Most Important Words in Communications

The problem with being a pack-rat becomes acute when you’re faced with a major upheaval in your life. You now have to decide what to do with all of those papers, charts, books, what-not that you’ve collected over the years. Do you keep it? Re-organise it in hopes you might still need that article? Throw it out? Choose to purge yourself of paper and go entirely electronic?

All in all, I’ve sorted and organised some 2,500 articles on creativity and innovation, some 100 books on the same, six file drawers of curricula and training materials – not to mention 92.5 million bytes of data on two hard drivers. Some of it goes back to my first year working in PR – in 1984 – at Ketchum Public Relations in Chicago.

To be honest, I’m keeping it all for now. But some interesting stuff to share in the meantime.

The Basics of Human Behaviour

Here’s an old snippet I kept from an article posted in the American Marketing Association, attributed to “author unknown.” I seem to remember they were originally written (or paraphrased) by UK leadership expert John Adair. Anyone have proof otherwise?

The six most important words: “I admit I made a mistake.”

The five most important words: “You did a good job.”

The four most important words: “What is your opinion?”

The three most important words: “If you please.”

The two most important words: “Thank you.”

The one most important word: “We”

The least important word: “I”

Stapled to the same article was this quote, from Stephen Covey. “You can’t talk your way out of something that you behaved your way into.”