I spent the past couple of weeks as a member of Faculty, delivering a Leadership Development program.

A theme that kept arising was the cultural bias that many organizations exhibit towards introverts.Even the brightest and the best can sometimes feel frozen out.

It reminded me of some sage advice I heard many years ago: Just because an introvert doesn’t say anything, it doesn’t mean that they have nothing to say. Or to put it another way…

 Coachaiku: 17-syllable ideas, in a 5-7-5 form,  for personal and professional reflection.

Ernest Hemingway once said that his best work was a story he wrote in six words:

“For Sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

Whether or not he rated this over A Farewell to Arms is a moot point – but there’s no denying its impact. Nor its economy.

It works because Hemingway gives us just enough information, and not a scintilla more. There is so much in the story that he doesn’t include, but that’s its beauty.

He invites us to fill in the gaps.

It’s neither an explanation nor a description – it’s a prompt. A six word invitation that taps into shared understanding. We don’t need to be told who or where or how much.

All that matters is that in the spaces between the words we can find unendurable sorrow.

WHEN ENOUGH IS

Hemingway’s six words are the western equivalent of Japanese haiku, the seventeen syllable poetry form that , according to Zen expert Alan Watts:

“is a pebble thrown into the pool of the listener’s mind, evoking associations out of the richness of his/her own memory.”

Watts goes on to say that a good haiku invites participation, instead of leaving the reader ‘dumb with admiration while the poet shows off.’

The screen is full of

Bullets and targets. I cough.

He shoots me a look.

The secret of haiku composition is to balance form with emptiness, and above all to know when enough is enough.

We tend to leave that aside when we shut the covers of a Hemingway or Watts. There’s always one more thing to be said, one more slide to be added, one more point to be made.

I think that’s the sign of a tell culture.

FILLED TO THE MARGINS

A tell culture is one that is in a hurry, a culture that leaves no space for exploration or reflection or mutual creation.

It’s a culture that colours to the very edges, and leaves no room for personal doodles.

“This is the subject. Here are all the facts. Here is the data, the charts, the processes, the blah blah blah and the blah blah blah. I have now filled the boundaries of the subject, in just the same way I have filled you. This is what I think. All you have to do is agree with what I think.”

Yet without an invitation to participate, what do we do? We tune out.

The blah blah blah becomes verbal muzak, a morass of material where the vital and the trivial cannot be separated. It all becomes noise, because its setting is noise itself.

More words, more charts, more pages. More of me, no room for you.

Surely there’s another way? One in which we leave gaps for thought, in which we open a door, in which  we invite one another to explore the emptiness, to become part of the solution?

Here are two stories to set the ball rolling:

HOW TO CHANGE A LIFE WITH FIVE WORDS

Raymond Corsini worked as a psychologist in Auburn Prison in New York. One day an inmate, about to be released on parole, came into his office:

“I couldn’t  leave until I thanked you for what you did for me.”

Corsini was stumped; to the best of his knowledge he had never spoken to the man.

“When I left your office two years ago, I felt like I was walking on air. When I went into the prison yard, everything looked different, even the air smelled different. I was a new person.”

The inmate explained how, from that moment, he changed the group he was hanging out with, moved from a cushy job in the kitchen, learned a trade in the machine shop, got a qualification, started writing to his family, and going to chapel.

“You have freed me. Thank you for changing my life.”

Still Corsini couldn’t place the man, couldn’t remember his face.

“Oh, it was you alright.” said the inmate. “I had just come into prison and I had to do some of your psych tests. You told me I have a high IQ.”

Five words: “You have a high IQ”.

And that was the inmate’s ‘aha!’ moment. He understood why he was different – why he read novels rather than comics, played chess rather than draughts, was good at crosswords.

Five words that were an invitation to participate not just in a story, but in a life.

FOUR WORDS ON THE TOP LINE

There’s a tale – probably apocryphal – of a marketing consultant who asks for a meeting with the CEO of a large petrol company. (It must be corporate mythology, because he gets the meeting).

It takes place in a different time, perhaps the early ‘60s. Mad Men era.

The consultant says he has closely studied the efficiencies of the company’s distribution network, customer service, its sales techniques and the behaviour of its staff putting $5 of fuel into customers’ Chevvys and Fords.

