I wrote that draft short assignment by short assignment, making each section, no matter how small or seemingly casual, as good as I could. I took out whole paragraphs that I loved, paragraphs I’d shoehorned into the book because I liked the writing or the image or the humor. I worked on it for eight or nine months, sending off the first third, which my editor was amazed by, and then the second section, which he loved. I finished the third section around the time I broke up with a man with whom I’d been involved for some time. I had a brainstorm: I would mail the third section off, borrow the money to fly to New York, and spend a week there, doing the line editing of the book with my editor and, at the same time, getting away from this man I was breaking up with. Also, I could collect the last third of the advance that Viking owed me and do a little retail therapy in New York City.

But going back to the primary goal of the review, it was so I and other managers could give helpful feedback on projects in midflight. Having so many other observers made that harder. The atmosphere felt formal and high pressure. The presenters were starting to spend too much time tweaking the details of their Keynote decks. And as a reviewer, I felt I needed to choose my words carefully in front of such a big crowd, which meant I couldn’t be as casual and direct as I would have liked.

Throughout the document, she had circled every time she had said “uh,” “um,” and “er.” And there were a lot of them.

The transcript had highlighted the problem.

In the weeks that followed, Lindsey worked to cull the hesitations from her presentations. She practiced what she was going to say, scripted answers to questions in advance, and paused when necessary to get back on track.

And, it worked. She used fewer ums and uhs, and her pitches got sharper. In the next month, for example, she converted almost a third more potential prospects into clients. Cutting the fillers had made Lindsey a more effective communicator.

Powerful Words

Talk That Prompts Others to Act, Persist, and Generate Imaginative Solutions

Say This

Not That

Why

“We’ve shortened all thirty-minute meetings to twenty-five and sixty-minute

meetings to fifty.”

“We’ve made our meetings shorter.”

Concrete language is more persuasive than vague

language because it demonstrates more knowledge about the details of a situation and gives more tangible guidance about what to do.

“The subtraction game is great.”

“The subtraction

game was great.”

The present tense is more persuasive than the past tense because it suggests greater confidence and

certainty about what is best to do now and about how to respond to current challenges.

“I don’t want to waste your

time.”

“I am not allowed to waste your time.”

Use terms that suggest you have chosen to act this way, that you are doing it because you have the power to do it, and you believe it is the right thing. Avoid terms that imply your actions are imposed against your will by rules, laws, or norms you can’t change or by powerful people.

“Your employees are

cold and callous and made my mom cry [:( ].”

“Your employees

are unpleasant

and hurt my mom’s feelings.”

Sensory metaphors, words and phrases that express concepts by linking them to bodily experiences such as touch, smell, pain, hearing, smiles, and tears, are easier to remember, more persuasive, and more contagious.

“We’ve completed our

journey, but our friction fixing will continue.”

“We’ve reached our destination, and we did some mighty fine friction fixing.”

People who frame accomplishments as a journey are more likely to think about and learn from the path they took and persist after reaching a milestone; people who focus on the destination tend to treat it as “mission accomplished” and disengage.

I went on writing the kind of things I wanted to write, exactly the way I wanted to write them, and if that allowed me to make a normal living, then I couldn’t ask for more. When Norwegian Wood sold way more than anticipated, the comfortable position I had was forced to change a bit, but this was quite a bit later.