The Language of Leadership by Joel Schwartzberg

Author:Joel Schwartzberg
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.

Auditing Your Ands, Adjectives, and Apologies

Three major obstacles to effective communication conveniently begin with the letter A: Ands, Adjectives, and Apologies.

Alliteration aside, I’m carving out room for these three concepts because, at first blush, they seem innocent if not downright helpful. Who wouldn’t want to add ideas, be more descriptive, and show contrition?

Let’s do a closer inspection.

The Problem with Ands

The word and may seem like a useful way to add details to a single phrase or point—as you might add ornaments to a Christmas tree—but a Christmas tree falls under the weight of too many ornaments, and your points can be similarly sabotaged.

Look at this sentence:

“This effective and efficient approach will alert and inspire our most important and relevant audiences to love and treasure our brand.”

Now do an “and audit,” kicking out less important or redundant descriptors:

“This effective approach will inspire our most important audiences to treasure our brand.”

I hope you agree that the sentence with fewer descriptors and less content is more effective. That may seem counterintuitive, but the problem with multiple ideas is that they fight each other for attention, ultimately diluting the impact of each. Ands are red flags for those little fights.

Earlier this year, I used an “and audit” with a CEO’s keynote speech and found five places in her script where we could collapse two ideas into one. In most cases, the words we ejected were never missed because they were redundant or added little value and were unlikely to be remembered by her team. The process of elimination created not only a more direct point but also an easier line to say.

This guidance doesn’t mean you must banish ands from your lexicon like carbs from your diet. Just see the ands as flags to assess each occurrence. Ask yourself how much you really need multiple descriptors in a single point or sentence, knowing that even one more word means more work for your audience.

I sometimes tell my clients: “Say many things, and your team may remember none. Say a few things, and they may remember some. Say one thing, and they will remember all.”

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