PDF Summary:Leadership Is Language, by L. David Marquet

Why do the decisions that leaders make often go unquestioned? What causes workers to stay silent when they have concerns? In Leadership Is Language, former Navy captain L. David Marquet argues that answers lie in the language that leaders use to communicate to their team—language that discourages workers from voicing their opinions. Marquet provides a new approach to leadership that empowers workers to play an active role in decision-making. By adopting Marquet’s strategies, you can transform your organization into an adaptive, innovative, and high-performing workplace led by engaged and passionate workers.

In this guide, we’ll explain why traditional leadership language is ineffective in the modern workplace and examine Marquet’s approach to better leadership communication. Along the way, we’ll supplement Marquet’s insights with the perspectives of other leadership and communication experts.

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(Shortform note: While Marquet suggests you do things with rather than for your team, David Coyle argues in The Culture Code that doing small acts of service for your team can make you seem more approachable and promote mutual respect. For example, he suggests ordering lunch for your team or cleaning up shared workspaces. Coyle advises you to not only make yourself more accessible but to reduce a sense of hierarchy among all team members. You can do this by creating “collision-rich” workplaces designed so that team members see and interact with one another more frequently. For example, set up more communal spaces or have your team work in closer proximity to one another. Being in such communal spaces might also make it easier for you to voice your emotions unguardedly around your employees.)

Encourage and observe, rather than judge. Remind people that you want to hear from them. For example, tell them you value their unique perspective, and promise to listen to them without judgment. Similarly, when you give praise, observe rather than judge. Instead of telling them “good job” (which is your personal assessment of good or bad), say how they did a good job. For example: “Thank you for speaking up about the error you noticed in the project yesterday. That will save the team a lot of time.”

Further Tips on How to Encourage Participation and Praise Employees

Once you’ve encouraged people to voice their opinions, as Marquet suggests, experts recommend responding thoughtfully and positively reinforcing their behavior when they do speak up. In The Fearless Organization, Amy C. Edmonson provides several tips on how to respond when employees speak up: Listen attentively, thank them for contributing, provide continuous support, and normalize failure. These moves help people feel comfortable to continue expressing their concerns.

In Nonviolent Communication, Marshall B. Rosenberg adds a layer of specificity to Marquet’s advice on giving nonjudgmental praise. He suggests you mention three things in your praise: what the other person did, what their actions accomplished, and what positive emotion you experienced as a result. This method works better than compliments, Rosenberg explains: Even when compliments are genuine, people find them hard to accept because you’re judging their personal worth rather than their behavior; and people are often self-critical, which causes them to doubt your compliment.

Cultivate trust. Marquet suggests that you should trust your team from the start, rather than expect them to prove themselves first. This is because when you trust them to do something, you encourage them to meet your expectations and be more committed to accomplishing the task than if you didn’t trust them.

(Shortform note: What if your employee’s actions have genuinely caused you to lose some trust in them? The authors of Crucial Conversations suggest you remember that trust isn’t an all-or-nothing concept and that how much you trust someone should change and depend on the situation. For example, you could trust someone to be dedicated to their work but perhaps not to finish their work on time. To rebuild trust in a specific area, describe your concerns tentatively, as an opinion rather than as a fact, so people are more open to listening to you.)

2. Launch Into Collaboration and Generate a Hypothesis

Once you've lowered the barrier to participation, you can have your first collaboration session to weigh your options and decide upon a course of action. Let’s look at how to communicate in ways that encourage open participation during these sessions.

Normalize Pause Points and Manage Time Proactively

As we discussed earlier, people tend to get stuck in execution mode because it takes less effort to plow on with a task mindlessly. To prevent your team from getting stuck in execution mode, introduce the concept of pause points when you meet for collaboration. Make it easier for your team to call a pause point by deciding on a name for them (like a “mindful moment”) or schedule them in advance. This creates more opportunities to adjust your course of action and make new decisions rather than getting stuck with the first decision you and your team made.

