Head: (4.5 of 5)
Heart: (3.5 of 5)
Leadership Applicability: (4 of 5)

Dr. Frank Luntz has served as a communications consultant to top politicians and dozens of Fortune 500 companies. Named the 'hottest pollster in America" by The Boston Globe, he has supervised more than 1,500 surveys and focus groups in 24 countries and has engineered what have been described as the most powerful political and corporate campaigns of the last decade. Although he is partisan in his political views, his methods are non-partisan, and the lessons he teaches about effective communication transcend politics, media, and business.

You can craft the best message in the world, Luntz says, but the person listening will always understand it through the prism of his or her own emotions, preconceptions, prejudices, and preexisting beliefs.  "It's not enough to be correct or reasonable or even brilliant. The key to successful communication is to take the imaginative leap of stuffing yourself right into your listener's shoes to know what they are thinking and feeling in the deepest recesses of their mind and heart," he writes.

The listener's perception is always more real than the reality you think you are presenting. And in fact, that's what you want to happen: you want your words to inspire the listener to visualize his or her own scenario, whether dream or nightmare. The listener's own imagination is always more powerful than even the best movie scene, because it causes him or her to interact with the message, thinking and feeling as well as moving to act. Motivating others doesn't come from what you say, it comes from what your audience hears (and sees) when you speak.

Interwoven with many entertaining and instructive anecdotes about the politicians and business leaders he's worked with (in addition to helping the campaigns of the most successful Republican candidates, his polling firm has worked for more than two dozen of the Fortune 100 companies), Luntz' book is filled with practical, succinct, specific advice. He lists the most powerful words you can use-28 to be exact-with seven new ones from the 2008 elections in this revised addition: "consequences," "impact," diplomacy" "dialogue" "reliability," "mission" (but not "mission statement") and "commitment."

These are the words that work best with the current mood, he claims. Under times of economic stress and strain, people want leaders who appear authentic and genuine; in an era of mistrust, they want candor and truth. He also stresses using the language of everyday utility over the lofty and the abstract. He does present a caveat: your talking points can't be filled with powerful words with no substance behind them: "Language alone cannot achieve miracles.  Actual policy counts at least as much as how something is framed."

Luntz lists ten simple rules for effective communication, each with extensive examples from political campaigns and corporate brands, as well as his focus study research, to back them up. 

1)  Simplicity: Use Small Words.  Using a long word when a short one will do can cause confusion, raise suspicions, and increase the chance that your message will be misinterpreted or not absorbed.

2) Brevity: Use Short Sentences. "Never use a sentence when you can use a phrase, and never use four words when you can use three," he writes.  Plain and short will help your message sink in and be remembered.

3) Credibility is as important as Philosophy. You must craft your message with sincerity and without contradictions of accepted facts or perceptions.  Tell people what's going on and what you're going to do about it, and then do it.  "Few things are worse for employee morale than being left in the dark with regard to job-related turmoil," he writes, suggesting a 24-hour turnaround on personal, one-on-one questions from employees.

4) Consistency Matters. Find a good message and stick with it; don't change your major talking points from day to day.

5) Novelty: Offer Something New. If you can't think of a new idea, try a new definition of an old idea. If you're going to take your employees time away from work, tell them something they don't already know.

6) Sound and Texture Matter. Practice your speech or read your memo out loud to listen for rhythm and fluidity. Study some rhetorical and poetic techniques to jazz up your performance.

7) Speak Aspirationally. Personalize and humanize your message. Express your confidence in your employees; encourage them to want something better for themselves and then deliver on how they can achieve it.

8) Visualize. Paint a vivid picture of the future you wish to engender. When coaching an employee, ask them to tell you in detail how their life will be different when they reach their goal.

9) Ask a Question. A statement in the form of a rhetorical question can have much more impact than the statement alone. In the same vein, open-ended questions get your employees to think more than do leading or yes/no questions.

10) Provide Content and Explain Relevance. Always give the "why" of a message before you tell them the "therefore" and the solution. As for relevance, make sure the message matters to the intended audience.

The rest of Luntz' book goes deeper and deeper into each of these points, with chapters such as "Preventing Message Mistakes" "Words We Remember" "Corporate Case Studies," "Political Case Studies," "Myths and Realities about Language and People," and "What we REALLY Care About." Luntz has a dry, self-effacing sense of humor, even if he does tend to brag about his influence on the bigwigs of our time and his corresponding personal influence on history.  Reading this book is like having an insider track into the mind of one of the best communication coaches and spin masters of our age. Buy it.