Why can’t these smart, talented speakers make their ideas stick? A few of the villains discussed in this book are implicated. The first villain is the natural tendency to bury the lead—to get lost in a sea of information. One of the worst things about knowing a lot, or having access to a lot of information, is that we’re tempted to share it all…

The second villain is the tendency to focus on the presentation rather than on the message. Public speakers naturally want to appear composed, charismatic, and motivational. And, certainly, charisma will help a properly designed message stick better. But all the charisma in the world won’t save a dense, unfocused speech, as some Stanford students learn the hard way.

Whether we realize it or not, we’re all writers. We may not write books or news articles, or call ourselves authors or journalists, but we still write. We write emails to colleagues and texts to friends. We write reports for bosses and draft slide decks for clients.

We’re also all public speakers. We may not go onstage in front of thousands of people, but we all speak in public. Whether making presentations to the company or chitchatting on a first date. Whether asking donors to make a pledge or asking the kids to clean up their rooms.

But to be better writers and speakers—to communicate with intention and care—we have to know the right words to use. It’s hard to get people to listen, to pay attention, to persuade them to do what we want. And it’s hard to motivate others, encourage creativity, and build social connections.

But the right words can help.

It’s often said that certain people have a way with words. They’re persuasive and charismatic, and it seems as though they always know the right thing to say. But are the rest of us who weren’t born that way out of luck?

Not quite.

Because being a great writer or orator isn’t something you’re born with, it’s something you can learn to do. Words have an amazing impact, and by understanding when, why, and

how they work, we can use them to increase ours.

Whether you want to use language more effectively or just understand how it works, this book will show you how.

In the years since then, scientists have refined the exact components of “powerful” language. But at its core, the main idea remains the same. Speaking with power makes people seem confident. It makes them seem more certain, self-assured, and knowledgeable, which makes audiences more likely to listen and change their minds.

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.

Before: Interrogative Self-Talk …

Tell yourself you can do it. Declaring an unshakable belief in your inherent awesomeness inflates a sturdy raft that can keep you bobbing in an ocean of rejection.

Alas, the social science shows something different and more nuanced…

Yes, positive self-talk is generally more effective than negative self-talk. But the most effective self-talk of all doesn’t merely shift emotions. It shifts linguistic categories. It moves from making statements to asking questions…

On average, the self-questioning group solved nearly 50 percent more puzzles than the self-affirming group…

The reasons are twofold. First, the interrogative, by its very form, elicits answers—and within those answers are strategies for actually carrying out the task…

The second reason is related. Interrogative self-talk, the researchers say, “may inspire thoughts about autonomous or intrinsically motivated reasons to pursue a goal.”...

During: Positivity Ratios …

Barbara Fredrickson of the University of North Carolina is the leading researcher on positivity—her catchall term for a basket of emotions including amusement, appreciation, joy, interest, gratitude, and inspiration. Negative emotions, she says, evolved to narrow people’s vision and propel their behavior toward survival in the moment (I’m frightened, so I’ll flee. I’m angry, so I’ll fight). By contrast, “Positive emotions do the opposite: They broaden people’s ideas about possible actions, opening our awareness to a wider range of thoughts and . . . making us more receptive and more creative,” she writes.

The broadening effect of positive emotions has important consequences for moving others. Consider both sides of a typical transaction. For the seller, positive emotions can widen her view of her counterpart and his situation. Where negative emotions help us see trees, positive ones reveal forests. And that, in turn, can aid in devising unexpected solutions to the buyer’s problem. Other studies show that positive emotions can expand our behavioral repertoires and heighten intuition and creativity, all of which enhance our effectiveness…

Fredrickson and Losada round up to 3. Once positive emotions outnumbered negative emotions by 3 to 1—that is, for every three instances of feeling gratitude, interest, or contentment, they experienced only one instance of anger, guilt, or embarrassment—people generally flourished. Those below that ratio usually did not. But Fredrickson and Losada also found that positivity had an upper limit. Too much can be as unproductive as too little. Once the ratio hit about 11 to 1, positive emotions began doing more harm than good. Beyond that balance of positive-to-negative, life becomes a festival of Panglossian cluelessness, where self-delusion suffocates self-improvement. Some negativity—what Fredrickson and Losada call “appropriate negativity”—is essential. Without it, “behavior patterns calcify.” Negative emotions offer us feedback on our performance, information on what’s working and what’s not, and hints about how to do better.