Be like Dorothy: command your words (or your Winkies) to make the world a better place!
Most of us could be more effective if we paid more attention to the words we use and how we use them.
I’m not talking about big speeches here. I’m talking about day-to-day word choice. I’m talking about what you say when you open a meeting and close an email. I’m talking about which words you use in the executive summary to a new report or the intro to your annual report. I’m talking about talking to donors, customers and anyone else you come into contact with in a given day.
The average adult uses around 15,000 words per day. That means that, on any given day, you have 15,000 chances to make the world—your world, our world—a better place.
You’re a word expert–own it
Whenever someone says, “I’m not good with words,” I cringe. What they’re really saying is, “I never learned what a gerund was in English class and am therefore not ‘good with words’.”
Hogwash.
Being good with words isn’t about syntax and grammar. It’s about finding words that give voice to your vision.
In his book, Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell established the 10,000 Hour Rule—basically, that you can become expert in anything after 10,000 hours of deliberate practice.
This infographic shows how long it would take, in years, to become an expert if you did deliberate practice for a certain number of hours per day. The average is 9.6 years, assuming you practice 20 hours per week.
Here’s how this relates to you being a word expert: Let’s be generous and say you started talking, really talking (meaning stringing together cohesive sentences) when you went into Kindergarten. Even if you zoned out for big chunks of time in school, you were still probably eking out 2 hours of “deliberate practice” per day, five days a week.
That means that, on average, it took you 20 years to become a word expert. Roughly by your mid-20s when, coincidentally, your frontal lobes—the part of your brain in charge of concepts and abstract thinking—becomes fully developed.
In sum: by around the age of 25 you had practiced enough and had the brain development to be a full-fledged word expert.
If you are over the age of 25, the “I’m not good with words” excuse simply doesn’t hold up. So best to stop using it, accept your status as a word expert and start using that expertise to your advantage.
Words are like Winkies
In the Wizard of Oz, the Wicked Witch of the West calls on her Winkies to destroy Dorothy and her crew. Winkies are not brave; they are dutiful. They have to do whatever their master says.
When the Winkies’ master was the evil Wicked Witch of the West, they did bad stuff (usually related to killing things). After Dorothy successfully kills the Witch (by accidentally dumping water on her, oops), they do good things because Dorothy is nothing if not nice.
Words are like Winkies—they will do what you ask them to do. They are dutiful. They will serve you well if you use them well. The can help you be a more effective leader and make the world a better place.
1,000 chances to make the world a better place
A key piece to being an expert at something is the intentionality you bring to it, whatever ‘it’ is you are out to master. If your ‘it’ is more effectively using words to give voice to your vision, this means deciding how many of the 15,000ish words you use in a day you are going to use intentionally.
Can you be intentional with 1,000 of your words today?(As a point of reference, this post is about 700.)
This could be in a meeting with staff, or lunch with a donor, or in an email you write to a colleague at a partner organization. Heck, it might be a chat with your accountant or teenager.
Remember: Those words are like 1,000 Winkies waiting for you to give them orders. They are your 1,000 chances to make the world a better place today.
Having culled through a bunch of new research, they have found that the good ol’ America values of responsibility, accountability and patriotic pride are a winning combination for those trying to advance a pro-environment platform.
It’s voting season, so people are thinking a bit more than usual about what they believe. But, just like a little black dress, American values are always in vogue.
Look at the diagram below. If you insert your cause, e.g. education, hunger, economy, does this narrative work? If not, is there another value that strengthens the narrative as it relates to your cause?
(Thanks to SightLine and their awesome Flashcards for getting this report on our radar!)
What is overhead anyway? We throw this term around but are we clear on what it means?
According to Wikipedia, the “term overhead is usually used when grouping expenses that are necessary to the continued functioning of the business but cannot be immediately associated with the products or services being offered (e.g., do not directly generate profits)…Overhead expenses include accounting fees, advertising, depreciation,insurance, interest, legal fees, rent, repairs, supplies, taxes, telephone bills, travel expenditures, and utilities.”
You can see why donors really want you to make the case for contributing to boring stuff like insurance and supplies. Who wants their donation going to yawners like that?
