The one-sentence summary

Six types of words can increase your impact in every area of life, from persuading others and building stronger relationships to boosting creativity and motivating teams.

Can’t be bothered to read it? Listen to the 5-minute summary.

Want to buy the book? CLICK HERE

WHAT THE BOOK SAYS

  • You can work out what to say to get your way. Almost everything we do involves words, but certain words have more impact than others.
  • There is a new science of language fueled by technological advances in machine learning, computational linguistics and natural language processing. Combined with the digitization of everything from cover letters to conversations, this material yields unprecedented insights.
  • The six types of words are:
  1. Activate identity and agency
  • Turn actions into identities (Will you be a helper? is stronger than Will you help?); change can’ts to don’ts; turn coulds into shoulds; talk to yourself using the third person; and pick your pronouns carefully (‘I’ and ‘You’ draw attention to ownership but can also attribute blame)

      2. Convey confidence

  • Ditch the hedges such as may, could and in my opinion; use definites; don’t hesitate, turn pasts into presents; but know when to express doubt to show you are open-minded.

      3. Ask the right questions

  • You can succeed more by asking for advice, following up with thoughtful questions, deflecting difficulty, avoiding assumptions, starting safe and then building to harder and more specific matters.
  1. Leverage concreteness
  • In language, concreteness refers to precision – the opposite of talking abstractly. Make people feel heard by demonstrating that you really are listening, be concrete or specific, and focus on the how.
  1. Employ emotion
  • Highlight the hurdles, build a rollercoaster story with highs and lows, mix up moments to create variety, consider the context, connect with your audience, then solve problems, and activate uncertainty to keep people engaged.
  1. Harness similarity (and difference)
  • Consider the balance between signaling similarity and driving difference, plot the right progression and use language to communicate more effectively.

WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT

  • The author Kurt Vonnegut believed that stories have shapes that can be drawn on graph paper. The rise and fall of triumph and failure over time drives almost every successful narrative.
  • Word embedding uses the relationships among words to plot them on a multidimensional space. The closer they are together, the more frequently they are used together. This can help us understand linguistic relationships and associations to greater effect.
  • While the impact of these words may seem magical, we don’t have to be a magician to use them. They merely work by using and understanding the science of human behaviour, so anyone can use them.

WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH

  • Not much. Anyone can pick up the suggestions in this toolkit and use them to improve their persuasion skills and general authority.