The Word “Because” Makes People More Likely To Comply

Research into thoughtless and automatic compliance supports Marquet’s suggestion that leaders should purposefully encourage pause points. According to one study, simply uttering the word “because” followed by a reason is often enough to get people to comply with a demand, even if the reason doesn’t make any sense.

In the study, people tried to cut in a line for a busy copy machine using one of three statements. Two of the statements provided reasons that received nearly the same high percentage of success: “because I have to make copies” and “because I’m in a rush.” Researchers argue that the word “because” triggers a mental shortcut that causes us to comply with the request without thinking. If you or other employees have started a task because someone told you to, implementing pause points may give you the chance to consider if the reason they gave you is valid.

To lower the barrier for calling timeouts, Marquet suggests using language that conveys vulnerability instead of certainty, such as, “I’m not sure if this is the best approach given that a couple of team members are absent today. Let’s see what we learn and revisit this decision in four hours.” This allows team members to feel comfortable calling pause points and expressing concerns while they work.

(Shortform note: When taking Marquet’s advice, you might worry that vulnerable language makes you seem weak or unconfident. In Dare to Lead, Brené Brown argues that the opposite is the case: Vulnerability requires openly acknowledging risks and confronting your fears head-on rather than ignoring them completely, which is something that takes courage. She makes a distinction, however, between being vulnerable and oversharing to manipulate other people’s emotions. For example, if you share how you haven’t slept or eaten for three days because of a pressing issue your team is dealing with, you’ll only make everyone feel more anxious. Instead, Brown suggests you simply focus on opening a safe space to discuss a situation honestly.)

Invite Comfortable and Honest Participation

Once you’ve introduced and encouraged your team to call for pause points if needed, collaborate on brainstorming your options. To do so, ensure that everyone feels comfortable enough to participate. Accomplish this by asking open-ended questions, voting on options before discussing them, and encouraging dissent.

Open-ended questions: Marquet suggests using “how” and “what” questions to avoid implying that one option is better than another. For example, you could ask, “How strongly do you feel about Option A and Option B?”

(Shortform note: Other experts say you should also ask open-ended questions in areas outside of decision-making—for instance, when having difficult conversations. In the same way workers might hesitate to share their thoughts, people also feel insecure when having uncomfortable conversations. The authors of Difficult Conversations argue that open-ended questions help make others feel heard and allow you to get more information about what they’re feeling or thinking. Rather than framing conversations around your opinions and beliefs, open-ended questions allow you to focus on understanding theirs.)

Vote first: Before anyone shares their thoughts on which option seems best, encourage honesty by having everyone vote on the options first. This prevents biases that commonly affect people’s opinions, such as giving more weight to the first option they hear. Marquet suggests using methods like probability cards or a fist-to-five voting method. Probability cards involve each member voting with a card with numbers like 1 or 80 or 99, where 1 indicates strong disagreement and 99 indicates strong agreement. The fist-to-five method involves showing agreement using their fingers, with a closed fist meaning strong disagreement and five fingers meaning strong agreement.

(Shortform note: There are other ways to prevent biases from getting in the way of good decision-making. Before you meet to vote on the options, you might consider having team members write down their ideas on their own beforehand. This can prevent production blocking, or the idea loss that happens during group discussions. When listening to one person talk, people tend to forget their own ideas or tune out the person who’s speaking because they’re forming their own ideas. By having their ideas written down, team members can actively listen to and vote on other people’s ideas without the fear of forgetting their own.)

Encourage dissent: Remind your team that to generate better solutions, they should be curious and open to different ideas and perspectives. Get your team comfortable with dissent, for instance, by having members play devil’s advocate. Marquet also recommends encouraging dissent over consensus when contemplating the best course of action. This is because people tend to try to agree with one another, which can cause you and your team to lose valuable insights and innovative ideas.

