Other articles by Dale Dauten:

Dale Dauten: It's not just a new job, but a chance to succeedDale Dauten: Worrywarts assure success for 'Doomsday Channel'Dale Dauten: Here's why 'What, me worry?' is a slogan with some substanceDale Dauten: It is better to try and fail than to marry the status quoDale Dauten: A lack of experience can lead to asking a brilliant questionDale Dauten: It's time for employee liberationDale Dauten: If you feel like you're too busy, maybe you're lazyDale Dauten: Use criticism as an opportunity to improveDale Dauten: Firm's success with mergers rests on simple ideaDale Dauten: Chess game as business model?

Engineering
CIMETTA ENGINEERING & CONSTRUCTION
QUALIFIED PARTY (MSHA & OSHA CERT) Health Care
CONMED HEALTHCARE
RNS Finance and Accounting
Tohono O'odham Nation
Controller and Assistant Controller Trades/Construction
Cascade Electric
Journeymen Electricians Driver/Transportation
DRIVERS Legal
PARALEGAL General
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MYSTERY SHOPPERS

"Never hate your enemies. It affects your judgment."

It was one of those little questions, asked of me 20-odd years ago, that changed my life: "Is your goal to impress readers with how smart you are, or to help them?"

That was my first book editor talking — Ruth Cavin, who went on to become a noted editor of mystery novels at St. Martin's Press. At the time, I suppose the honest response to her question would have been, "Both." Back then, still nursing an intellectual hangover from my years in graduate school, I thought you scored points with readers by sending them to the dictionary. Only later did I realize that when you start showing off, you don't send them to the dictionary, you send them to a less-pretentious writer.

These days, when I ask colleagues to read a draft of a new book for me, I implore them to please mark any sentence that they had to read more than once. Try it with the drafts of your reports and see if it doesn't make you a better writer.

What got me thinking about worthy sentences was reading the new book "Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive" by Noah Goldstein, Steve Martin and Robert Cialdini. (Should you pick up the book, you will find a blurb from me on the back cover. That's because I've long admired Cialdini and his work as a social psychologist and as author of his classic book "Influence.")

The book is divided into 50 chapters, each exploring social-psych research relevant to organizations. The chapter that got me thinking about writing was on simplicity. The authors recount research by Adam Alter and Daniel Oppenheimer in which they examined words and names that are easy to pronounce. In one study, they asked participants to rate the future performance of companies and found that those with easy names (such as Tanley) were rated higher than those with difficult names (Frurio). Makes sense. But then they examined IPOs on the New York Stock Exchange, dividing the company names into those that were readily pronounceable versus those that required some guessing and rereading. Would it still matter, in the real world?

It turned out that those stocks with straightforward names rose further in their first year — one-third further. One-third higher? A mutual-fund manager would give his left dart for that kind of extra return. The results seem impossible, but as the authors of "Yes!" remind us, "Often, people are so focused on seemingly more influential aspects of their projects that they overlook the first piece of information that will become communicated to its audience — its name."

The authors then go on to organizational communication, saying, ". . . communicators frequently try to convey their erudition via their grandiloquent, magniloquent sesquipedalian verbosity; in other words, they try to look smart by using unnecessarily long words or overly technical jargon."

Which brings us back to where we started: "Are you trying to impress them with how smart you are, or are you trying to help them?" With every report, memo or PowerPoint presentation, the reader or listener can quickly deduce the answer. The audience always knows. That's one of the glories of the language — the audience always knows, because they know what words you've chosen to offer up to them.

As Marshall McLuhan told us, the medium is the message. And what good social-psych research keeps reminding us is that the messenger is the medium, so the messenger is the message.

Most people assume the worst when they know they are "being persuaded." Try to hide behind language and they see you hiding; try to sidestep and they see the footwork; try to con them and they scoff; talk above them and they turn away; talk down to them and their eyes glaze over. There are dozens of ways to get communication wrong, and one way to get it right — by caring about the people you're talking to, and that includes caring enough to take advantage of the research on persuasion.