local radio station owner, he told me about instructing his presenters to be an Authentic Radio Personality. In each show, the presenter had to talk about some event from their personal life and how they'd interpreted it. So this is more than just using the first person singular ("I") instead of the 1st person plural ("We" or "The Government"). It's about bringing your personal experience to the conversation:

Tip 4: Show you understand the impact of the message on the recipient by revealing how you personally interpret it.

Back to the Integrity Project. That post goes on to mention someone called the Frankfurt bullshitter. I'm not exactly sure I know who that is, but the author makes a point about an orator who chooses high-reaching speech not to make himself understood, so much as to create a certain impression of himself in the eyes of the audience.

"By making flippant use of our moral and evaluative language, it seems possible that the language itself becomes devalued and less able to be used to express genuine value judgments."

Again, when we are flippant with language, then we are seen to fail to value the relationship of the audience to the speaker. What's the remedy? It's not fashionable these days, but the most convincing way of speaking is almost patrician. Steven Pinker, in "The Sense of Style" calls it Classic Style.

In Classic Style, the writer takes responsibility. They have searched and seen something that the reader has not yet noticed. They take themself out of the description and instead direct the reader's gaze so that they can see it. Disinterested truth. It is not contemplative or romanticising. It is not idiosyncratic. Not prophetic. It is elegantly simple and depends on the writer doing the work to concretise the abstract.

Tip 5: Do the work for your listener. Present your information as Disinterested Truth.

There are other tips which good writers are fond of. For example, at Verbal Identity we always try to ask questions or to make recommendations in the form of SCQA. When a colleague emailed me because they couldn't attend a presentation to a client scheduled for that day, he explained that we had arranged for him to attend (Situation), but overnight his lungs had collapsed (Complication), which raised the Question of whether I'd like him to attend remotely from hospital and he suggested an optimum Answer that, as WiFi was poor, he'd miss the meeting this time.

The advantage of SCQA is that it starts you and the listener in the same place, rather than being surprised because they can't remember why you're there or they have a different topic in mind.

Tip 6: Don't assume your listener is starting in the same place as you. Use SCQA.

And don't assume that what you know about a subject, your listener knows. In fact, they almost certainly won't. The 'Curse of Knowledge' is familiar to anyone who's ever asked an IT specialist to explain what went wrong. But think of this. If an alien appeared and they wanted to know how to open your front door, you'd give them the key. But there's no logical connection between a small, flat piece of metal with an odd shape, and a large wooden obstruction. Until you know the connection. A reliable piece of research showed that experts in a topic (e.g. how to use a new phone) consistently underestimated by a factor of 3 how long it would take someone to learn.

Tip 7: Remember: Your listener almost certainly knows less about this topic than you do.

I like Franklin Covey's advice on communication, and will take that as Tip 8 to round things off:

Tip 8: Before trying to get someone to understand you, seek to understand them.

That's it. All very top-of-head stuff, excuse me for ignoring Tip 5 and not doing the work. What have I missed?