“Words Matter.” Those words were scrawled across the commentary section my local paper, The Richmond Times-Dispatch. This article was about the tendency of government entities to use confusing language and the danger this tendency carries. While I appreciated the article, the headline got me thinking about other language-related problems. Language is particularly important in the field of executive leadership. In my coaching practice, many of the biggest challenges my clients face stem from imprecise language, yet most of us rarely think about the words we use.
Words do matter, and it is important that we understand those that we use so we can use them well. The problem is that there are many important and powerful words that we have misused to the point of making them meaningless. So what happens when we try to use these words appropriately with the power that they should wield? No one really knows what we mean. We send mixed signals. Some may hear them as we intended, while others hear them in their weakened state.
The most obvious example of this misuse is the word “love.” I love my wife. I love my kids. I love God and my country. I even love the work I do. In these cases I am using the word appropriately and powerfully. I am expressing “a deep, tender, ineffable feeling of affection and solicitude toward,” or “a feeling of intense desire and attraction toward,” or “an intense emotional attachment.” These things are so important to me that saying “I love” them makes sense. I weaken love when I say that I love a book, a restaurant, a meal, or other things that could never meet the standard set by the definitions above.
Another commonly misused word is “passion.” Last spring, I heard a speaker talking about the importance of distinguishing between passion and interest. The speaker warned the audience to beware of the word passion. Most of us use passion to refer to things we feel strongly attached to, like sports teams, political issues, activities, etc. In some cases we may be using passion appropriate to express a “powerful emotion, such as love, hatred, or anger.” To understand fully the word passion, it is important to consider its derivation. Passion comes from the Latin for physical suffering or martyrdom. How many of us are willing to suffer physically, let alone be martyred, for some of the things we declare our passion for?
World class athletes can claim to be passionate, because they do make huge sacrifices for the sake of the sport. A politician who gives everything for the sake of his cause may be truly passionate. Many of us have a strong interest in these things. We may even feel a sense of commitment to them, but we aren’t passionate about them. As a long-time Redskins fan, I do feel like I have suffered as they have struggled for the past two decades, but even that doesn’t make following them worthy of the term passion. So that begs the question, “What are we passionate about?” What are we willing to suffer or be martyred for? Most people have some things that rise to the level of passion. For me it is my family, my faith, and my country.
Being clear about what we love and are passionate about brings me to my final words that matter, “values” and “beliefs.” To many people, these words have become indistinct, and therefore both have been diminished. Our beliefs are the collection of things in our lives that are important to us. They can range from the important to the trivial, and they are all-encompassing. Values are those beliefs that we invest ourselves in. Values are to beliefs what passions are to interests. When we muddle them, it prevents others from knowing us. When we say we believe in something, or we believe another thing to be true, we are saying that those things matter to us. However, when we declare something we believe in to be a value, we are committing ourselves much more deeply. For example, I believe that smoking is bad, but I am not prepared to invest my time, talents, and treasure to stop people from doing so. I value my children and their health, so I would invest those things in keeping them from smoking.
Maybe these words and the distinctions I have highlighted aren’t as important as some of the starker distinctions around us. When we hear words like freedom and oppression, good and evil, or right and wrong, we can become motivated to say, “these words matter.” However, our ability to convey to others why they matter comes from the words we use to describe them. I love the freedom we enjoy as Americans; I am passionate about defending that freedom; and I value sacrifices people make to do the same. These words give greater meaning to the words to which I attach them.
