A word about cliches

The world loves cliches. Speakers use them, and Facebook posts are full of them. But on many occasions; cliches that have not been expressed with some element of careful thinking. To the learned and the experiences; the statements come out as ridiculous.

Cliches are not wrong, and they are not bad. The reason why cliches are cliches is that there is still an element of truth in it and can help a person understand thought or an opinion in a condensed form. The reason why they become ill and costly is when cliches are applied liberally to situations or occasions that are not relevant at best or impertinent at worst to the vital objective of the message. Thomas Swan says: “A cliche is a hackneyed and commonplace expression, phrase or idea that has become irritating through its frequent use. The most annoying cliches are either meaningless or contradictory in relation to the sentence they are attached to. Further annoyance arises when the cliché is intended to be condescending, or confirmatory of an offensive remark.”

Leadership cliches are in abundance. I have learned from them, used them, and I have also heard many speakers do the same. But these leadership cliches should reflect principles that are practical and sensible so that they can be effective and useful.

Many leadership cliches do not make sense. Though the words may come out nice, we still need a little thinking to see if it would apply to our specific context and situation.

I wince every time I hear a speaker say, “Fail faster and succeed sooner.” Another one would say, “entrepreneurship guarantees that you will fail first for many times until you succeed later.” Sounds romantic and even gallant, but with my years of business experience; I will have to say that failure presented this way is over-romanticized.

Failure is overrated. Perhaps the speaker says this as a way to explain his or her entrepreneurial shortcomings. But the practical side of this is that nobody enters business with the sole objective of wanting to experience failure. They want to succeed, and they want to earn how to manage their resources best and make their enterprise profitable. Leadership, business and “motivational” cliches are useful only when they are practical and sensible.

The respected business philosopher Jim Rohn presents practical ideas on leadership. I collected his thoughts and have kept them with me and his practical principles have helped me not only in my entrepreneurial efforts but also in life as general.

I want to share them with you so you can see how practical and useful they are:

• Leaders must not be naive. I used to say, “Liars shouldn’t lie.” What a sad waste of words that is! I found out liars are supposed to lie. That’s why we call them liars – they lie! What else would you expect them to do?

• Leaders must understand that some people will inevitably sell out to the evil side. Don’t waste your time wondering why; spend your time discovering who.

• Leaders, whether in the family, in business, in government, or education, must not allow themselves to mistake intentions for accomplishments.

• Managers help people to see themselves as they are. Leaders help people to see themselves better than they are.

• A good objective of leadership is to help those who are doing poorly to do well and to help those who are doing well to do even better. As a leader, you should always start with where people are before you try to take them to where you want them to go.

• We must learn to help those who deserve it, not just those who need it. Life responds to what we deserve, not to what we need.

• When dealing with people, I generally take the obvious approach. When someone says, “This always happens to me, and that always happens to me. Why do these things always happen to me?” I say, “Beats me. I don’t know. All I know is that those kinds of things seem to happen to people like you.”

• And finally, we could all use a little coaching. When you’re playing the game, it’s hard to think of everything.

I hope you see what I mean. These statements or principles Rohn shared are so practical and dependable. They are not some wishy-washy “feel-good” throwaway lines that motivational speakers say that would not help nor add value to their audiences. Rohn passed a few years ago and is sorely missed, but his ideas live on simply because they are practical and sensible.

Cliches that last no longer stay as cliches but become wisdom statements. The thing is that we have to discern, which is which.

(Attend the two inspiring days of leadership training with Francis Kong. His highly acclaimed Level Up Leadership seminar-workshop will have its last run for the year this Sept. 10 to 11 at Makati Diamond Residences (near Greenbelt 1). For registration or inquiries contact April at +63928-559-1798 or register online at www.levelupleadership.ph)