Is What You Say Costing You Something?

In my life and in my Coaching practice, it’s important to me to share what’s been useful. My conversation with author, speaker, and consultant, Jack Quarles, definitely needs sharing. Credited with saving companies tens of millions of dollars by seeing process, strategy, and people in clear and productive ways, Jack’s professional life has led him to realize most of us have habits of expressing ourselves that can cost us dearly.

In his newest book, Expensive Sentences: Debunking the Common Myths that Derail Discussions and Sabotage Success, Jack explains how little sentences like, “I’m too busy,” “We’ve always done it that way,” or “It’s too late for that” can stymie progress, limit potential, and take us far away from achieving our goals. 

As a Communication Coach, I was very interested to read this book. Just from the cover, I knew I would find ideas I agreed with. What I didn’t expect, maybe due to ego, was how much I’d learn. Expensive Sentences is now a book I’m recommending, not only to my business clients, but to educators, healthcare professionals, and leaders of all kinds. Jack’s insight and ability to clearly and creatively express the problem and the solutions make his book an important read.

I had the privilege to pick Jack’s brain a bit when we spoke a few days ago. The first thing that caught my attention was his humility and thoughtfulness. Though, it makes sense. You’ll find his writing style matches his personality. So, I became very curious about what Jack hoped his book will accomplish both with individuals who read it and then their larger sphere?

Jack: My hope is that people will, maybe even from just seeing the cover [which is packed with examples of expensive sentences], start to think about what thoughts and words may be costing them something, and they’ll be able to make other choices. In business, families, and homes, these limiting ideas are just part of common vernacular. We all say them, and we let them blind us to other possibilities. I hope that as people begin to think about ideas like, “We’ve always done it that way” or “We can handle that in-house,” they’ll begin to see how those simple sentences immediately stop creative thinking and problem solving.

-- As Jack talked about this, it reminded me of an example he gave in the book about a company that was thrilled with a vendor for not having raised their contract price in years. Everyone he talked to gave that exact reason for not looking into other vendors. It turned out that, though the contract price had not been raised, it was far above what others were charging, and Jack was able to save the company thousands simply by opening thought to the idea that trusting something is good doesn’t always make it so.

One of my favorite concepts in the book comes very early. “Reality is always your friend.” This idea is one I work hard on for myself and with my clients. When you know what is real, what is true, you can do something about it. But don’t we all have moments when maybe we would rather not know? I have teen and 20-something kids. Trust me. There are things I’m sure I just don’t want to know, but being in the dark, or worse, being willfully ignorant, means I’m of little to no help, and I could find things worse, much worse, later. I asked Jack about his experience with this idea and if it’s hard to convince people that reality is really their friend.

Jack: I never try to convince people of anything. I offer examples of some expensive sentences and ask them to consider if they’ve said them before and if acting on those sentences has given them good results. Then I watch them think about it and laugh. They always have examples of times they’ve said something “expensive” and how badly it has gone in the long run.

Expensive sentences are deceptive. They give us the idea that we have a very good rationale for something, a solid basis for making a decision. But a lot of times, that’s just window dressing. You hear one of these cliches and think it’s true. Yet when you really unpack it, you find that’s just not the case at all.

-- This made me think about a much later part of the book that explains sunk costs and how to deal with them. Simply put, a sunk cost is time, energy, or money already invested. Once you’ve invested, it’s done, sunk. The problem is, many times we believe that because we have invested, we must follow through to the end of that process. For example, maybe you’ve already spent eight months developing a product only to find there is a much better way to do it if you start from scratch. The investment of time and funds may dissuade you from taking the better route, but why? If something will work out better in the end, shouldn’t we do it?

Jack: If I could get people to read only 5 pages of the book, it would be the section on sunk costs. I see that as driving a lot of decisions that businesses, families, and individuals make. Economists have a really simple way of dealing with sunk costs. They ignore them. The problem is, in real life, we don’t ignore them. We’re terrible at it, which has been proven in many academic studies. And you can think of instances in your own life when you’ve continued in a direction just because you were already headed that way.

So one of the tips I give in the book is that it’s not about ignoring sunk costs. What we need to do is actively reject them and realize, hey maybe I’m making these decisions simply because of my current trajectory. I need to actively step back and say, “OK, if I’m starting over now, where would I go, and what decision would I make.” And that’s usually going to be the right choice. It’s not because the past is irrelevant. You learn things from the past, and you acquire things from the past. But you don’t want your past decisions to be closing you in, chaining you to some future that isn’t the best for you.

-- This led me to bring up Jack’s section on trust, where he unpacks the expensive sentence, “We trust them.” I found these to be my personal favorite pages. We want to trust those we hire, those we work with, the vendors and experts we employ, and we should. But sometimes we make the mistake of concluding that our trust of someone means we should not communicate our ideas, requirements, or questions. “They are the expert, and I trust them. So I won’t check in on them.” “I hired them to do their job, and I trust they will. So I won’t get more detailed about the project.”

As Jack explains it, though we may be trying to express our trust, we may actually be setting someone up to fail.

Jack: People find that I count “We trust them” as an expensive sentence to be alarming because trust is a good thing. But trust is not monolithic. We’ve got to look at the different elements of trust. For one thing, we all think we are better communicators that we are. As mature adults, we’ve got to admit that what we think we’ve communicated, what we are sure we got through to someone, isn’t always what they hear and understand. The words I’m using, that I’m sure are clear, may actually not be connected at all to the construct I have in my brain. So communication is an area where we are probably better off trusting less.

That means we have someone, an employee, a vendor, a partner, a friend, trying to come in and do something for us, and we have a responsibility to them to be clear. It’s not obnoxious to over communicate what we want, to kind of micromanage a little bit to be sure they understand. Really, to ensure the expectations are very clear, to be sure we understand each other, is doing that other person a favor. Then they know what’s expected. They know how to proceed, and there is a much better chance that they’ll be successful. There are gracious ways to offer all the details of our preferences and requirements. So we need to view being clear and detailed as a kindness. Being more structured and communicative than we are used to allows us to get the results we hope for. That’s good for everyone.

-- There was much more to the conversation Jack and I had, but you’ll find all the ideas, and an excellent explanation of them, in his book. Expensive Sentences resonated with me as deeply useful, certainly in business where the cost of limited thinking is obvious, but also in any relationship. The universal nature of Jack’s ideas is a big reason I’m recommending everyone I know buy and read his book. Honestly, my habitual thinking was costing me too much. Thanks to Jack Quarles and Expensive Sentences, I now have ways to limit that expense with the potential to improve all of my personal and professional investments.