2. The Connection Between Communications and Success in Leadership and Management

“Volatility of words is carelessness in actions; words are the wings of actions.”

—Lavater

There are two factors for which there are mountains of empirical evidence that overwhelmingly account for the success of individuals in any field. Those two factors are the verbal and networking skills of the successful people.

Common sense and simple observation can be your laboratory. Just look at most of the people you know or people you have worked for. Furthermore, look at the people who ran or owned the organizations and firms for which you, or people you know, have worked. Think about the people who owned and ran the vendor firms and organizations that serviced and supplied the firms and organizations for which you, or people you know, have worked. If you think about it, what is it that most of these people have in common?

The vast majority of these people have big vocabularies and extensive networks. Consequently, that is probably a primary reason why many are successful and they are the managers, leaders, and owners of businesses and organizations as well as civic and social leaders. The common denominator of most successful people in a cross section of fields isn’t education, family, money, race, or gender...It’s what they know and who they know!

It has long been known that successful executives do not have large, useful vocabularies merely because of their positions. That would be an incorrect correlation and not a proper explanation of cause and effect. In fact, it is the opposite that is true. Successful business executives (as well as successful people in other fields) are successful because they are helped tremendously to advance by their skills in vocabulary—and networking (Funk and Lewis 1942, 3).

Leadership is not something achieved by birthright or tenure but rather something that is gained by followers acclaiming someone as their leader. This is a consequence of the leader’s behavior, actions, work, effort, results, intentions, plans, world view, responses, what they practice, and mostly what they do and say in every moment of every opportunity.

The 80/20 principle (Parato’s law) is in practice for leaders. Twenty percent of what a leader does is technique and process (i.e., tools, methodology) and 80% is actions (i.e., behavior, communications).

It has been said before: It isn’t what you say that matters but how you say it that really counts. Dr. Frank Luntz takes it a step further and claims it isn’t what you say that counts—it’s what people hear. The issue is you have to choose your words! In addition, you have to time the right words and give the right words the necessary emphasis by the correct supporting body language so the receiver fully grasps what is being said and has no pause or hesitation in understanding your meaning (Luntz, 2007).

This guide is all about power verbs and how they can help you be a much more effective communicator and by extension a more successful consultant, coach, and mentor.

Verbs are the catalysts of sentences. Power verbs bring sentences to life. More to the point, the right power verbs bring conversations, meetings, speeches, directives, résumés, memos, speeches, presentations, networking contacts, sales plans, marketing plans, business and branding plans, and sales proposals to life. Frankly, the right power verbs can put a pop into all interpersonal communications.

The definitive source for the English language, the Oxford English Dictionary, states it this way: “It is a simple truth that in most sentences you should express action through verbs just as you do when you speak. Yet in so many sentences the verbs are smothered; all their vitality trapped beneath heavy noun phrases based on the verbs themselves” (Oxford English Dictionary, 1991).

A successful leader, manager, or supervisor will make use of the power of human communication to give expressive life to his or her strategies, operational plans, directives, proposals, ideas, and positions. Human communications is, of course, a combination of nonverbal cues (body language) and the actual words spoken. Even the words that are chosen to be spoken by successful leaders, managers, and executives are frequently invigorated and fortified with linguistic enhancement, such as metaphors, similes, figures of speech, and other vigorous uses of imagery, including hyperbole.

Sometimes the words are combined in rhythmic and symbolic phrasing called alliteration, repetition, antithesis, and parallelism. Successful leaders, managers, and supervisors are generally considered to be good communicators or at least it is recognized that communication skills are necessary for them to succeed. These people can enhance their positions with their staff, direct reports, stakeholders, upper-level management, vendors, media, and others with greater communication skills, including the use of stories, citing references, using quotations, or using figures of speech with two very, very important caveats. Whatever is used has to be fresh and it has to be apropos. Tired metaphors, idioms, similes, figures of speech, old stories, and lame references are worse than none at all. More important, using an inappropriate phrase, figure of speech, metaphor, simile, or a poor analogy can hamper communications.

For those readers who are old enough to remember, recall when live radio entertainment included speakers who had to sell the listeners on the plot or story by painting verbal pictures with words. Today, we still have the need to create vivid imagery in our daily communications with what we say and how we say it. Furthermore, we have one more issue: We are dealing with a more attention-conflicted audience. So, we add a third need: We have to be aware of the fact that it is not always what we say that matters, or even how we say it, but now we have to deal with what it is that people hear.

There are so many filtering biases, prejudices, attention sappers, and diversions that many people simply do not hear what has been said; instead, they hear only what they want or need to hear. We cannot always control this phenomenon, nor do we want to, but we need to be aware of this dynamic.

Put simply, verbs move our sentences along in a variety of ways. Power verbs really make the sentence jump.

Speaking of jumping...there are more forms than we will want to cover here, so let’s jump to just the ones we want to cover.

To form this tense, use am/is/are with the verb form ending in -ing.

Examples:

I am meeting with the others tomorrow. [present progressive ongoing action—using am + -ing]

The project management team is examining the stakeholder’s proposal. [present progressive ongoing action—using is + -ing]

The team members are researching ideation and other options. [present progressive ongoing action—using are + -ing]

She is happy.

Use the present tense to describe something that is true regardless of time.

Examples:

The new project team was presenting its recent findings when the power went out. [past progressive on simultaneous action—using was + -ing]

Four team members were meeting with the sponsor when the news broke about the award. [past progressive on simultaneous action—using were + -ing]

Examples:

Only one team member will be presenting during the annual meeting in June. [future progressive on future action—using will be + -ing]

The clock is ticking. [future progressive on future action—using is + -ing]

The band is playing. [future progressive on future action—using is + -ing]

The clock ticks.

The band plays.

When the progressive form is not used for continuing events, a dramatic style effect can be produced.

Example:

The project sponsor has been considering an increase in the budget.

Example:

Before the budget increase, the project team had been participating in many sponsor meetings.

Example:

By the next fiscal year, the new product development project team will have been researching and proposing more than 60 new product categories.

Lastly, we need to mention transitive and intransitive verbs.

An intransitive verb has two characteristics. First, it is an action verb, expressing a doable activity like arrive, go, lie, sneeze, sit, die, and so on. Second, unlike a transitive verb, it will not have a direct object receiving the action.

Here are some examples of intransitive verbs:

Huffing and puffing, we arrived at the church with only seconds to spare. [Arrived = intransitive verb]

Jorge went to the campus café for a bowl of hot chicken noodle soup. [Went = intransitive verb]

To escape the midday heat, the dogs lie in the shade under our trees. [Lie = intransitive verb]

Around fresh ground pepper, Sheryl sneezes with violence. [Sneezes = intransitive verb]

In the early morning, mom sits on the front porch to admire her beautiful flowers. [Sits = intransitive verb]

Flipped on its back, the roach that Dee dosed with pest repellent dies under the stove. [Dies = intransitive verb]

Sorry, Ms. Finney (seventh-grade English teacher), I know you would want me to talk about transitive and intransitive verbs, lexical and auxiliary verbs, compound verbs, copulas, prepositional phrases, gerunds, participles, adverbs, tense, aspect, mood, model and nonmodel verbs, subjects, objects, complements, modifiers, and so on, but I promised this would not be a style manual.