As Julian left, Aris turned back to his monitor. He looked at a draft of an email he was writing to his own estranged daughter. He saw the "I"s piling up like a wall, a testament to his own ego and his need to be right. With a sigh, he began to delete them, searching for a "you" that might finally bridge the gap.
People who are being deceptive often distance themselves from their actions, Aris explained. They stop inhabiting their own sentences. He’s not just hiding the money, Julian. He’s hiding himself from the narrative.
One Tuesday afternoon, a panicked executive named Julian sat across from him. Julian’s company was hemorrhaging talent, and he couldn't understand why. He handed Aris a stack of internal memos and transcripts from recent board meetings. The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say...
You use 'we' constantly, Aris noted, tapping a finger on a graph. But look at the context.
The most chilling discovery, however, lay in the emails of the Chief Financial Officer. The CFO’s writing was devoid of the word "I." It was all passive voice and third-party references. The funds were allocated. The decision was made. As Julian left, Aris turned back to his monitor
Julian sat in stunned silence. He had spent years listening to the stories people told him, never realizing that their smallest, most boring words were shouting the truth.
The results were startling. In the memos from the departing managers, the use of the word I had spiked by forty percent in the final months. Aris knew that an increase in first-person singular pronouns often signaled personal distress, isolation, or a sense of being under threat. These weren't people who felt like part of a team; they were people in survival mode, retreating into the fortress of themselves. Then, Aris looked at Julian’s own speeches. With a sigh, he began to delete them,
Aris didn't look at the complaints or the project updates. He ran the text through his software, stripping away the jargon. He was looking for the fingerprints of the psyche: function words.