The Power of "We"

Winston Churchill once said,

"Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all."

And, I can think of no better short and old word than "we".

I came to understand the power of the word as a strategic consultant to colleges and universities. You see, the president of our company understood the significance of phrasing every conversation with a client with this tiny possessive plural pronoun. He understood its importance to such a degree that he made it into a rule. No consultant shall ever use "I", we shall always use "we".

I was even told the story of how we stopped collaborating with a very experienced and senior external consultant because he could never live up to this rule. It was that important.

Why is "we" so significant, you ask?

Well, "we" has a quirky aspect. You never exactly know who is included. Which is nice, because it allows you to simultaneously mean you and yours, as well as them and theirs. It also lets you show that you are in the same boat as they are.

Any audit or consulting team that shows up and uses the divisive "us"-versus-"them" or "I"-versus-"you" phraseology is missing a huge opportunity to start a partnership.

When it is "we", then we are both in this together. When its otherwise, the client is left to assume you've got a different agenda than they. Any student of history knows that conflict arises from two groups having different agendas.

The other big reason to use "we" is that now we've engaged the power of "us". The whole firm or audit department is now standing behind you (kind of like the Verizon guys), rather than you putting all the weight on yourself. Who would pretend to argue with all of us?

Further, it means that if you've got to pull in a resource to cover an area that you don't understand, you've already telegraphed that the whole team is engaged. You look brilliant for having gotten all of us involved.

Sounds simple right? Well, it isn't. And, I've known some seriously top-notch folks who had a dickens of a hard time with "we".

The issue is that folks want to be able to make personal committments. They want to say (in lots of different ways) that, "you have my word." At least the best and the brightest do. Unfortunately, "my" and "we" are antithetical.

And it's an ego thing. We all want to put our stamp of ownership on what we do. Hard to demonstrate individual stardom using "we."

Now, it would be easy to suggest that I'm just waltzing to our new President's accordion, but I'm here to tell you that we knew about "we" before we knew about him.


--Prescott Coleman, CIA, CISA