The Thong Principle: Saying What You Mean and Meaning What You Say

Introduction

What’s in a Name

In the case of this book, everything.

The Thong Principle is a way of communicating and a way of thinking. It’s about, as the subtitle indicates, a way to communicate that works on all levels. A way of communicating that works for the person sending the message and the person or people receiving the message.

As participants who’ve taken my courses know, I’ve been talking about the Thong Principle for decades. It’s a way to remember what matters most when we’re trying to convey a message. It’s a reminder that how we convey a message is as important as what we have to say.

The name came to me after spending several glorious days on a beach in Mexico (or it may have been the Dominican Republic). One thing is certain, the sand was white, the ocean aquamarine, and the skies ablaze with sun.

Under the rules of this particular resort, cabanas could only be reserved on a first-come, first-served basis. A kind fellow who was part of our group got up every morning at five o’clock (bless his heart) and staked out prime territory for us on the beach. The rest of us awoke to find our towels, chairs, and beach hut ready and waiting. Here we would spend the day until dinner called us in for the evening.

As you sit under a dried palm umbrella, icy marguerita within easy reach, and a best-selling mystery novel in hand, there is little to do but enjoy life, fill your lungs with gratitude, and look up every once in a while to soak in the atmosphere. As I looked up, and walked the beach, it occurred to me that many vacationers were wearing thongs. Yep, the swimsuit with a single string in the rear.

Admittedly, many of them looked good, very good. Of course, when you see enough people opting to wear an outfit with less material than my cat’s harness, it raises a very personal question: Should I wear a thong?

After of week of looking and lounging, I had my answer. No.

Whatever carefree attitude, chutzpah, confidence, or complacency it took to walk up and down a public beach with your ass hanging out, I didn’t have it. (Still don’t.) Initially, that realization surprised me and disappointed me. I wanted to be the lighthearted beach walker who meandered blithely up and down the sand without a care in the world about my bare ass, who was looking, or how I ranked on the thongwearing scale.

I came to realize, however, that my reluctance to wear a thong was just that. Mine. It’s about comfort, physically and emotionally. I am not a thong wearer. I’ve learned to live with that.

I’ve also come to realize this reality is the foundation of effective communication. While you want to look good and sound good when you share information and insights, you also want to look and sound like yourself. Indeed, it’s essential that you do. Anything else will sound forced, unnatural, and suspicious. It will raise two questions: Do you know what you’re talking about? Are you being honest with me?

And that’s the thong principle. Rely on the material in this and other documents to help you understand the essential elements of effective communication, but understand ultimately, it’s about trust. Your reader or your listener has to trust you do know what you’re talking about. They have to trust you’re being upfront with them. If they don’t, whatever you have to say will fail to resonate. In fact, you may end up sending a message you never intended to send.

The thong principle isn’t about appearances. It’s about getting your message across in the way you intended with the information you intended actually being understood. Otherwise, why bother.

You might as well stay inside the resort and order room service.

CHAPTER 1

Speak Your Veracity Truth—and Their Vernacular Language

Participants in many of the classes I teach and many of the clients I work with tell me—apologetically—I write like I speak. It’s offered up as an explanation as to why their written communication often fails. In fact, the reverse is true.

Listeners and readers are looking to connect with a human being. If you don’t sound like one, they can’t connect with you. If they can’t connect with you, they won’t trust you. And the circle of miscommunication is complete.

We’ve gotten it into our heads and our hearts since elementary school teachers graded our first essay and announced we would have to give a presentation, that communicating professionally was somehow different from all the other types of communicating we do: having a heartfelt conversation with our best friend, talking to the grocery store clerk as they scan our items through the checkout, greeting a colleague in the lunchroom after a long weekend. Yet the people we talk with—in writing, in person, via Zoom, over the phone—tell us otherwise.

One particularly irksome culprit that gets in the way of clear communication is elevated language. This is us getting dressed for the Oscars when all that’s really required are comfortable slacks and a clean shirt.

So why do we communicate in a language that isn’t natural to us?

Two Reasons.

First. We often feel like we’re not impressing people with our knowledge, our skills, and our insight when we use everyday language. It’s too ordinary, and we want our subject or ourselves (or both) to stand out. Using language that isn’t plain will indeed make us stand out, but not in the way we intended or the way we want.

