Tales of Great Teaching
ACTIVE VOICE
The Grammar of Leadership
By Professor Michael Harvey
 ON
THE STORMY, ANXIOUS DAY of June 5, 1944, as a vast Allied armada
steamed toward the beaches of Normandy, Dwight Eisenhower, the
invasion’s commanding officer, wrote a short press release:
Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain
a satisfactory foothold and the troops have been withdrawn.
This particular operation was based upon the best information
available, and the troops, the air and the navy did all that
I asked. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is
mine alone.
As it turns out, the simple and succinct message was not needed.
The weather moderated, the landings worked, and the liberation
of Europe began. But the “failure message,” now
preserved at the Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum
in Abilene, Kansas, lets us see how a great leader like Eisenhower
chose to talk about adversity. There are certainly other choices
leaders can make. The simplest choice is avoidance: George W.
Bush, for instance, in his recent Second Inaugural Address—in
many ways a soaring and memorable speech about the power of
freedom—simply avoided any mention of Iraq, preferring
to stick with glittering generalities about liberty. (Over time,
I suspect, this will come to be seen as a profound weakness
in an otherwise powerful speech.)
In my little book on writing, I tell college students that it’s
important to write clearly, and in particular to be clear about
“who is doing what.” Of course it’s one thing
to tell students this—but how do you make them care?
One way, I think, is to show that clarity about “who is
doing what” goes beyond esthetics or elegance or even,
dare I say it, grades: Clarity goes to the ethical heart of
persuasion. There are many ways that great leaders communicate—through
attention to the rhythm and the sound of words, through rhetorical
tropes like parallelism, alliteration and repetition, and through
the ability to draw on their listeners’ hopes, fears,
memories and values. But one of the most important and powerful
ways that leaders communicate is through a grammar of leadership
that is clear about identities and actions:
• Martin Luther, before the Emperor Charles V (1521):
“Here I stand; I can do no other.”1
• Queen Elizabeth, as the Spanish Armada approached England
(1588): “I myself will take up arms.”
• Susan B. Anthony (1897): “There never will be
complete equality until women themselves help to make laws and
elect lawmakers.”
• Nelson Mandela (1964): “I have fought against
white domination, and I have fought against black domination.
I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society
in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal
opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to
achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared
to die.”
IDENTITIES. In 1801, the inauguration of Thomas Jefferson as
America’s third president was overshadowed by the bitter
struggle between Jefferson’s Democratic Republicans and
the rival Federalists led by John Adams and Alexander Hamilton.
In his inaugural address, Jefferson used the grammar of identity
to appeal for unity: “We are all republicans; we are all
federalists.” A century and a half later, at the height
of the Cold War in 1963, America’s thirty-fifth president,
John F. Kennedy, made a similar use of the grammar of identity
in his famous speech in West Berlin: “All free men, wherever
they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and therefore, as a free
man, I take pride in the words, ‘Ich bin ein Berliner.’”
The grammar of identity can also be used destructively, to assign
blame for failure. Shakespeare, in his great play Henry V, shows
us both uses. The play’s arrogant and out-of-touch French
nobles use identity to distance themselves from failure in one
battle. “Normans, but bastard Normans, Norman bastards!”
cries the Duke of Britaine, blaming his men rather than his
poor leadership for defeat (3.5.10). Later in the play, just
before the climactic battle of Agincourt, Shakespeare gave Henry
one of the most powerful examples of how a leader can make use
of the grammar of identity, as the young English king seeks
to rally his outnumbered men: “We few, we happy few, we
band of brothers, / For he today that sheds his blood with me
/ Shall be my brother” (4.3.61-3).
Just as powerful, perhaps, is how Sojourner Truth, the great
American advocate of freedom, used the grammar of identity.
Born a slave, Truth became a powerful advocate for abolition
and women’s rights. At a convention in 1851 she turned
an attack on women into a ringing assertion of powerful identity:
That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages,
and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere.
Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or
gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman? Look at
me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered
into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman?
I could work as much and eat as much as a man—when I could
get it—and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a
woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold
off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s
grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman?
Interweaving her identity—asserted in the repeated rhetorical
question—and her actions—described in hammer-strokes
of verbs (ploughed, planted, gathered, work, eat, bear, borne,
cried out)—Truth changed her listeners’ understanding
of what a woman is, and does.
ACTION. The second key element in the grammar of leadership
is action. For good communicators, that means active verbs.
Julius Caesar wanted to portray himself as decisive, effective,
swift: “Veni, vidi, vici” (“I came, I saw,
I conquered”). More typically, the leader talks about
action in the future, laying out a vision of what a united group
can achieve. A classic example comes from Martin Luther King,
Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech (1963):
This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this
faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair
a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform
the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony
of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together,
to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together,
to stand up for freedom together. . . .
