Winning Minds: Secrets From the Language of Leadership by Simon Lancaster

Author:Simon Lancaster
Language: eng
Format: mobi, pdf
ISBN: 9781137465931
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: 2015-07-30T14:00:00+00:00

chapter 8

Style

‘Through the style, we find the man’

Ancient Roman saying

Style is substance

Cabinet reshuffles are an exciting time in Whitehall. As speechwriter to a cabinet minister, you never know whether the boss is going to move; nor can you be sure that, if they do move, they’re going to invite you along with them. In 2007, I moved with Alan Johnson when he was shuffled from the Department of Education to the Department of Health. Instantly there were a number of major speeches and parliamentary statements to write. I was plunged head first into a series of meetings to acquaint me with the issues. These meetings were horrendous. Everyone spoke this awful jargon. Everyone was constantly saying words like benchmarking, collaborating, beacons, deliverables, frameworks. I emerged from one of these meetings and said to the official beside me, someone who had been working at the department for years: ‘I didn’t understand a word of that.’ ‘Oh!’ she said. ‘Thank God! I thought it was just me!’

The way we speak and write sends all sorts of instinctive messages about who we are and where we come from. Some make the mistake of thinking that convoluted jargon enhances their leadership credentials. It does not. In fact, people who are on the receiving end invariably find it alienating and unhelpful: the measure of success for any language must be its effect on its audience so, by that measure, it fails. But also it fails as an expression of leadership.

Research was carried out a few years ago by the then HM Customs and Excise. A sample group of members of the public were shown two letters: one was full of jargon with long words and long sentences; the other was brief, jargon-free and to the point. The readers of the letters were then asked to guess the seniority of the author of each letter. Overwhelmingly, recipients believed that the brief letter had come from a senior person in the organisation whilst believing that the convoluted letter had come from someone more junior.

The insight is this: we expect our leaders to speak in plain English. Leaders have clear visions and they present them in clear language. Leaders are confident enough to speak clearly without fear. In contrast, people who are insecure about their status are likely to seek refuge in overly elaborate language: a bit like those wonderfully verbose entries in Adrian Mole’s diary after he had bought his thesaurus – they are fearful of challenge.

I spend a lot of my time analysing people’s language and one feature I have repeatedly noticed is how non-native English speakers habitually use longer words and sentences than native English speakers. I have also found that social status also appears to have a bearing: in a study I carried out on political language in 2010, the three politicians who spoke with the shortest sentences all went to private schools whilst the politicians with the lengthiest sentences were all state-educated. The difference between the two was startling: the sentences were as much as three times as long.

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