“I have a full-proof way of increasing your top line revenue by substantial amounts with no added cost to the business.”

The CEO sits up. Trading has been down, his shareholders are not happy. This may save his head at the next AGM.

The consultant sets out his terms: a percentage of any revenue increase for the next fiscal year.

Well, if this works there’ll be no cost to the business, figures the  CEO, so he agrees and asks his secretary to cancel his meetings for the next two hours. He’s expecting the consultant to show him charts and reports and analysis.

Instead, the consultant takes an envelope from his inside jacket pocket and places on the CEO’s desk.

The CEO  opens it with the pearl-handled letter knife he was awarded for his 10-year service with the company.

Inside is a small white card. Written on it are just four words:

“Fill her up, sir?”

* * *

This week a brilliant video which speaks for itself (at least in the Anglo-Saxon world):

You’ll find it – and other thought provocations – on Ruthercast, a fledgling YouTube channel of  ‘inspiration for curious minds’.

CALL TO ACTION

Like a magpie, I pick up ideas along the way – but all any of us can do is skim the surface.

I’m sure you have recommendations of other great speakers, presentations or performances that have moved you, inspired you, set you thinking. Do please send me the details.

The more you offer, the more we’ll all get back. Thanks, in advance, for your suggestions.

To be more precise, all things are best left unsaid – because they cannot be said. Or, at least, cannot be said with any accuracy.

It quite possible that already you have no idea what I’m on about, and are still scratching your head over the paradox in the title of this post.

Bear with me; while this is about to get a little more conceptual it will, eventually, end up in the real world and daily life. Indeed, it is about the very stuff of daily life: words.

That’s how we manage to connect with our fellow human beings. Common sense, right? As plain as the nose on your face. (Why is he going on about this? And why doesn’t he get to the point?).

Well, in truth, I’m putting off using the next word, which was supposed to be  the next word at the beginning of the previous paragraph, but I got cold feet. It’s too intimidating.  And I don’t want you to think I’m pretentious. Because the next word was to have been…

Wittgenstein.

See? That’s completely shifted the tone, hasn’t it? It’s gone all philosophical now. I don’t want you to think that I’m underestimating people, but 50% of those who made it this far have now clicked to another website.

Or maybe they haven’t, because I challenged them not to by saying that they would in that previous sentence. (But now I’ve pointed that out, they’ve rumbled me, seen that they’re being manipulated, and have moved on. Or not).

All this will make sense. I promise.

In 1921, Ludwig Wittgenstein published his magnum opus, Tractacus Logico-Philosophicus and then spent the next 30 years trying to explain  it’s seven core propositions, such as: The general form of a truth-function is [p, ξ, N(ξ)]

That’s why University professors have tenure. Explaining that previous sentence is a lifetime’s work. Think of it as a philosophical annuity stream.

He died (in 1951) before his next book was published (“Philosophical Investigations”1953). In that book, he came out with an extraordinary premise, which philosophers have been arguing about ever since. The reason why Tractacus – indeed, all modern philosophy – was so hard  to understand was due to a fundamental flaw in the tools of the job; namely, language.

Language, he postulates, is context dependent. The words we use accumulate meaning, forming concepts which he likens to ropes, woven together from multiple strands. Some of those stands may be of different colour, texture, content than the majority, but they can still be gathered under a single linguisitic umbrella.

Take these concepts out of context, and they become meaningless.

Philosophers are supposed to solve problems like ‘truth’. But is this legal truth, ethical truth, mathematical truth or religious truth? Philosophy then finds itself reduced to a series of word games that play with terms like ‘meaning’, while, in turn, rendering them meaningless.

“Ah-ha!” says Wittgenstein. “This is the wrong type of game. It’s not word games we should be focusing on, but a higher order of game. Language games.”

These are games in which individual meanings of words, phrases or propositions are a set of informal rules – a consensus – adopted in and by certain players who enter the game. That may be an elite group or it may be everyone.

To give a simple example: ‘memory’. Take a moment to think of that concept and what it means for you.

Now consider what you have just been thinking about in the context of the following related concepts: psychology; computer; funeral. Different language games, different set of associations, different meaning.

The difficulty comes when the game changes, and you don’t know that it’s been changed.

