This passage is made up of clips from an excerpt of Robert Reich’s book Locked in the Cabinet. In it, he describes his tour through the L-S Electro-Galvanizing factory in Cleveland. As he takes his tour through the plant, he asks the front-line workers various questions to see if they pass his “Pronoun Test.” Do the workers describe the company as “they” and “them,” or as “we” and “us?”

“Hi! What’s it like to work here?” I ask the first person on the factory floor who’s running a piece of equipment, a huge rolling machine disgorging a continuous four-foot-wide sheet of flat steel. He’s about twenty, with long hair and a beard.

This is not likely to be a moment of brutal candor. The plant manager is standing next to me, the CEO is just behind, and the TV camera is recording the whole scene. We are bathed in an intensely bright spotlight.

“Oh, I like it a lot.” The kid pushes the hair out of his face, which is covered with pimples.

The plant manager and the CEO smile. Then I begin the test. “Tell me a little about this company.” I expect another flunk.

“Oh, we work hard here. We put out a good product.”

Hmm? I thank him and move on to another fellow down the line who’s monitoring a machine that lays a thin layer of gray liquid over the steel. Plant manager, CEO, camera, and spotlight all move with me.

“Hello.” I extend my hand. This fellow is stout, balding, middle-aged. He shakes my hand limply. “So, tell me about this machine,” I ask.

“This is our new zinc-coater. We got it last month.”

Two for two.

Five minutes later, I’m talking with a woman who drives a forklift, carrying steel coils to the delivery dock. I ask her about company-sponsored training.

She delivers this stunner: “We train everyone on a variety of jobs. Our goal is for everyone to know the whole operation.”

…

At L-S Electro-Galvanizing, worker committees do all the hiring, decide on pay scales linked to levels of skill, and set production targets. They rotate jobs, so every worker gradually learns about the entire system. More than ten percent of payroll is spent on training. And jobs are secure. Even during the recession, when its customers were scaling back, the company kept everyone on board.

…

“Fifteen percent return on equity. We’re growing twenty percent a year,” [the CEO] says… “This is the most profitable cold-rolled steel company in the Midwest, maybe in all America.

Jump forward to today.

A recent news story on the current elevation in the terror alert level quoted Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as saying, “You ask, ‘Is it serious?’ Yes, you bet your life. People don’t do that unless it’s a serious situation.” The headline to the story highlighted the “you bet your life” part of his statement. But when I read the full quote, the use of the word “people” stood out to me, partly due to the passage from Reich’s book.

This is a real nit-pick, I know. But I hear the word “people” used too often and too loosely to strengthen arguments. In my own mind, use of the word “people” just triggers a red flag when I’m engaged in either political or organizational-related discussion. To me, language is important, and it can help me predict an individual’s hidden attitude or motivation. Some examples of how the subtleties of spoken language can be significant can be given with a few things I’ve heard over the past few years. While none of these statements are likely true one hundred percent of the time, they are statements I’ve heard people say that help them make behaviorial and attitudinal predictions:

• People who say “people” in their arguments don’t have much ground to stand on.
• The tenants who are the least likely to pay their rent on time are the same people who always end their conversations with “Have a blessed day.”
• A job applicant who asks about money during the interview is more interested in money and won’t contribute to the organization.

There are others, and I could probably stand to offend just about everybody with more generalizations about what people say and what they mean. The point here really goes back to Donald Rumsfeld’s comment about what people are doing.

Perhaps the real intent of his statement was to say that we shouldn’t question the motives of the folks who decide where the terrorist alert level stands. After all, they take their jobs seriously enough and they’re not going to raise the alert level out of some political motivation. Not to mention, perhaps Rumsfeld uses the word “people” instead of “we” to mean that homeland security is a separate department from defense, so he has no connection with what goes on over there. The consequence is that there is only one way to describe “connecting the dots” — useless.

On the other hand, his use of the word “we” could go more along the lines of where my own prejudice lies. After all, Rumsfeld isn’t the one doing the work. So when something goes wrong under his watch, he’s not really responsible. Those “people” can take the blame.

Not knowing the mind of Donald Rumsfeld, I can’t really vouch for what his motivations really were in using the word “people.” Either way, for anyone who feels that language is important, it’s a troubling sign of where the lines of accountability lie within the administration.

There’s an underlying lesson in leadership, whether that’s corporate or political leadership. As someone in a position of leadership, it’s very important — not to mention, difficult — to not only become a part of the “we,” but also to allow others an opportunity to become a part of the “we.” If “people” and “they” become a normal part of your vocabulary, the leader can falter by allowing this subtlety in language become not only a part of your attitude, but also a defining element of the corporate culture.