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Communication Skills29 min read
Leadership Is Language
by David Marquet
The Hidden Power of What You Say – and What You Don’t
Published: October 29, 2020
4.5 (248 ratings)
Table of Contents
1
what’s in it for me? become a better, more effective leader by changing the way you communicate.2
in the traditional approach to management, people are divided into two categories – deciders and doers.3
the language of the old approach to leadership is deterministic and binary – all about doing, not about thinking.4
the old approach to leadership is no longer effective for modern companies.5
for organizations to thrive, the doers must also be deciders.6
effective leaders use language that encourages people to speak up, contribute, and participate.7
a successful leader rejects the traditional “obey the clock” mindset in favor of a “control the clock” approach.8
effective leaders embrace a collaborative approach to decision-making that celebrates diversity and variability.9
effective leadership means getting people to commit to actions rather than comply with directives.10
successful leaders complete defined goals instead of continuing work indefinitely.11
successful leaders encourage people to learn, grow, and improve.12
final summaryBook Summary
This is a comprehensive summary of “Leadership Is Language” by David Marquet. The book explores the hidden power of what you say – and what you don’t.
what’s in it for me? become a better, more effective leader by changing the way you communicate.#
Introduction
david marquet, leadership is language.
the hidden power of what you say and what you don't.
narrated by stephen schiller and alex vincent.
what does a book published in 1911 about steel mill management have to do with the 2017 academy awards fiasco?
why are so many airplane crashes ultimately attributed to poor communications between pilot and co-pilot?
you probably don't realize it, but the language most of us use in our 21st century workplace is a relic of the industrial age.
it's designed to maximize efficiency, reinforce hierarchy, and encourage conformity.
but the world has changed a lot in the past century.
these days, adaptability, teamwork, and diversity are more important to a company's success.
so why are we still using a playbook developed for a different era?
in these chapters, you'll learn to identify outdated formulations you're probably still using and to develop new ones better suited to the workplace of today.
in the traditional approach to management, people are divided into two categories – deciders and doers.#
chapter 1 of 10.
imagine you're at work.
the day's over and you're getting ready to head out.
some friends are meeting at a nearby bar.
maybe you'll join them.
or maybe it's better to hit the gym.
you could really use the workout.
on the other hand, you're exhausted.
going home for some rest sounds pretty appealing.
you pause a minute to weigh each option before making your final decision.
then you pack your bag, walk out the door, and put your plan into action.
you've just engaged in the two primary modes of human activity, thinking and doing.
you thought about where you wanted to go and then you went.
in your private life, you switch between these modes several times a day.
everybody does.
but in the working world, most of us are categorized as either thinkers or doers.
that's because most companies are still run according to models developed in the industrial age.
the key message here is, in the traditional approach to management, people are divided into two categories, deciders and doers.
over the years, different descriptors and signals have evolved to describe each group.
leaders and followers, salaried and hourly, white collar and blue collar, the primary and totally arbitrary, difference between them?
one group is charged with making the decisions and the other with executing them.
this approach is exemplified in frederick wilson taylor's 1911 book, the principles of scientific management.
in it, taylor specifies the single most efficient way for steel mill workers to perform a variety of tasks.
the typical worker, for example, was most efficient when shoveling 21 pounds of material at a time.
not 20, not 22, 21, exactly 21.
the way to improve efficiency, taylor found, was to reduce variability.
that made sense at the time.
in traditional manufacturing industries, after all, standardization was the key.
even today, it often makes sense for companies to reduce variability.
to mass produce cars, for example, factories have to build millions of identical parts in rapid succession.
to keep customers happy, mcdonald's has to ensure that its burgers come out the same every time.
but humans, unlike burgers or car parts, are variable.
we can't be divided neatly into the doers and the thinkers.
taylor's principles of scientific management needs a revamp.
the language of the old approach to leadership is deterministic and binary – all about doing, not about thinking.#
chapter 2 of 10 on october 1, 2015, a tragedy occurred in the bahamas.
after navigating into the eye of a hurricane, the container ship el faro was lost at sea.
none of the 33 crew members survived.
it would be easy to blame the captain for not taking an alternate route to avoid the storm, or the first mate for not warning the captain about changing weather conditions, or the bridge team for not speaking up to the first mate about the increasingly battering waves.