Try these terms: ‘compliance”, “discipline”, “tradition”, “childhood”. Pretty straightforward to define. Except, in educational circles they carry very specific, technical meaning. So you can listen to a conversation on the Today programme that you think you understand, but actually you are completely detached because you don’t know the rules of the game being played.

More to the point, neither does the interviewer.

Fred Inglis, Emeritus Professor of Cultural Studies at Sheffield University, highlights this in his new book ‘Key Concepts in Education“. For example, “Skill” may sound like a good, positive term:  for a while the DoE was the Department of Education and Skills, before being split into the Department for Children, Schools and Families and the Department for Innovation, University and Skills.

(Already, you can see the language game being shifted just by changing the scope of the departments).

But, Inglis argues, in this particular language game ‘Skills’ focuses on the acquisition of techniques, rather than the development of craft or the outcome of achievement. It omits the length of time it takes to learn, apply and master those techniques. So two people can have a debate about Skills – ‘up-skilling’, ‘re-skilling’ – and actually be talking about very different problems and solutions.

Why does this matter? I think it matters for two reasons:

First – as I have mentioned on previous Blogs -  we are becoming increasingly lazy in our use of language, surrendering much of public discourse to commercial agendas (different language games), and devaluing the currency of communication;

Secondly, because the greater our awareness of language games, the more sensitive we will be about the agenda of a conversation, and the fact that there is an agenda at all. In all conversations, no matter how innocuous.

And the greater the awareness, the greater the understanding of the dissonance between what ‘they’ mean and what we hear.

The size of a chequebook, it’s full of pictures of things I can insure (a ‘fridge, a car, a pet) with my name on each: ‘Paul’ integrated into the photos as if it were actually on the item. It’s a very clever piece of digital printing.

And on the first page, they thank me for choosing them again, and as a token of appreciation here’s this ‘handy booklet in which you’ll find our gift to you’:

“Discounts across their range of products”.

That’s not a gift; that’s an offer. Putting aside the legal difference , what really irritates about this hand-tooled, finely-wrought piece of marketing nonsense is the blatant abuse of meaning.

When I give a gift (see; use of the word give is a clue), it doesn’t come with conditions. I don’t expect the recipient to have to give me something back so that they can realise the value.

“Happy Christmas, son. Here are some batteries. Given me £150 and I’ll let you have the remote control car to go with them.”

That’s a deal, an exchange, a contract, a bargain, a sale. It’s not a gift.

Interesting to note that there is some precise language on that first page: ‘we’re giving you this handy booklet in which you’ll find our gift to you’ (my italics). So, the company is clear that the  booklet isn’t the gift. There is nothing tangible here. Indeed, the only way of realizing the ‘gift’ is to make another purchase.

Which means that not only is this a jaw-tensing abuse of  language, it’s also a lie. They are not making me a gift at all. They’re making a promise of a gift if I make another transaction.

With wobbling bottom lip he recounts: “My present was under the tree. I was so excited, I tore off the paper, and found that the box was empty, save for an IOU.”

Thank you, Direct Line.

CAUSE FOR CELEBRATION

While we’re here, at the first virtual meeting of “Pedants’ Anonymous”, have you noticed how the word celebrate has changed its meaning?

You probably grew up thinking that celebrate meant to mark an achievement or a milestone of some sort; a marriage, a coming-of-age, exam results, a sporting success.

Not any longer. Now we’re being offered the chance to celebrate the release of a DVD.

Celebrate now means plug.

But again, take a moment to unpack the sentence in which it appears on your local radio station: “We’re giving you the chance to celebrate the release of ‘Now That’s What I Call High School Musical 58′ with our fun competition / ‘phone-in / organ donation scheme / whatever.”

Oh THANKS. You’re giving me the opportunity to mark the fact that I can now buy something from you. Truly, I am blessed.

Look – I know that I sound like a grumpy old man on this. That’s because I am. And I am, because it matters.

Language defines us. Along with opposable thumb, it puts space between us and pondlife. As a friend recently posted on his Facebook wall: “We do not describe the world we see; we see the world we describe”.

Language is the toolkit with which we make the world. The greater our vocabulary, the greater the granularity with which we can see and understand. The meaning of words matters because they give common currency with which to share understanding.

And if we let words like gift and celebrate get hijacked and subliminally redefined without even noting that it’s happening, we’ll be much the poorer for it.