Sophistication. You want it. You need it. So, how do you get it?  

How do you project gravitas – that quality of refinement of displaying good taste, wisdom, and subtlety rather than crudeness, stupidity, and vulgarity? 

Step one – stop worrying about your vocabulary. According to the Flesch–Kincaid test, you’ll be communicating effectively with 80% of your audience at an eighth-grade level. Using fancy words doesn’t work; you’ll lose your audience. As Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel-winning psychologist, wrote, every unfamiliar word adds to the mental load people carry in their heads. If you keep adding weights to the load, the listener will drop everything and give up. 

You need to recognize that the sophistication is not about your words. It’s about communicating your thoughts with clarity and precision in simple language. 

Years ago, I had the opportunity to spend a day with Marshall McLuhan – the breakthrough thinker on communication. He explained that the medium is the massage.  

Decades later, I still remember that the medium is the massage, and I see the depth of those simple words more and more.  

Simple words, sophisticated thoughts. 

If you want to project sophistication, you have to distill complexity into words that are straightforward and memorable.  

If you would like coaching to help you elevate your thinking and communicate complexity with clarity and ease, let’s talk: