The Power of Words
Best Practices in Communication for Lawyers, Courtesy of Winston Churchill.
By Talmage Boston
Among the most important tools in a successful lawyer’s toolkit is
the capacity to communicate effectively, both verbally and in writing.
Whether the person receiving one’s communication is a judge, juror,
client, or opposing counsel, for a message to have the desired impact,
it had better be direct, clear, trustworthy, and engaging. No one
touched these four bases and scored better than Winston Churchill.
Although not a lawyer, Churchill used his communication skills to
effect the most positive impact on world history in the modern era.
Exactly how he did what he did with his word power is worthy of
emulation by those in the legal profession.
Though there have been many biographies of Churchill, the New York
Times and Wall Street Journal reviewers late last year
agreed that the best of them all came out in November 2018, written by
award-winning British historian Andrew Roberts and titled Churchill:
Walking With Destiny. Roberts’ book is relied upon in this essay
for the accounts of Britain’s most esteemed prime minister.
Mastering the Theory of Rhetoric
Churchill established himself as a communication prodigy at 23, as
demonstrated in his unpublished article, “The Scaffolding of Rhetoric.”
Roberts believes it “showed that Churchill had already mastered the
theory of public speaking, if not yet the practice.” Over the
next 67 years of his life, he mastered the practice.
His “scaffolding” of rhetoric had five parts and should hang on every
lawyer’s wall:
1. Choose words with precision: Churchill believed that an “exact appreciation of words” should ensure that the communicator will engage in “the continued employment of the best possible word,” which he believed should mainly be “short words of common usage” to maximize clarity.
2. Craft rhythmic sentences: Although words chosen for presentations should be short, “sentences need not be, provided they have an internal rhythm.” Desirable sentences are “long, rolling, and sonorous” and phrases should “produce a cadence which resembles blank verse rather than prose.”
3. Build arguments that gain momentum: Power in one’s persuasion “comes with the steady accumulation of argument, bringing forward a series of facts that all point in a common direction.”
4. Use analogies to make a point: When a speaker succeeds in aligning two disparate subjects, it allows him or her to “translate an established truth into simple language.”
5. Extravagance can sometimes elevate: On occasion, to maximize the potency of one’s words, “wild extravagance of language” should be used because it “represents the aroused feelings of both the speaker and his audience,” and has the power to “become the watchwords of parties and the creeds of nationalities.”
Once
Churchill erected this theoretical “scaffolding” of effective
communication in his early 20s, he built out the rest of his lifelong
body-of-work masterpiece—as the remainder of Roberts’ biography
demonstrates—with his future speeches, writings, and statements made in
conversation.
Using precise short words. When complimented by a fellow
wordsmith on the high percentage of one-syllable words in a speech he
gave in Manchester on January 27, 1940, Churchill responded, “Short
words are best and old words when short are best of all.” As an example
of this short old word preference, in his wartime speeches, he used the
shorter and older word “foe” instead of “enemy.”
Following this precept, a few months after becoming England’s prime
minister, in a speech delivered during the London Blitz in the fall of
1940, he urged the British people “to look back hundreds of years to
similar moments of national peril,” and Roberts noted that in that
speech, he “found it helpful [as he reviewed Britain’s history] to use
deliberately archaic language,” such as his saying, “Pray explain”
instead of “Please explain.”
Crafting rhythmic sentences. Churchill created “rolling and
sonorous” sentences, with phrases that “produce[d] a cadence resembling
blank verse rather than prose,” by utilizing the rhetorical device known
as anaphora—using the same words in rapid succession. He did this most
memorably in his speech to the House of Commons on June 4, 1940, when in
his climax, he ratcheted up his countrymen’s resolve to deal with the
Nazi reign of terror:
We shall go on to the end.
We shall fight in France,we shall fight on the seas and oceans,
we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air.
We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be.
We shall fight on the beaches,we shall fight on the landing grounds,
we shall fight in the fields and in the streets,
we shall fight in the hills,
we shall never surrender.
Note that of the 75 words in this electrifying charge to his people,
64 contain one syllable.
Building arguments that gain momentum. In his famous “Iron
Curtain” speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, on March 5,
1946, Churchill caused the countries who had been victorious in World
War II less than a year before to rethink their perception of their
former ally, the Soviet Union. Presenting a series of facts about the
Soviets’ postwar actions, describing what they had done country by
country, he proved that Joseph Stalin’s aggressive imperialistic
ambitions were clearly aimed at spreading communism throughout Eastern
Europe and the Far East. Thus, just as Churchill had been the first
leader to warn England of Adolf Hitler’s evil threat beginning in 1930,
he gave the same early warning to the world with his Westminster speech
about the looming crisis Stalin was engineering.
