Leverage your power with deliberate word choices

To say Joel was a large man was a bit of an understatement. Over six feet tall and beyond 250 pounds, he was a commanding figure on and off stage. In the 1990s, he performed the role of Lazar Wolf, the butcher, in the Broadway tour of Fiddler on the Roof.

When negotiating his contract, Joel required that anytime the cast flew, he would get two seats. On the day of the first flight, the tour manager handed out tickets (before digital boarding passes … okay before cell phones). When she came to Joel, she handed him his two assigned seats: 12A and 17C.

He had failed to put the word “adjoining” before “seats” in his contract rider. Now I’m certain he was able to get one of the passengers assigned to 12B or 17B to trade with him, yet I love this story from my husband’s past as it so pointedly shows the power of a single word in a particular moment.

At the birth of our daughter, my friend Burt Alper, himself a logophile, gave us the book The Boy Who Loved Words by Roni Schotter, and I love the way it values the power of the individual word. I can wordsmith a document, slide deck, or newsletter for hours to find the precise word I mean to use. I must be careful to manage my time in such an endeavor because at some point the value-add becomes a time waste.

But the point remains: words matter.

The very title of the newsletter you are reading right now is a prime example. The phrase “communication matters” contains a lovely double-entendre feel to it. In fact, it was nearly the title of my first book, Communicate with Mastery (which I like far better!). What took it out of the running was that Stanford’s former president had just published his own book, Leadership Matters, and I did not wish to be seen as a copycat, particularly in the world of academia.

The subtitle of this newsletter contains another doubly deliberate word choice— “occasional.” As you know by now, I’m not consistent … I try to publish mid-week, but not always, and for at least one week, I did not pump out a newsletter at all. I feared using “weekly” or “monthly” would become a promise I could not keep.

But there’s a deeper reason for this choice. It goes back to my sophomore year of college when my employer and earliest professional mentor, Mary Leonida, invited me to create a newsletter for the arts council she led. It was also to be an occasional publication. Only after it was printed and copied did she see I had incorrectly spelled the word as ocassional. She contemplated having me manually correct each of the 400 copies but decided that would draw even more attention to the error. I think she also was more careful the next time I wrote the newsletter.

I use the word here as a reminder to myself to be careful, to use an editor (both software and a person, Elizabeth), but mostly to be humble and admit my humanity. Each time I use the word occasional, I’m reminded not of my mistake, but the lessons I’ve drawn from it.

So, for this week, I ask you to be deliberate in selecting the precise term that communicates your meaning to your reader, and, perhaps, has an even deeper meaning for you, the writer.

Let me know what you learn in the process.

JD’s Recommendations: what I’m reading, hearing, and seeing:

• Reading: Susan Gelman’s thought-provoking piece from Big Think emphasizes how little words like I, you, and we can have a significant impact.

• Hearing: My former student Greg McKeown conducts a brilliant interview with the author Bruce Feiler on the shape of life.

• Seeing: At the conclusion of the One Mind Accelerator, each of the 11 startups I coached presented a final video pitch. You can see their remarkable work on this YouTube link.

Thanks for enjoying my newsletter. I welcome your comments below.

As always, jds

P.S. I have now broken 1,000 readers on a few issues and over 700 subscribers. It’s a great start, but I welcome more. Please consider sending this to three people you think would benefit from reading it.