Big Words Don’t Make You Smarter
I watched a panel interview recently and one of the panellists said that their use of simple language was a superpower, and how she sees that as a strength in her work.
Not long after, I received a piece of feedback that said: “you’re honest and clear in the way you speak (e.g. you don’t overcomplicate the way you speak which some coaches/therapists feel they need to do).”
And it made me pause, because there have been moments where I’ve questioned that, particularly moving from Operations in hospitality into coaching, and whether I should be using more technical language. Bringing in more theory and sounding a bit more like what people might expect. A bit more grounded in coaching theory, I guess…
I see a lot of conversations in the coaching and development space that are quite complicated.
Long explanations.
Concepts built on top of concepts.
Language that feels like it needs a bit of unpacking before you can respond to it.
And I understand how that happens. Thinking we need to build credibility, or using the language we were taught in a certification to show our worth, or para-phrasing something that we read somewhere. Or maybe it’s habit…
But it can really change how a conversation feels, right? Because when language becomes more complicated, people start to work a bit harder.
They listen differently. They pause more. They try to get it “right”.
When I started thinking about this article, I went down a bit of a research rabbit hole and found a study that backs up how the use of simple language is a super power.
A study by Daniel M. Oppenheimer looked at whether complex language makes people sound more intelligent. The name of his paper perfectly proves the point, because he deliberately gave it that title as a bit of a joke… and a demonstration: Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity: Problems with Using Long Words Needlessly. 😂
And the study found that the more complicated the language, the less intelligent people were perceived to be. The simpler the language, the more intelligent they seemed.
Which makes sense when you see it play out in real conversations, because when something is easy to understand, people relax and tune in.
In my work, that often looks like:
People speaking more openly, without editing themselves as much
Saying things they hadn’t quite found the words for before
Being willing to sit with something, rather than trying to move past it quickly
Those moments don’t tend to come from complicated explanations. They come from clarity. From language that feels accessible enough to engage with, rather than something that needs to be decoded.
Simple language doesn’t mean there’s no depth. If anything, it seems to create the space for it, because people can actually take things in, reflect on them, and use them.
So I’m starting to see this differently, and as something to protect. Being clear. Being honest. Being easy to understand.
And if you ever feel the need to sound smarter or more clever because of the space around you, it might be worth pausing for a moment and noticing what that space is bringing up for you… and whether simplifying your language might actually be the stronger choice.
Or, to articulate that through a more unnecessarily elaborate and cognitively burdensome linguistic framework… clarity works better. 😂