Using word picture analogies. The capacity to examine a
complicated subject and simplify its essence by invoking an apt analogy
and doing so on a frequent basis using new (i.e., non-clichéd)
comparisons is a mark of genius. As a picture can be worth a thousand
words, so can an analogy. An example of Churchill’s showcasing his
command of this communication skill came a month after the United States
entered World War II, when someone in January 1942 suggested that he
continue to use cautious language in dealing with the U.S. as he had
done before America’s entry. He rejected the advice by replying, “Oh,
that is the way we talked to her while we were wooing her; now that she
is in the harem, we talk to her quite differently!”
Occasionally swinging for the fences with extravagant words.
Sometimes, when seeking an extra kick with his words, Churchill went all
out. An example of this came in May 1939, while he was in the House of
Commons, as then-Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and Viscount Halifax
failed to check Hitler and Benito Mussolini’s aggression in Eastern
Europe. In his speech, Churchill decided to ramp up his description of
the threat, thereby becoming a forceful prophet of doom if Britain
continued to turn away from confronting the Nazis: “To submit to their
encroachments would be to condemn a large portion of Mankind to
their rule; to resist them, either in peace or in war, will be
dangerous, painful, and hard. There is no use at this stage in
concealing these blunt facts from anyone. No one should go forward in
this business without realizing plainly what the cost may be, and what
the issues are at stake.”
How to take the scaffolding’s
five parts and make the final message as precise, appealing, and
persuasive as possible? For Churchill, there were no shortcuts. The
desired result came only after he had relentlessly edited multiple
drafts, and for his speeches, rehearsed them repeatedly. With each
pass-through, he improved his word choice and delivery. On a day before
Churchill was scheduled to give a major speech, a journalist visited his
home and reported, “All day he could be heard booming away in his
bedroom, rehearsing his facts and his flourishes to the accompaniment of
resounding knocks on the furniture.” Roberts reveals in his book that
Churchill’s practicing for a major speech was so intense that he
typically continued through the night and into the next morning.
Churchill’s theory and practice of rhetoric provide an exemplary
approach for maximizing a lawyer’s word power. Getting the most mileage
from it requires a commitment to extensive editing and rehearsal that
does not stop until the attorney knows he or she has made his or her
work product as perfect as can be.
Judges, juries, and clients
definitely prefer to process the messages they get from attorneys
quickly, and their rapid retention comes only from receiving statements
that have polished clarity. What’s communicated is more likely to be
persuasive (and not just merely understood) if the speaker/writer
integrates into his or her remarks as many of the five components in
Churchill’s scaffolding as can reasonably be incorporated, always
keeping in mind the context in which the statements are made.
The Need for Steadfast Honesty
Churchill’s eloquence, clarity, and power of persuasion made their
mark in history only because those who read or heard his dazzling words
knew they could take the accuracy of his content to the bank. Roberts
explains that Churchill learned from his dad, a leader in the House of
Commons, the importance of a statesman’s delivering an honest message:
“His father’s motto, ‘Trust the people,’ had convinced him that they
could hear the worst, so long as it was not put in a demoralizing way.”
The biographer explains why Churchill’s honesty paid dividends: “His
huge political capital in later years rested on the public perception
that he told unpopular truths as he saw them … The public trusted him in
1940 not because they believed he had always been right … but because
they knew he had always fought bravely for what he believed in.”
As World War II raged on, in line with the prime minister’s stated
absolute commitment to speak the truth, British diplomat Harold Nicolson
wrote of Churchill in his diary, “I must say that he does not try to
cheer us up with vain promises;” and his private secretary Leslie Rowan
wrote, “Churchill hated above most things civil servants’ polite but
insincere remarks designed to please.”
In describing Britain’s being on the ropes early in the war, Churchill
knew there was an upside to telling the truth about where things stood
that went well beyond the importance of maintaining credibility.
Speaking with candor inspired his people to do what it took to get off
the ropes. Roberts explains: “[H]e wanted Britons to continue to believe
they were under imminent threat as a spur to unity and
productivity.”
Learning from Churchill, lawyers should be mindful that ultimate esteem
comes only to those who earn a reputation for unwavering honesty. Using
the words chosen by Roberts as well as Churchill’s colleagues, attorneys
going about their business must always have the integrity to acknowledge
“unpopular truths,” make no “vain promises,” and never speak “insincere
remarks designed to please.” Honest lawyers build reserves in their
professional capital account over time when those in their network know
that regardless of what is said in good and bad situations, they can
always be trusted.
Churchill: Walking With Destiny author Andrew
Roberts.
Make the Content Connect With the
Audience
Finally, in attempting to apply Churchill’s art of communication to
lawyers, most know the adage about the three most important rules for
public speaking: Make it interesting. Make it interesting. And make it
interesting.