Second. We’ve been trained to write and speak like a dictionary wedded to a thesaurus. Once we hit junior high, then high school, then university, we were rewarded for our use of big words, long sentences, and repetitive thoughts. Fair enough. But this is an academic environment where pushing ourselves and our ideas is paramount. When we exit the hallowed halls of academia and enter the real world, the rules change. Our bosses, our customers, our coworkers aren’t looking for us to use words they have to ask Siri to look up or take 40 pages to tell us what could be said in 10. Frankly, it wastes their time, and it’s frustrating.

So what’s wrong if we use fancy words people aren’t familiar with?

Two Things.

Content. When we use words people don’t instantly and naturally understand, we open the door to miscommunication. Now we all think we’re bright (because we are), but the reality is that language is specialized and becoming more so. The language we use when we’re having lunch with a friend or picking out a puppy at the shelter is the language that comes most naturally to us. It’s also the language that is most easily and instantly understood by the person we’re communicating with.

Let me give you a famous example. When entrepreneur P.T. Barnum opened Barnum’s American Museum in New York 180 years ago, he wanted it to become one of the greatest attractions in the country. And he succeeded. Between 1841 and 1865, roughly 38 million customers forked over a quarter to set foot inside the museum. At that time, there were only 32 million people in America.

So volume was critical to Barnum’s success. It didn’t take long for the wily museum owner to realize that moving people through the exhibits quickly was essential for greater profit. However, visitors wanted to linger at the flea circus, gawk at the loom powered by a dog, and admire the glass blowers.

Instead of raising the price of admission to raise more money or have exhibit staff nudge people along, Barnum did what many great marketers have done over the course of history. He fooled his customers by using a language they didn’t understand.

Barnum posted a sign that read, This Way to the Egress. Well who wouldn’t want to see a magnificent egress? However, egress means exit. Barnum wasn’t directing people to another fabulous, outrageous, incredible display, he was literally sending them back outdoors. He knew if the sign read exit people would go in another direction. He knew if he used a term they weren’t familiar with, they would willingly usher themselves outdoors. One word and problem solved.

But that is short-term profit for long-term mistrust.

This Way to Comprehension

The reality is this. When we use a language our audience doesn’t understand—deliberately or inadvertently—we run a high risk they won’t get our message. And that’s the whole reason we communicated in the first place. If readers and listeners don’t understand what we’re saying to them, we won’t achieve our purpose; indeed, we may achieve the opposite of what we intended, and it’s likely we’ll have to communicate again. That wastes everyone’s time—and impresses no one.

Well, we could argue that if our readers don’t understand the language we’re using, they should look it up. Indeed, they could. But we know this: The longer it takes for someone to get our message, the more difficult we make it, the more work that is involved, the less likely they are to finish reading or listening, and the more annoyed they’ll become. Our job is to make our communication as simple and straightforward as possible so we can accomplish our purpose.

We also have to be realistic about our own language. We are intelligent, we are educated, we are articulate, yet our day-to-day conversation comes in at a Grade 8 level or lower, which we’ll talk more about in the plain language chapter. Speaking simply and clearly is the most efficient and effective way to get things done, to ensure our message is interpreted as intended, and to build that all-important trust with our audience.

Frankly, specialized and elevated language is not easily understood by most of us. That reality was tragically underscored on January 28, 1986, when the space shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after its launch. All seven crew members were killed. A subsequent review of the disaster included a close examination of a memo issued before the shuttle launch that warned a critical O-ring might not work—with lethal results.

Unfortunately, that warning was not clear to readers. The dire consequences were identified only after a long, wordy, jargon-filled introduction and even then, the warning was not heralded clearly. The tone and the words did not impact urgency or make it immediately clear the launch was in imminent danger.

Here’s some of what was said.

Bench test data indicate that the O-ring resiliency (its capability to follow the metal) is a function of temperature and rate of case expansion. MTI measured the force of the O-ring against Instron patters, which simulated the nominal squeeze on the O-ring and approximated the case expansion distance and rate.

At 100 degrees F., the O-ring