Removing the agent from a sentence is a useful tool in business communication. Doing this omits blame or accusation, particularly in written communication where there is risk of misinterpretation. Tailoring your sentence meticulously and purposefully ensures that your question or statement is understood, but with little criticism or negative connotations associated. 

Hi it’s Fliss from Zen and welcome back to the Language and Communications Mastery Insight series.

Today I want to talk to you about the Agent in a sentence. And I want to talk to you about that because in both a spoken word and the written word, the Agent is the person who is responsible for whatever actions we are outlining.

And why does that matter in a Board Room setting or within business communications? 

It matters because there are very often occasions when we either don’t want to put our hand up or accept responsibility for something (on an individual basis or on a brand basis), or because we’re having to make some statements and we don’t want to be seen to be personally accusatory. We don’t want to be combative in our language. And it works just as well actually removing the Agent. It also works just as well when you’re communicating with your team if you’re looking at being empowering rather than disempowering. 

So let’s put this into some context.

If you think about the Agent, it could be 'we', 'us', 'I', or it could be a named person.

Bob, Jane, Freddie.

The Agent is the person taking that responsibility. So rather than saying, “Have you done the Board Report?”, “When can I expect a Board Report from you?”, you might choose to say “Has the Board Report been completed yet?” or “Is the Board Report ready for review?”

All I’ve done, I’ve very slightly pivoted that sentence.  I’ve taken out the 'you' and the 'I'.  And you’ll hear in that example alone, it becomes much less accusatory.   We're sensitive souls in business.

In past Insights, I’ve talked about the stained glass window sunglasses that we all wear.  Actually , we are primed and programmed to be triggered by what we may see to be critical, negative, or accusatory statements.   So by saying, “Have you done the Board Report yet?” (particularly in writing when you can’t hear the associated nuances of voice), I could very easily read that as a criticism of, “Well, why haven’t you done the Board Report?" or “You should have done the Board Report by now."

So, it’s much easier to say and to put the onus on the neutral third-party -  the Board Report -  almost making that the entity in its own right. “Is the Board Report ready for me? “ becomes much less accusatory. There’s no personal relationship between me and it.  It’s just a thing. 

It’s also very useful if you’re writing a customer service email for example. 

Perhaps I’ve had a very negative experience with a brand,  I’ve complained about the service that I received in a restaurant.  Now the restaurant manager could email me back, or could call me and say “I am so sorry that Sally, the server, provided you such a poor service”.  They could say “I’m sorry that you received such poor service”.  Or they could remove the Agent from that sentence (spoken or written) and they could say, “I am so sorry that you did not receive the service that you should have, I would love to do something about that.”

Now you can see there what I’ve done - I have actually gone from the negative, and the negative again, and actually into the positive. So what I’ve talked about isn’t what I received, which was poor service, it’s what I didn’t receive, which was the good service that I deserved.

Now the reason that’s important as well is there’s a collective identity.   We both agree that I should have received good service. So by going in there, we’re already thinking about the language of negotiation.  I’m going to cover this more in a future insight, but it's where we're already finding commonality.

So, just remember....when you remove the agent of a sentence, you take away the risk of blame, you take away the risk of criticism, and you also helpfully remove yourself (or a brand) from that quite literal physical connection with what’s happened. 

Let me know how that lands. Follow #ZenCommsMaster for more Insights. I’ve got some great stuff lined up for the coming weeks. 

I’ll speak to you soon, thanks so much.

Meet the Author

As one of the UK's leading experts in the applied psychology of language, Fliss has helped Boards, leadership teams, and c-suite executives from across the world to communicate with influence, integrity, and impact. A psycholinguist, voice dialogue, and NLP Practitioner, Fliss is also trained in influence and persuasion, and behavioural psychology, and is a certified empowerment coach and trainer. Fliss heads-up The Ultimate Advantage, a dedicated language and communications mastery coaching and training consultancy, as well as Zen Communications, a successful PR and content agency. She regularly speaks on all aspects of compelling communication and is a popular podcast guest.