but according to the author, the real problem was a failure of language.
both on board el faro and within the company that owned it, the language used to conduct operations was outdated, a holdover from an old approach to leadership, one that in this case had fatal consequences.
this is the key message.
the language of the old approach to leadership is deterministic and binary, all about doing, not about thinking.
let's look at some of the things the captain said to his crew in the days leading up to the tragedy.
it should be fine, he told them.
we're going to be fine.
he poked fun at less experienced mariners who were inclined to change course for every single weather pattern.
no, no, no, he said.
we're not going to turn around.
the captain was most likely trying to motivate his crew, to inspire confidence.
but what he actually did was make it harder for anyone of lower rank to speak up about their concerns.
the captain's language of invulnerability and invincibility, the author argues, is a relic of the industrial age, when people in the leader class had to get those in the follower class to comply with their decisions.
it is a focused and goal-driven language designed to reduce variability and preempt challenges.
when it does ask questions, the questions are binary and deterministic.
are you sure?
instead of, how sure are you?
binary questions invite only two possible responses, yes or no.
how sure are you?
is much more open-ended.
it asks people to think.
it slows things down.
imagine if the captain of the alfaro had used a different approach.
instead of telling his team, we're not going to turn around, what if he had invited everyone to participate in the decision-making process?
what if he had asked the entire team how confident they felt about their route?
he might have slowed things down, to be sure, but he also might have saved alfaro and everyone aboard.
the old approach to leadership is no longer effective for modern companies.#
chapter 3 of 10 let's consider another tragic accident on the water.
in april 2010, gauges on the deepwater horizon oil rig began to indicate that a dangerous amount of pressure was building inside the drilling riser.
bridge operators triggered the temporary seals to shut down drilling, but none of them activated the emergency disconnect switch, a last resort option that prevents blowouts.
after nine minutes of emitting hydrocarbons, the rig erupted in flames.
eleven people died and five million barrels of oil spilled into the gulf of mexico.
so why didn't anyone flip the switch?
because the bridge operators, an investigation later revealed, were waiting for permission from a manager.
think about that.
for nine whole minutes, combustible hydrocarbons spurted from the wellhead of an oil rig while operators on the bridge waited for authorization to prevent the blowout.
how is it possible that someone could be more afraid of pushing a button without permission than of dying in a giant explosion?
here's the key message.
the old approach to leadership is no longer effective for modern companies.
in the old way of doing things, as we've seen, one group of workers made decisions, the other executed them.
control and compliance were necessary for processes to function.
leaders had to get people to do what they wanted.
they may have made sense in the industrial age, which privileged standardization and efficiency, but it doesn't always make sense today.
that's because today adaptability is just as important as efficiency.
the world moves at a much faster pace now, even in traditional industries.
take car manufacturing, for example.
the internal combustion engine used in cars was invented in 1859, almost 100 years after the invention of the steam engine.
it took another 27 years for the first car to be built, and another 22 after that for ford to create his model t, the first automobile available to the middle class.
these days, innovation can be measured in months, not centuries.
conditions change quickly, and companies need to be able to adjust accordingly.
think back to alfaro.
there were plenty of opportunities for the captain to change course, but the leadership style he was stuck in didn't leave room for stopping to re-evaluate.
nor did it encourage other team members to speak up with their concerns.
the result?
everyone was operating within a narrow mode of activity that made it impossible for them to adapt to changing conditions.
for organizations to thrive, the doers must also be deciders.#
chapter 4 of 10 in 1906, the english polymath francis galton attended a country fair.
at one stand, visitors were asked to guess the weight of an ox on display.
whoever came closest would win the animal.
after the contest ended, the ever-curious galton collected and analyzed all the votes.
what he found was that the collective average of the guesses came closer to the real number than all but a few of the individual guesses.
the group, in other words, knew better than almost any individual fair-goer.
the key message here is, for organizations to thrive, the doers must also be deciders.
as taylor famously demonstrated in his study of steel mills, doing work tends to benefit from reduced variability.
consider a submarine operator, for example.
it's probably for the best that she follow procedure to the letter.
step 1.
close the hatch.
step 2.
submerge the vessel.
variation from the set sequence is not advised.
thinking work, on the other hand, benefits from variability.
