I give credit to Shelly Alcorn and her Association Subculture blog for triggering this post. She wrote a post about “volume,” referring to a very cool video of George Carlin. Carlin talked about how, later in his career, he learned to “raise his voice”–not literally, but upping the stakes in his comedy. Elevating his voice. Amplifying.

I like the word amplify. I recently added it to my bio to describe what I do around leadership in organizations. I work to amplify leadership. That means working with a lot of people on a lot of different issues, but all with the goal of increasing the system’s capacity to shape its future. It’s certainly not about making things louder (for people on top of the org chart, it’s often about helping them be a bit quieter, in fact). But it is really about adjusting the volume. Changing what we spend our time talking about, and changing whose voice is heard. Turning up the volume on what was previously unspoken or whispered at the water cooler. Changing how you show up at meetings. There is a lot to be said for mastering the skill of volume moderation in organizational settings.

Image credit (and yes, it goes to 11)