Words That Work: It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear

You can have the best message in the world, but the person on the receiving end will always understand it through the prism of his or her own emotions, preconceptions, prejudices, and preexisting beliefs. It's not enough to be correct or reasonable or even brilliant. The key to successful communication is to take the imaginative leap of stuffing yourself into your listener's shoes to know what they are thinking and feeling in the deepest recesses of their mind and heart. How that person perceives what you say is even more real, at least in a practical sense, than how you perceive yourself.

Every attack that is not met with a clear and immediate response will be assumed to be true.

They learned the hard way – or not at all – that language is like fire: Depending on how you use it, it can either heat your house or burn it to the ground.

He broke a cardinal rule of political communication: never repeat a criticism as part of your rebuttal.

As Warren Beatty, perhaps the best student of the human condition in Hollywood, once told me, people will forget what you say, but they will never forget how you made them feel.

When you trash the opposition, you simultaneously demean yourself.

Remember, everything you need to say should be up front. All that you want to say can come later.

A political party should be defined by what it stood for, not by what it was against.

My client comes into the courtroom with baggage because we do not have the presumption of innocence in America. Truth is, we have the assumption of guilt, and it starts the minute somebody is arrested. Nobody says “an innocent person was arrested today on suspicion of murder.” What happens is the Chief of Police, the District Attorney, and everybody else who is looking to get on television has a press conference and says “We have solved a crime. We have arrested and have in custody the person who did it. He will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.” And then a lawyer comes along at some point and either says “no comment” or “my client’s not guilty,” but nobody believes, so my job as a lawyer is to try to level the playing field.

Those who define the debate will determine the outcome.

These, then, are the ten rules of effective communication, all summarized in single words: simplicity, brevity, credibility, consistency, novelty, sound, aspiration, visualization, questing, and context.

He knew instinctively that Americans vote for dreamers because they themselves like to dream.

There’s a time and a place for showing off the William F. Buckley vocabulary – but it’s probably not in a speech to your constituents, a sales pitch to a prospective client, or at a job interview.

The best way to communicate values that will transcend partisan division is to use words that no Coke-drinking, apple pie-eating, GM-driving American could disagree with. “Family.” “Freedom.” “Opportunity.” “Responsibility.” “Community.” “Sacrifice.

Focus on results, not process.

The fifth word, “reliability,” had been left off the original Twenty-one-word list, but it should have been. Thanks to increasing dependence on technology, couples with dwindling free time, more and more people have come to conclude that the reliability of a particular product or service is at least as important as its price, and in some circumstances-automobiles, cable television, and personal communication devices to name but three-even more so.

The language lesson: A+B+C does not necessarily equal C+B+A. The order of presentation determines the reaction.

These presidential debates are in essence sixty-second pitched battles, and slow starts are seldom rewarded with come-from-behind victories.

No theme. No focus. No discipline. Message: discipline matters.

Saturday Night Live had a point. The degree to which politicians on the left have fled from the liberal label is striking. In fact, since the later 1990s, the term “liberal” has been widely replaced by “progressive.

On the other hand, there are far more “Democrats” than there are self-proclaimed “liberals.” So Republicans are almost always better off downplaying their partisan affiliation and playing up their ideology, while Democrats are better off citing their party identity than they are their liberalism. The relative paucity of self-described “liberals” is one of the reasons George Lakoff and others have argued so strongly for the re-branding of “liberals” as “progressive.” “Progressive” not only lacks the negative baggage of “liberal,” but it also suggests “progress” and is therefore future-oriented.

Impact” has a similar effect on the listener in that the word is ostensibly neutral but remarkably influential. Thanks to my firm’s extensive work ion corporate social responsibility, I found this one word – more than any other – caused listeners to assume that they will see and feel a measurable difference.

Simplicity is important because the average American like Jennifer hasn’t graduated from a four-year college. Brevity is important because Jennifer or her husband don’t have time to think about what you’re saying. They need to be able to sort it out immediately. Credibility is important because Jennifer Smith has been misinformed too many times to trust what products or politicians promise her. Consistency is important because she won’t hear you the first, second, or even third time you speak to her. You’ll have to give your message gains and again and again. Novelty is important because you need to stand out. “Been there, done that” is Jennifer’s creed. If you aren’t different, you’ll get lost. Say something that grabs her attention. Sound (alliteration) is important in attracting her attention. She’s already doing too many things at once. You need to break through the clutter. Aspiration is important because you know that she has dreams for a better life. If she recognizes her dreams, sees your words in her dreams, she’ll listen to you. And relevance is important. The greater the impact you can demonstrate on her daily life, the more likely she is to pay attention to what you want to say.

In my own market research for dozens of Fortune 500 companies, I have found that the best ways to communicate authenticity I to trigger personalization. Do audience members see themselves in the slogan… and therefore in the product? Unfortunately, achieving personalization is by no means easy.