As King’s verbs show, the plainest and strongest way to
describe action is usually the active voice, where a clause’s
subject does the action (I hit the ball, rather than the passive-voice
The ball was hit). But while I tell my students to develop an
active-voice bias, the active voice is not always the best choice.
In a December 2004 speech, Dubai’s Crown Prince, insisting
on the need for political reform in the Arab world, deftly combined
active and passive voice statements: “I say to my fellow
Arab [rulers]: If you do not change, you will be changed.”
The change in voice underscores the prince’s message,
that his fellow rulers have only a limited time in which to
act.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt employed a similar strategy
of weaving together passive and active voice in his great Pearl
Harbor address (1941). He began with the passive voice, to emphasize
America’s innocence:
Yesterday, Dec. 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the
United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked
by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.
Then, matching his grammar to his message of Japan’s perfidy,
FDR turned to the active voice:
Yesterday, the Japanese government also launched an attack against
Malaya. Last night, Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong. Last
night, Japanese forces attacked Guam. Last night, Japanese forces
attacked the Philippine Islands. Last night, the Japanese attacked
Wake Island. This morning, the Japanese attacked Midway Island.
Japan has, therefore, undertaken a surprise offensive extending
throughout the Pacific area.
And at the end of the speech, affirming his faith that America
would ultimately triumph, Roosevelt turned naturally to the
active voice again, this time cast in the leader’s favorite
tense, the future: “The American people in their righteous
might will win through to absolute victory.”
AVOIDANCE. It takes courage for leaders (and indeed the rest
of us!) to speak and write plainly. Examples of leaders avoiding
plainness abound. The classic example is “Mistakes were
made,” and the classic text remains George Orwell’s
essay “Politics and the English Language.” But here
are a few other examples worth glancing at. One of my favorites
comes from the Bible. Aaron is Moses’ brother and second-in-command,
but he utterly lacks his brother’s authority. When Moses
descends Mount Sinai bearing the Ten Commandments (themselves
a model of lucid, clear, simple language), he finds that all
heck has broken out among the Israelites—dancing, drinking,
idol-worship (think of your average WC residence hall on a Friday
night—eh, just kidding, parents). Moses has some questions
for his brother: What on earth happened? Where did this horrid
golden calf figurine come from? Aaron, squirming under his brother’s
angry attention, tries desperately to conjure up some person
or force—anybody but him—responsible:
And Aaron said, “Let not the anger of my lord burn hot;
you know the people, that they are set on evil. For they said
to me, ‘Make us gods, who shall go before us; as for this
Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we
do not know what has become of him.’ And I said to them,
‘Let any who have gold take it off’; so they gave
it to me, and I threw it into the fire, and there came out this
calf.” (Exodus 32:21-24, RSV)
“There came out this calf.” If you want, you can
try a similar tactic next time you have to face the music: “That
number filled itself in!” . . . “That memo went
and hid itself!” . . . “My car just started speeding,
officer!”
A slightly different tactic for avoiding the glare that a simple
“I did it” can bring was employed in March 2004
by Senator John Kerry. Kerry, trying to explain his, um, nuanced
stance on Iraq, tried to present himself as a model of action
while giving himself some wiggle room: “I actually did
vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.” Not
as memorable as Aaron, perhaps, but still a pretty good effort
at avoiding clarity. We should remember that rather than protect
Kerry, this line became a lightning rod for criticism of his
inconsistency and lack of principle: Words do matter, and it
is part of our responsibility as citizens to pay close attention
to how leaders use them.
CONCLUSION. We began with Dwight Eisenhower’s short message
in case the D-Day invasion failed. But there’s more to
the story. Eisenhower, an accomplished writer, was not satisfied
with his initial effort. Even with the anxiety of the landings
pressing on him, he took pains to rewrite the message. Here
is his final draft:
Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain
a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My
decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the
best information available. The troops, the air and the navy
did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame
or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.
This is how an inspired leader communicates. When he was talking
about failure, Eisenhower increased his own grammatical role:
the troops have been withdrawn became I have withdrawn the troops.
This particular operation became My decision. And when he wanted
to call attention to how his men fought, he reduced his grammatical
role: all that I asked became all that bravery and devotion
to duty could do. These changes simplify the passage. But more
importantly, they clarify our understanding of the action, of
”who did what.” It takes courage to write and speak
like this—but I tell my students that if a general can
do this on the eve of a great battle, so can they when they
write a paper for me. Michael Harvey is an associate professor
and chair of the Business Management Department. His research
and teaching focus on leadership, literature, and language.
He is the author of The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing (2003),
published by Hackett. This semester he is teaching a freshman
seminar on leadership in literature and art.
(Footnotes)
1 It is unknown whether Luther actually uttered these words,
or whether an inspired chronicler added them later on.
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