We can educate donors until we’re blue in the face about why the lights, staples and post-it notes are all necessary parts of meeting our mission. But why not spend that time talking about impact instead of expenses? Tell a story of impact and then connect that impact back to the light switches, hosting fees, and telephones. Not the other way around.
Overhead is important. It’s necessary. We can’t operate without it.But don’t let it hijack your story.
Your story is about impact. Not your income statement.
The second Monday in October is Columbus Day in the U.S., except in South Dakota, where it is officially Native American Day.
The choice of what to call this day is interesting. Is it about Columbus, the guy who sailed the ocean blue, or the Native Americans (and the Tainos, to be specific), who had discovered this land long before Columbus was tall enough to hoist a sail.
In their book, Rethinking Columbus, Bill Bigelow and Bob Peterson encourage us to revisit our assumptions about history. They are on a mission to write “a true people’s history”. Both the characters in the history and the ones telling the history matter. The tales they tell and the words they use to tell those tales will differ. At times drastically.
Which version of history do your words tell? (Hint: This matters to organizational and personal histories, not just history as it relates to the second Monday in October.)
The two candidates all smiles post-debate. Photo credit: CNN
Listening to the first Presidential debate last night, the words the candidates used said a lot about the essence of their campaigns and the conversation they wanted the country to have.
Romney wants us talking about principles.
Obama wants us talking about opportunity.
If you read the transcript, you’ll see how often each came back to Their Word again and again and again.
Two lessons:
Simplify your message to your essence. If they can do it, so can you.
Repeat, repeat, repeat.
If you were running for President, what would your word be?
When we sit down to craft our ‘elevator pitch’, we generally ask ourselves: “What do I want people to know about me and my organization?”
That’s the wrong question.
The right question is: “What words can I use to spark conversations that will make my community better, stronger and more vibrant?”
Your elevator pitch is a gateway to a better world. Every time you talk to someone about your work, it’s an opportunity to spark a conversation about building that better world.
Are you building a better world by ending poverty, hunger or bullying? How about world-class theater or breath-taking sculpture? Or maybe your better-world convos center around sustainability, transportation and housing?
If you focus solely on you and your organization rather than sparking a conversation, you’re missing out on the building-a-better-world boat.
So ask yourself: what conversations will I spark today?
For instance, an elevator pitch is said and taglines are read. That’s why when you use your tagline as your elevator pitch, you end up “taglining” someone.
That’s right, thanks to an awesome workshop attendee, “to tagline” is now a verb. They were asked to share their current elevator pitch with their neighbors and as I wandered by one group, a woman looked up and said, “I think I just got taglined!”
Being taglined is no fun. It’s kind of creepy.
Take the American Cancer Society. They have a humdinger of a tagline: The official sponsor of birthdays. Now imagine you’re at a cocktail party chatting with someone who worked for them and they said: “I work for the American Cancer Society. We’re the official sponsor of birthdays.” Um, okay. Good for you. (Go away, creepy person who is coming on way to strong. That’s what you’d really be thinking.)
If you’re working on your messaging, start by perfecting your elevator pitch, then tackle your website copy and other social properties, and then your tagline. In that order.
Everyone wants to come up with the snazzy tagline. It’s way fun. And that’s why most organizations start there. But it’s much smoother, and completely un-creepy, to transition from messaging that is said to messaging that is read.
Last week, I got to help board members from three different organizations find their words. One of the biggest hiccups they faced was using jargon and/or acronyms. On the receiving end, these both sound like blah, blah, blah.
Staff bandy about some blah, blah, blah with the best of them. Don’t get me wrong. But since board members don’t talk about the organization as often as staff, they don’t have as many opportunities to shake the habit.
If your board members are struggling to de-jargonify their personal pitches, teach them this trick: as soon as they hear themselves use jargon or an acronym, have them pause and say, “Here’s what I mean by that…”
This allows them to keep some words and terms that are comfy to them (which is often important in order for them to let their passion shine through!) while making it understandable to those not as familiar with your mission and work.
Any other tips and tricks to help board members get over messaging hiccups?
Mission-motivated organizations (nonprofits and social enterprises, I’m talking to you!) talk a lot to people’s heads. If you want more engagement, speak to their hearts. Find out how in this video!