Churchill adhered to this rule by sprinkling humor, alliteration,
Scripture, Shakespeare, poetry, and lessons from history throughout his
spoken and written content. This frequently amazing exhibition of
wordplay became the bells and whistles that empowered him to hold the
attention of his audience. Roberts notes that Churchill knew that “in
the Victorian era of long political speeches, he needed to
entertain if he was to instruct, persuade and inspire.”
Regarding humor, he knew what worked. People respond favorably to a
speaker’s self-deprecation and his “pricking an antagonist’s pomposity.”
As an example of his self-deprecation, after World War II, Churchill
received many honorary degrees from colleges all over the world. At the
ceremony where he received one from the University of Miami, he
delighted the crowd by saying: “I am surprised that in my later life I
should have become so experienced in taking degrees, when as a
schoolboy, I was so bad at passing examinations.”
As for pricking pomposity, Roberts mentions the conversation between
President Harry S. Truman and Churchill that occurred shortly before the
1946 “Iron Curtain” speech in Fulton, Missouri. Truman remarked,
“Clement Attlee [who succeeded Churchill as the United Kingdom’s prime
minister in 1945] came to see me the other day. He struck me as a very
modest man.” Churchill retorted, “He has much to be modest about.”
Alliteration gave Churchill’s word pictures a dash of extra color. In
a speech on July 14, 1941, in the aftermath of the London Blitz, he made
clear his contempt for the despised Nazis with this final rat-a-tat-tat:
“We will have no truce or parley with you or the grisly gang who
work with your wicked will.”
Knowing most Brits of his era were churchgoers, Churchill knew that
integrating the Bible into his remarks strengthened his message. In an
article he wrote in 1938, as he recognized the rising threat of Hitler
and how defeating the Nazis might require the collective effort of a
“United States of Europe,” Churchill pulled from his memory a passage
from II Kings, Chapter 4 to drive home his point that England’s entering
into an alliance with allies to defeat the Germans would not nullify its
independent position in the world:
We are with Europe, but not of it. We are linked, but not compromised. We are interested and associated, but not absorbed. And should European statesmen address us in the words which were used of old, ‘Wouldst thou be spoken for to the king, or the captain of the host?’ we should reply, with the Shunammite woman: ‘I dwell among my own people.’
He could quote not only the Bible but also the Apocrypha. As he prepared his people for the German charge across Europe, Churchill gave this famous warning in a radio broadcast that paraphrased I Maccabees 3:58-60:
Today is Trinity Sunday. Centuries ago, words were written to be a call and a spur to the faithful servants of Truth and Justice: ‘Arm yourselves, and be ye men of valour, and be in readiness for the conflict; for it is better for us to perish in battle than to look upon the outrage of our nation and our altar. As the Will of God is in Heaven, even so let it be.’
Churchill’s scholarship
and brilliance sprang from his photographic and phonographic memory—he
remembered everything he read or heard. By the end of adolescence, he
had memorized many of Shakespeare’s soliloquies and scenes from his
plays, as well as a wide spectrum of others’ poetry. Throughout Roberts’
book are accounts of Churchill elevating his speeches and conversations
with lines from Lord Byron, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow, as well as Shakespeare.
In addition to using humor, alliteration, Scripture, and poetry to
enhance his communications, as an accomplished historian (he won the
Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953), Churchill knew how to use England’s
past as a way to inspire his people in the present. During the London
Blitz, in a September 1940 radio broadcast, he raised the Brits’ spirits
as they prepared to confront the dire circumstances likely to arise in
the coming weeks by reminding them of their forefathers’ heroics:
It ranks with the days when the Spanish Armada was approaching the Channel, and Drake was finishing his game of bowls; or when Nelson stood between us and Napoleon’s Grand Army at Boulogne. We have read all about this in the history books; but what is happening now is on a far greater scale and of far more consequence to the life and future of the world and its Civilization than these brave old days of the past. Every man and woman will therefore prepare himself to do his duty, whatever it may be, with special pride and care.
There are probably no lawyers with Churchill’s capacity to deliver humorous punchlines with Groucho Marx-like precision, create memorable phrases with alliterative word sequence, or bring into their text inspiring words from Scripture, Shakespeare, poetry, and history, and inject all of them into just the right place with just the right tone while still flowing in the discourse of the topic at hand. Nonetheless, while Churchill stands alone at the top of the mountain as the world’s greatest communicator of the last hundred years, the lawyer who aspires to enhance his or her word power should do everything he or she can to follow in Sir Winston’s footsteps and get as close as possible to the peak.TBJ
TALMAGE BOSTON
is a partner in the Dallas office of Shackelford, Bowen, McKinley
& Norton and the author of four history books.
