Diction and the entrepreneur – an editorial

Many people believe that a businessman doesn’t need good diction in order to succeed. This belief ignores an important fact: most people judge you by your diction. Fairly or unfairly, they assume that if you are indolent in your diction you are indolent in everything.

For example, a journalist asked a venture capitalist what kind of speech or behavior marks an entrepreneur as an amateur. The venture capitalist answered, “Entrepreneurs shouldn’t overly use buzzwords to describe the business. ‘We have a cloud-enabled, big data, social graph platform...’ ”

Keep in mind, the man who gave that answer can make or break an entrepreneur who comes to him seeking funds. And yet, as his answer suggests, many of these seekers do not bother to present themselves as diligent grown-ups.

The Takeaway: People judge you by your diction. They don’t just judge your diction; they also judge your character. Need I say more?

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