(Shortform note: In Originals, Adam Grant agrees that dissent should be welcomed but argues that assigning a devil’s advocate is less effective than finding people who truly have dissenting views. He suggests you appoint an information manager to talk with people before your meeting and discover their true viewpoints. During your meeting, you can also ensure that team members can voice both popular and unpopular opinions by having your team rank the options in order of preference. When groups debate options one at a time, they tend to agree on one option too quickly. By ranking them instead of simply discussing each, your team must consider all possible options, which gives people who have minority opinions the opportunity to voice them.)

Decide on a Hypothesis to Test

Once you’ve brainstormed ideas, your team must decide on a course of action to take. Marquet suggests you treat your decision like a hypothesis—an assumption to test—rather than as something that’s fixed and unable to be changed. This mindset is more flexible and allows you to pivot to new directions if needed.

(Shortform note: Treating your decision like a hypothesis may help your team be less fearful of taking risks and overcome feelings of shame if your decision goes badly. When we make decisions, we’re often afraid of making wrong choices because being wrong damages our self-worth and causes us to feel shame. Often, this shame becomes worse when we view decisions as final. Approaching your decisions like they’re experiments, experts argue, removes this notion of finality and replaces it with curiosity: You merely observe what might happen and know that you can make changes and try again.)

When selecting a hypothesis, Marquet writes that the final decision should be made by someone other than the person who proposed the idea. People tend to become emotionally invested in their own suggestions and often favor their ideas over others’ ideas. To avoid this, Marquet suggests that team members decide on the hypothesis to test while the leader has the final say to approve or reject it.

(Shortform note: Some research shows that leaders and groups tend to be overconfident about the ideas they propose than the average lone employee. Leaders feel more confident about ideas because of their higher status, while groups feel more confident because they share strong ties and feel in sync with one another. The average lone employee, on the other hand, tends to be more realistic about their ideas. Therefore, to avoid bias, it might make more sense to leave the responsibility for making the final decision in the ideator’s hands, rather than in the hands of an overconfident leader or group. You might do this by having them reconsider their ideas after taking a break or moving to a new location.)

3. Run an Experiment to Test the Hypothesis

Once you’ve decided on a hypothesis, it’s time to dive into experimentation so you can test it out. Marquet doesn’t cover specific techniques on how to execute your experiment, as this will look different for every organization, but he does offer advice on how to make your experiment as effective as possible.

Before your team launches into work, you may find that some members of your team disagree with the decided course of action. In spite of this, you can still encourage everyone to put in their best effort by simply asking that they commit to testing the hypothesis as part of a learning process. Don’t try to convince everyone that the hypothesis is right—you’re simply trying out a course of action and seeing what happens. By trying to convince people, you’d be asking them to change their beliefs. This would discourage them from expressing their unique perspectives.

(Shortform note: It may be easier for workers to commit to testing hypotheses that they personally disagree with if your team has a common mission—a big-picture goal your whole team shares. In The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge suggests you create a shared vision by finding out what each of your team members values and trying to include those values in your vision in some way. That way, each team member may have a different personal motivation, but your entire team still works toward the same end goal. For example, in a high school, staff members may have different ideas of what curricula or teaching methods are best for students, but they can all share the goal of providing students with quality education.)

Additionally, before beginning your experimentation, set a time when you and your team will regroup and analyze the results (the steps we’ll discuss next). By planning a time to review the hypothesis and the experiment, your team can focus completely on carrying out your course of action without constantly questioning their work.

(Shortform note: When setting a time to review your decision, it might also be helpful to establish a clear definition of failure. In The Lean Startup, Eric Ries argues that knowing what failure looks like can make it easier for your team to recognize when it’s time to regroup and pivot. That way, team members can still focus on their task without constantly second-guessing their approach. However, if a situation starts looking like your definition of failure, a team member can take initiative and call a pause point.)

