Secret #1: It’s What You Don’t Say 45
tive communicators don’t do that. Effective communicators use
brief PowerPhrases, and people hear them.
Rebecca gets to work forty-five minutes late. Her manager
wants to scream or lecture her on timeliness. Instead, he sim-
ply says,
Rebecca, you are late and did not call. Policy requires
that you notify us. I will regard this as the first time we
have discussed this and make a note.Rebecca can whine and plead, but standing constant with this
succinct statement will earn the manager more respect than a
wordy assault on Rebecca’s misbehavior. When you have the
correct words, you don’t need so many of them. Try being less
wordy for a day—you will notice people’s interest peak.
Recently I was watching the assistant to a CEO as she
worked. Jeanette poked her head into her boss’s office and said,
Last year we didn’t use all the candles that we bought for the
holiday party at the party. We had a lot left, so I brought
them back to the office and used them here. Well, actually, I
didn’t use them all here—I did give some to Ross in mar-
keting and Sydney in production, because we had so many.
I mean they were only about half-burned. Probably not even
that much. Anyway, last year we didn’t have enough money
for everything we wanted to get at the party. I mean, I
wanted to get people goodies to take home, and there wasn’t
enough money in the budget for that, so we had to skip that.
We also could only afford ice tea and water. So I’ve been try-
ing to figure out how to save money from the holiday bud-
get and I decided to put the candles on my budget instead of
the holiday budget. Does that sound right to you?