For several years, Stella was known to her colleagues as a failure at just about everything she tried. In class she was always taking the last position. As a school drop-out who managed to secure apprenticeship in a small scale industry, she tried her hands at bead-making, then tailoring. She did not survive beyond eight months in each of these handicrafts. She enrolled once again in a notable business School in her State. She graduated as an average student. She could not fit into her first employment as the business development manager. She started a magazine but the business crumbled after eight months.
After several weeks of being jobless, she met an old friend who talked her into joining their small organization as a project supervisor. The salary was nothing to write home about but there were enormous opportunities. Most of all, Stella was made to undergo a compulsory training to sharpen her communications skills. The training was to prepare her to interact with the organization’s clients. This was an eye-opening experience for Stella because she realized what her problems had been all these years.
Stella grew up in an environment where people say anything, anywhere and anyhow. She was separated from her parents at a very tender age. Her exposure to a hard-knock life with her guardians left her with a ‘potpourri’ of foul languages. To worsen it all, she never took her studies seriously.
Well, all these were in the past because having realized her defects, Stella started to make efforts to change her life. Today, Stella is the President of a reputable Public relations outfit in the capital city of Nigeria. From grass to grace, you may say. There are many Stellas out there. They do not understand the impact of words on their personal brand and professional life.
The Stella story corroborates the work of a renowned scientist, Johnson O’ Connor, who studied human learning and achievement. His discovery posits that an employee’s rank on the career ladder has direct relationship with his/her vocabulary scores. Those who have stronger business vocabulary are most likely to climb higher and earn more than others.
Graded out of a maximum of 272, average vocabulary score for a President/Vice President is 236. For a Manager it’s 168. For a Superintendent it’s 140. Foreman scores 114 while Floor Supervisor scores 86.
You may call it an unfair advantage, but it’s a reality. The good news is that everyone can work at his vocabulary and build it. It’s not about your gene; it’s about hard work and perseverance.
When your ‘vocab’ is on point, you equally build your confidence and your conversation skills especially in official situations. When you give it a trial, you will discover how strong and powerful you and your business will grow in the near future. You’ll be amazed at how you have improved at your spoken and written words. It is all about using the right word at the right time.
Your Strength at business vocabulary can be used to predict your income. Come to think of it, when we meet people with good vocabulary, we automatically perceived them to be intelligent, efficient, diligent, articulate, experienced and successful. On the other hand, poor vocabulary can lead to embarrassment, loss of business, career retardation and so much more!
Therefore, we all need to build our words. Take a look around you, from the newspaper you’re holding and reading right now, to your television, computer, car and phone, name it, are packaged, projected and promoted by powerful, persuasive and positive words. Such words create hypodermic effect that spurs you to action. I am referring to words that build mental images and effective impressions in your mind. Such words make up advertisement, jingles and commercials that arrest our attention and retain our patronage.
Researches in brain science and Software have proven that you can enhance your vocabulary if you dedicate your time to it. More so, there are affordable tools & techniques that can assist you.
Get familiar with words by practicing their pronunciations and how to use them in sentence constructions. The more you use them, the better you’re at it.
Be an active reader. It pays to be a voracious reader. The more you read, the more you widen your horizon. It makes you a fisher of words. Spend time in acquiring new words; they are priceless assets that will keep you shining through the ages.
Take note of new words and their meanings. The dear old diary still comes handy. Write and carry them with you for reference purposes.
Explore opportunities to speak and exercise your newly acquired words. The more you speak, the more you get comfortable with words.
Eliminate undesirable words from your speech. When you have limited vocabulary, you become a victim of what we call pause fillers. These are unnecessary, meaningless and useless expressions that people tend to use when words elude them. They are intruders that take away the beauty of your sentences. Worse still they irritate and distract your listeners.
Examples of pause fillers are uuuhm, aaah, you know, and others. Exercise caution with jargons, clichés and other unacceptable or foul expressions. You must make conscious effort to positively and meaningfully close up gaps in your speech.
Your choice of words can make or mar your business opportunities. You are addressed the way you dress, truly, but I want to remind you also that your speech is as important as your appearance.
There are three traits crucial to effective communication of which you must require your vocabulary in order to achieve these traits. They are credibility, likeability and authority.
Writing on the topic “Why words matter as much as numbers in business”, L. J. Rittenhouse, 2013, recounted how Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos gave a mandate to every of his staff to write and read aloud an essay about their meeting agenda or product on a daily basis. The idea is to encourage them to build their skills in writing, reading and public speaking. Quite instructive!.
I believe that if you are curious and interested, you can improve your vocabulary. You can make it better than what it is currently.
CHIAMAKA BOBBY-UMEANO