4. Regroup and Reflect

After conducting your experiment, regroup with your team at your preappointed time to reflect on the results. Without deliberate time for reflection, you risk getting stuck with a bad decision or missing out on valuable insights for improvement. In your post-execution collaboration session, Marquet advises you to celebrate the completion of the experiment and encourage reflection. Let’s discuss both of these actions in more depth.

Celebrate and Provide Closure

After your team has completed the experiment, regroup to celebrate. This gives team members a sense of progress that they won’t feel if they labor on indefinitely and makes them feel appreciated and engaged. Additionally, when tasks are done, it’s easier for workers to look back on them and reflect on their work more objectively. They can confront any mistakes they might have made and identify ways to improve in the future from a more detached perspective.

(Shortform note: Some psychologists argue that creating a sense of progress is the most important factor in boosting motivation among workers, trumping other factors that leaders often prioritize, such as tangible incentives or recognition. According to research, workers feel the happiest and say they have their best days when they make progress in their work. Conversely, they feel the worst when they experience setbacks. Beyond celebrating the execution of work, as Marquet recommends, consider also creating a culture in which you recognize small wins and show your team how their work is making an impact.)

To improve your team’s performance, Marquet suggests you reward behavior, such as effort or focus, rather than traits, like intelligence. Similarly, encourage your team members to reflect on their journeys over the course of the project, rather than just the outcomes of the project. This makes them more aware of the behaviors that led to the positive results and more likely to repeat them in the future.

(Shortform note: Praising behavior instead of intelligence not only makes workers more driven to repeat positive behaviors, but it also cultivates a growth mindset and makes them more resilient to failure. According to psychologist Carol Dweck, author of Mindset, people with growth mindsets believe they can strengthen their abilities with effort and seek out opportunities to improve, while people with fixed mindsets believe their abilities are unchangeable. Praise that centers on intellect or talent causes people to develop fixed mindsets and shrink from challenges because they associate success or failure not with effort but with ability—something they feel is out of their control.)

Promote Learning

According to Marquet, taking time to regroup and reflect allows your team to brainstorm ways to improve the next experiment. This is only possible, however, if everyone feels comfortable admitting their flaws or areas for improvement.

To encourage people to reflect on possible improvements, use language that:

Focuses on the future (not the past). Ask what could be done better rather than what was done wrong—“What did we learn that we can apply next time?”

Focuses on others (not the team). Ask your team what advice they would give others working on a similar project or task or to consider how to better serve customers’ needs.

Focuses on the action (not the person). Ask how the work could be improved rather than how the person could do the work better.

Additional Suggestions for Giving Feedback for Improvement

In How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie expands on Marquet’s suggestions on how to speak to encourage your team to grow and improve. While Marquet recommends gaining distance from the problem, Carnegie’s approach focuses more on appreciating what the person did well. Let’s look at how Carnegie’s advice compares to Marquet’s.

Language that focuses on the future. Carnegie provides an alternate approach to making future improvements: If you want someone to improve a certain skill set, you should treat them like it’s already one of their best traits. This encourages them to work harder to live up to the outstanding reputation you gave them. While Marquet advises you not to focus on the past, Carnegie says that you can reference how well someone did in the past if they’ve been recently falling behind to inspire them to work harder.

Language that focuses on others. According to Marquet, you can draw your team’s attention away from their performance (and thereby prevent them from judging themselves) by asking them what advice they would give to other teams in similar situations. According to Carnegie, you can similarly direct attention away from your team’s performance and help them identify areas for improvement by sharing relevant experiences you've had in the past and, more importantly, mistakes you've made. This helps others recognize that making mistakes is normal and encourages them to make improvements like you did.

Language that focuses on the action. Giving feedback on a person’s actions rather than the person themselves can help preserve their pride, Carnegie argues. People want to feel valuable and will be more open to your feedback if you make them feel that way. Carnegie suggests you emphasize that the person’s mistakes were due to inexperience or a moment of inattentiveness rather than their lack of ability. He also recommends you voice your confidence in them in public.