when you brainstorm, for example, you want as many ideas as possible to emerge, and when you make decisions, you like to have options.
that's why good leaders reject the old division between deciders and doers and instead include all team members in the decision-making process.
they know what galton knew, that the wisdom of many is almost always superior to the wisdom of one.
in addition to encouraging variability, this approach also increases people's motivation.
study after study has shown that people given autonomy over their work are happier and less prone to burnout.
one harvard business school study even identified freedom in deciding what to do or how to accomplish the task as the number one factor driving innovation in organizations.
the smart leader knows that including all team members in the thinking work is the best way to achieve results, or should the occasion arise, to guess the weight of an ox.
in the next chapter, we'll look at some techniques for doing just that.
effective leaders use language that encourages people to speak up, contribute, and participate.#
chapter 5 of 10.
a ceo is out to lunch with an old friend.
it's a big day for him.
his company is field-testing a new product.
if all goes well, the benefits will be significant.
in the middle of lunch, he gets a call from his project lead who's on-site and overseeing the trial.
things are not going well.
after a brief conversation, he signs off with the following instruction, tell me if you need me to come over.
it just so happens that the ceo is out to lunch with the author of leadership is language, who is troubled by this interaction.
he suggests his friend call back the project lead and rephrase his sign-off.
the ceo does just that.
on a scale of 0 to 5, he asks her, how helpful would it be if i came to the site?
the answer is 5.
the ceo gets up, thanks his friend, and heads over.
here's the key message.
effective leaders use language that encourages people to speak up, contribute, and participate.
in his first sign-off, the ceo unconsciously conformed to his outdated leadership role.
i give a command, my employee follows it.
tell me if you need me.
after all, it's a command.
it also puts the onus on the project lead to admit she needs help and to demand that her boss leave his lunch.
that's not an easy thing for someone to do.
by reformulating, the ceo changed the dynamic entirely.
how helpful would it be if i came over is a request for information.
an open-ended, non-binary question, it indicates he genuinely wants to hear what the project lead is thinking.
by rephrasing, he made it safe for her to give him the information he needed so that the product test could succeed.
psychological safety is key to an organization's success.
as this example shows, it's generated by actively encouraging uncomfortable perspectives and soliciting input.
there are a number of techniques leaders can use to do that.
they can consciously talk less so that others talk more.
they admit when they don't know things so that others can do the same.
and they can exhibit vulnerability, which makes it easier for people to speak up without fear.
just think what might have happened had the deepwater horizon operators felt safe enough to follow common sense and flip the switch.
or had the bridge crew of el faro felt safe enough to raise concerns about the weather?
a successful leader rejects the traditional “obey the clock” mindset in favor of a “control the clock” approach.#
link 6 of 10.
let's imagine an alternate reality in which the crew of el faro felt psychologically safe enough to question the captain's decision.
in this scenario, the captain took the time to meet with his first mate before departure.
i'm excited you're on the team, he told her.
our differences in age and gender probably mean we'll bring different perspectives to the table.
i encourage you to share your opinions, and i commit to listening to what you have to say.
over the next two days, he called several all-crew meetings at critical junctions to discuss the possibility of changing routes.
he used language that facilitated full participation and employed a variety of techniques to include everyone in the decision-making process.
instead of blindly adhering to the route chosen before departure, he called timeouts for reflection and reconsideration.
in short, he did what the author refers to as controlling the clock.
this is the key message.
a successful leader rejects the traditional obey-the-clock mindset in favor of a control-the-clock approach.
controlling the clock means weaving back and forth between thinking mode and doing mode, even if it means slowing things down or questioning choices to which you have already committed.
this stands in stark contrast to the old obey-the-clock approach, which sought to avoid pauses at all costs.
in a factory, after all, a period during which no products are made is a waste of time.
that's why the language of the old approach is designed to keep teams in doing mode.
we'll just have to tough this one out, the captain of alfaro told his crew.
you can't run from every single weather pattern.
in other words, now that we've decided, we'll keep going at all costs.
no wonder his crew didn't feel comfortable speaking up with their concerns.
who would want to be the type of person to run from rain?
good leaders not only make pauses possible, they actively encourage them, plan them, and name them for what they are.
instead of saying, we need to make landfall by friday, they say, i'm a bit nervous about the storm.
