If you’re naked, make sure you’re buff: what language says about the person
I’m guest blogging over at the International Association of Online Communicators. Here’s today’s post.
What does a person’s writing say about the person? Plenty, especially if you learn how to use the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) program developed by James Pennebaker and colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin.
You run text through the program and it categorizes words into 70 linguistic or psychologically-relevant categories. I inputted the several recent blog posts from three popular CEO bloggers — Paul Levy, CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Bob Lutz, vice chairman of GM, and Bill Marriott — and here are the partial results:
| LIWC Dimension |
Bob Lutz, GM |
Paul Levy, Beth Israel |
Bill Marriott |
LIWC formal texts |
| Self-references (honesty) |
3.79 |
2.47 |
4.55 |
4.2 |
| Social words (more outgoing) |
5.26 |
6.23 |
9.62 |
8.0 |
| Positive emotion words (more optimistic) |
1.78 |
2.85 |
3.26 |
2.6 |
| Negative emotion words (anxiety levels) |
0.39 |
1.14 |
0.86 |
1.6 |
| Overall cognitive words (How actively thinking about topic) |
4.87 |
5.18 |
3.09 |
5.4 |
| Big words (Higher grades, tend to be less emotional) |
18.72 |
25.52 |
15.72 |
19.6 |
Some admittedly oversimplified takeaways:
· Bill Marriott comes across as most honest, outgoing, and positive.
· Paul Levy appears to be especially intelligent, with highly cognitive and big words; he’s also quite outgoing and more negative than the other two CEO bloggers. Interestingly he’s done an extraordinary job of turning around Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital and has been writing about union issues, which may account for the negative emotion.
· Bob Lutz comes across honest and smart.
What does this have to do with online communications? It’s an area I’m studying and have no answers yet, just some questions I’d like to ask you:
· Should we “test” executives writing and analyze it before they start blogging on behalf of the company? If they score very negative, low on honesty and low on cognitive thinking – would this person be a good representative of the company?
· Does using an analysis tool like this help us be more aware of our selves – and help us change our language, and, in turn, change our behavior?
· Is it a good tool to coach others in communicating in this new conversational world? (Note that many people think that using the first person “I” is not professional and makes you seem too self-absorbed. But linguistics has found that not to be so; use of the first person implies honesty.)
· Should we never talk about this tool as it may scare execs about being naked out in the blogsophere – especially if they aren’t all that buff when it comes to being positive, cognitively complex and honest?
· Lastly, can writing a blog every day make us healthier? (Studies have proven that writing about personal topics 15 – 30 minutes a day improves people’s emotional and physical health.)
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November 5th, 2007 at 3:23 pm
Lois
You bring the coolest things to my attention. thanks. Awesome. I did my analysis online.
November 5th, 2007 at 3:33 pm
Makund,
Did you learn anything helpful in doing the analysis?
Lois
November 5th, 2007 at 10:53 pm
Hi Lois,
Timing is everything in life I guess, (didn’t we discuss that before?) I just read a post about graphically analyzing arguments and generating the analysis as an image. I referenced this excellent post of yours and think it might inspire someone to move forward with that other idea. It is discussed here on Tangler.com:
http://www.tangler.com/group/tangler-feedback/topic/27954
Anthony
November 5th, 2007 at 11:26 pm
Yes, I scored very well on self reflection and overall cognitive words. I think I have to buy a copy of the software and do it over time so I can improve the positive emotion. Why? I am amazed at how many leaders evoke a sense of insecurity among the troops. Its very easy to fall into the trap at times, but I have read multiple times that subtle and overt tones of leaders need to be positive and reinforcing. Not untruths, but accent on the positive.
Mukund.
November 6th, 2007 at 3:20 pm
I second Mukund. Foghound’s a little like the best parties I went to as a kid: I had a great time while there AND I left with an unanticipated goodie bag in hand to remember it by.
This tool intrigues me for two reasons. I can see immediate self-awareness applications helping folks 1) see that their language is communicating for them whether what its saying about them is what they mean it to say or not, and 2) how its doing that, exactly.
In terms of our own marketing communication, something about it’s been off in a way I just haven’t been able to put my finger on. When I ran a couple of our more recent pieces through analysis - presto - it showed me what’s likely a big part of the problem.
As a husband and wife team, we predominantly write as ‘we’ - rarely referring to ourselves in first person. It’s awkward to write most of the time, and the results have been lacklustre at best in comparison to first-person contact. It doesn’t feel natural.
This analysis tool suggests that writing as a ‘we’ consistently results in a low honesty ranking. Ouch – and very good to know. Anybody out there who’s discovered a better way of handling this, love to hear from you.
As a life coach, I can vouch for the health-promoting benefits of regular writing. Hand’s down, it’s one of the highest ROI exercises when self-awareness, authenticity or identification of calling/purpose is the objective. Few things help you see what you’re really thinking, feeling and wanting – or why – and few things make us feel better than knowing what’s going on.
At the same time, few things make us feel more ‘naked’ (well put, Lois) which is why many people don’t write more often, or - as is true in this case - find their language outs them in ways they haven’t bargained for.
Stripping down’s a bit of a scarey proposition if you’re not entirely sure you’ll like what you’ll be revealing, especially when flashing your wobbly bits in the professional public is the order of the day. Can anyone say performance anxiety…?
Lissa