Power of Words

Philosopher Fernando Flores, who was formerly minister of finance in Chile and later a political prisoner, holds sessions to teach companies how to use assessments and commitments to transform the way they do business. This article explores Flores' philosophy of communication by providing a glimpse into one of his sessions, which is designed to produce executives who speak and act with intention.

Excerpts from the article follow:

Talk all you want to, Flores says, but if you want to act powerfully, you need to master "speech acts": language rituals that build trust between colleagues and customers, word practices that open your eyes to new possibilities. Speech acts are powerful because most of the actions that people engage in -- in business, in marriage, in parenting -- are carried out through conversation. But most people speak without intention; they simply say whatever comes to mind. Speak with intention, and your actions take on new purpose. Speak with power, and you act with power....

"The soft issues are the hard issues," Flores begins. "Your problems don't come because you don't know how to calculate entropies or to design plates. They come because you don't know about people. Our best comes out when we have honest discussions. Our worst comes out when we behave like robots or professionals...To deliver exquisite care, you need an organization that coordinates well and listens well...."

"Follow the script, exactly as it is written":

Assessor: [Name], [negative assessment]; [positive assessment].

Person assessed: [Name], thank you for your assessment. I appreciate your sincerity. I would like to have further conversations with you about the topic.

Assessor: Thank you.

Person assessed: You're welcome.

..."That's what happens in an atmosphere of openness," Flores says. "When trust improves, the mood improves. Everyone feels more confident. One thing we need to do here is to produce despair -- because despair produces reality. A feel-good style can be a symptom of unawareness or lack of caring. I'm showing you what your blindness looks like. Drop the idea that you have a map for the future, or that you need one. I want you to build your sense of curiosity. If you act as if you know everything when you meet with your customers, you'll lose your job."...

"In the western mind, there are two notions of compassion," he explains. "One is, I'm going to be a good Samaritan and help this guy. But that is the compassion of the weak. The compassion of the strong is in waking people up to their blindness. For that, you need to be a warrior. I am tough and sweet....We aren't aware of the amount of self-deception and self-limitation that we collect in our personalities. I'm fighting for freedom, for breadth of being. I want to open up people's moral imaginations -- which will give them a strategic advantage in business, in politics, and in their personal lives."

...The World According to Flores exists in three realms. The first is the smallest -- and the most self-limiting: What You Know You Know. It is a self-contained world, in which people are unwilling to risk their identity in order to take on new challenges. A richer realm is What You Don't Know -- the realm of uncertainty, which manifests itself as anxiety or boredom...But it is the third realm of Flores's taxonomy to which people should aspire: What You Don't Know You Don't Know. To live in this realm is to notice opportunities that have the power to reinvent your company, opportunities that we're normally too blind to see. In this third realm, you see without bias: You're not weighed down with information. The language of this realm is the language of truth, which requires trust.

As Flores practices it, transformation requires that you risk your current success -- What You Know You Know -- in order to join a more satisfying game. It allows you to enter the realm of freedom. But to get there, you have to shock your system out of its arrogance, blindness, and complacency. Since all action is based in conversation, the shock has to come through language.

The Way Words Work

...To speak in language that promises action, you must practice assessments (to work on truth) and generate commitments (to work on trust). Here's how Flores's technique works.

Lesson One: How to Make Assessments....Air strong opinions in public; make honest assessments in plain view of your colleagues. Truth equals trust. But you must make these assessments regularly, because, at first, people will try to game the system. They will use assessments as a way to enhance their own power or to diminish the power of others...

...Become practiced in making assessments, and you come to see others clearly, well beyond their fictions and lies. You also come to see how much influence you have over your own life. "We don't realize how much we create reality through language," Flores says. "If we say that life is hard, it will be hard. If, on the other hand, we make commitments to our colleagues to improve our productivity, we also improve our mood, and as a result, clarity and happiness will increase. People talk about changing their thinking, but they have no idea what that is, let alone how to do it. The key is to stop producing interpretations that have no power."

Lesson Two: How to Make Commitments. ...Commitments are bold promises. "...You need to put emotion into your message. If you can't put your body into it, there is no truth. And without truth, you can't sell the idea, not even to yourself."

Click here for the full article on the Fast Company site.