we're going to head out, but we'll have a team meeting to revisit that decision at noon.
in doing so, they make it easier for their teams to adapt to changing conditions and sometimes end up saving lives.
effective leaders embrace a collaborative approach to decision-making that celebrates diversity and variability.#
link 7 of 10 executives of a big international company are attending a leadership seminar run by the author.
after people break into small groups, he assigns them a task.
each group has 90 seconds to come up with an educated guess about the results of an experiment the author has just recounted.
at every table in the room, the same thing happens.
one person, usually a senior executive, throws out the first guess.
others offer guesses slightly above or below that one, and then everyone discusses and agrees on a choice.
the result?
each group's final estimate is always somewhere around that first guess, no matter how far off that first guess was.
the key message here is, effective leaders embrace a collaborative approach to decision making that celebrates diversity and variability.
in the old model, as we've seen, leadership was coercive.
it was about getting people to comply with decisions they had no part in conceiving.
today, many leaders see the benefit of including everyone in decision-making processes, but are often ill-equipped to execute that play.
changing from a coercive style of leadership to a more collaborative one requires leaders to actively change their language and approach.
the executives at the leadership seminar, for example, could have individually and anonymously written down their guesses before having a group discussion.
this would not only have yielded a broader diversity of initial guesses, it would also have allowed quieter group members to be heard and protected everyone against the influence of the senior executive.
another technique for encouraging variability is to ask good questions, questions driven by genuine curiosity about what another person thinks.
imagine how different the response might be if you asked someone, what am i missing?
rather than, does that make sense?
or you could try actively inviting dissent rather than subtly encouraging consensus.
at the author's company, for example, meetings start with everyone picking a card randomly from a deck consisting of 80% black cards and 20% red.
if you pick a red card, you have to dissent, and the card gives you the same sense of psychological safety required to do so.
the upshot of your efforts, as we'll see in the next chapter, is not only a much broader range of ideas, but also a much more energized team.
effective leadership means getting people to commit to actions rather than comply with directives.#
chapter 8 of 10 it's late afternoon on the first day of january.
this night, you resolve to give up sugar for a month.
now you're tired, hungover, and desperately tempted to raid the cupboard for sweets.
you tell yourself, no, you can't eat sugar.
it becomes a refrain.
i can't eat sugar.
i can't eat sugar.
i can't eat sugar.
what you don't realize is how much more effective it would be to tell yourself that you don't eat sugar, saying can't implies there's an external force trying to keep you from consuming sugar.
when you use the word don't, on the other hand, the power comes from inside you.
you won't raid the cupboard because you are a person who does not eat sweets.
this type of intrinsic motivation is much more powerful in driving human behavior than compliance with an outside force.
here's the key message.
effective leadership means getting people to commit to actions rather than comply with directives.
compliance elicits the minimum necessary effort.
commitment on the other hand inspires energy, creativity, and initiative.
one way to get commitment is to focus on learning as opposed to just doing.
the traditional playbook puts people in a prove mindset.
prove you know what you're doing.
prove the product works.
but humans are far more effective when they have an improve mindset.
like all mammals, we're curious.
our brains are hardwired to react positively to exploration and discovery.
psychologists call this the seeking system.
when we engage in work with the goal of learning something new, we activate this system.
we work much more enthusiastically and effectively because we're excited to see what we may discover.
we also handle failures and setbacks more easily.
they're part of the learning process, after all.
another way to encourage commitment is to divide work into chunks.
when people know a pause has been planned for the near future, a moment to check in and reevaluate, they're much more willing to throw themselves into work full on.
breaking work into chunks has the added benefit of protecting against an escalation of commitment, whereby pledges to a certain course of action reinforce themselves and become impossible to rescind.
think what might have happened had the el faro crew broken up its journey into smaller chunks of decision-making and execution.
rather than the captain making one decision at the beginning of the journey, we will take this route and we will not deviate.
the crew would have met periodically on board to re-evaluate.
successful leaders complete defined goals instead of continuing work indefinitely.#
chapter 9 of 10 toward the end of the 2017 academy awards, warren beatty and faye dunaway walked on stage to announce the best picture winner.
when beatty opened the envelope, he found a card that said, emma stone, la la land, and in smaller print at the bottom, actress in a leading role.
it wasn't the card for best picture at all.
