What's in a word, (or a title)?

There's a lot in a word, or the titles you chose for your programs! I’ve written before on the importance of paying close attention to the words used in an organization to get a feeling for what the organization holds important. A recent article in Newsweek shows it’s not only the actual words that are used; it’s also how the words are used.

The article quotes Lera Boroditsky, a psychologist at Stanford. She has done a series of experiments showing that people who use words from different cultures and languages actually see the world differently according to the words they use and how they use them.

We have known for a long time that having a word for something enables you think about the thing in a more sophisticated way. The best example is the way Eskimos are supposed to have many words for snow, so they are able to recognize many types of snow. Closer to home, my father was an interior designer. He had many words for “red”. Consequently, he could accurately remember different colors, match different patterns, and tell you if someone’s dress was really “red” or perhaps scarlet, carmine, crimson, pink, burgundy, cherry, or even madder lake.

Boroditsky also shows how the language used to describe an event can affect not only what you see and remember, but how you think about what you saw.

To quote the article,

“English says "she broke the bowl" even if it smashed accidentally (she dropped something on it, say), Spanish and Japanese describe the same event more like "the bowl broke itself." "When we show people video of the same event," says Boroditsky, "English speakers remember who was to blame even in an accident, but Spanish and Japanese speakers remember it less well than they do intentional actions. It raises questions about whether language affects even something as basic as how we construct our ideas of causality."

So when you chose the language that is acceptable in your organization one thing you are doing is enabling everyone to share a common meaning more accurately. For example, calling something “red” could be open to many interpretations, but calling it “scarlet” is likely to lead to more accurate color matching.

You could go further and say that if you chose the right words not only can you ensure more accuracy, you can positively influence how people think about the thing you are describing.

I’m about to head off to plan a workshop on performance for a high performing group of professionals in the legal industry. Do you think it matters if we call it “Performance Calibration and Consensus Planning” or “Raising the Bar on Results”?