we all know what happened next.
dunaway announced the wrong winner.
the producers of la la land came on stage to accept the award, and it wasn't until minutes later that one of them interrupted the celebrations to announce moonlight as the real winner.
why didn't beatty or dunaway say something when they saw that they had the wrong card?
because they were stuck in an outdated mindset.
keep on going.
don't hold things up.
continue at all costs.
this is the key message.
successful leaders complete defined goals instead of continuing work indefinitely.
in the industrial age, leaders sought to maximize the time their teams spent in production work.
work proceeded indefinitely without operational pauses.
the clock was obeyed and barriers were erected to avoid interruptions.
workers were primed never to think, only to do, so that production never slowed.
that's the mindset beatty and dunaway were stuck in when they walked on stage.
they both knew something was wrong.
when beatty opened the envelope, he did a double take.
his face tightened with confusion as he searched for a second card.
dunaway stared at him expectantly.
the clock was ticking and the silence was awkward.
beatty looked offstage for help, some sign of what to do.
you're impossible, dunaway said, exasperated.
come on.
beatty showed her the card and she immediately called out, la la land.
imagine if instead they'd felt empowered to stop and double check the winner.
maybe charming the audience with a joke to keep them entertained.
that would have meant chucking the industrial age playbook in favor of one that encourages pauses for reflection.
how can leaders encourage that kind of approach?
by thinking of projects not as endlessly ongoing, but as a series of discrete steps that can be completed and celebrated.
studies have shown that pausing to acknowledge and enjoy a completion actually improves people's workplace performance.
it also creates space for reevaluation and reflection.
maybe if beatty and dunaway had had that kind of space, the academy of motion picture arts and sciences could have avoided the worst fiasco in its history.
successful leaders encourage people to learn, grow, and improve.#
chapter ten of ten.
you've probably heard of the disney movie frozen, even if you haven't seen it.
it grossed over a billion dollars, after all, and won tons of prestigious film awards.
what you probably don't know, though, is that an early version of the film was a total flop.
at a test screening held eighteen months before the planned release date, viewers were unsparing in their criticism and dislike.
a producer using the old playbook might have focused on everything that went wrong, reminding his team how little time they had left to get their act together.
but instead of focusing on failures, frozen's producer focused on opportunities.
i want you to envision your biggest hopes, he told his team.
if we could do anything, what would you want to see on the screen?
the key message here is, successful leaders encourage people to learn, grow, and improve.
instead of pressuring his team to prove their ability, the producer invited them to improve their outcome.
he gave them permission to let go of any ties they had to the existing work and let their imaginations run wild.
the result?
team members felt confident about throwing radically new ideas into the mix.
they could reimagine the film in totally fresh and surprising ways without worrying about how it would affect the production schedule.
the concept of improve and learn is nothing new.
industrial age companies were constantly analyzing their processes in an effort to tweak, streamline, or perfect them.
but back then, only leaders were responsible for this type of work.
it was their job to observe and judge workers and decide how they could improve.
today, in a world that privileges greater collaboration, it's up to everyone on the team to evaluate themselves.
in order to facilitate this, effective leaders need to create cultures that are psychologically safe.
most people are afraid of being perceived as ignorant or incompetent.
this keeps them in a prove rather than improve mindset.
but no one is served when people feel threatened and become defensive.
instead, we want them to feel empowered to make things better.
if frozen success teaches us anything, it's that when people are empowered to learn, committed to act, and included in decisions about their own work, there's no limit to what they can achieve.
you've just listened to our chapters to leadership is language by david marquet.
final summary#
Conclusion
the key message in these chapters is that if you're a leader, the language you use is probably inherited from the industrial age, when people were divided into strict categories.
deciders and doers, leaders and followers, decision makers and decision executors.
today, the most successful organizations reject that division, including all team members in both thinking work and doing work.
to achieve that end, leaders need to rethink radically the language they use to communicate.
now for a wee bit more of actionable advice.
ask open-ended questions.
next time you want to move from one phase of a project to the next, don't ask your team to sign off on a decision you've already made.
that means avoiding a question like, everyone okay with this?
or this looks fine, right?
instead ask, how could this be improved?
or on a scale of one to five, how confident are you feeling about moving ahead?
that way you'll get better and more diverse input and a more motivated team to boot.
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