Articles / Leadership is Language Summary: Marquet's Revolutionary Approach
Development, Training & CoachingDiscover David Marquet's Leadership is Language key insights: 6 revolutionary plays, red work vs blue work framework, and practical language tools for modern leaders
Written by Laura Bouttell
Bottom Line Up Front: David Marquet's "Leadership is Language" presents six transformative "plays" that replace outdated command-and-control leadership with collaborative communication: Control the Clock, Collaborate (don't coerce), Commit (don't comply), Complete (don't continue), Improve (don't prove), and Connect (don't conform). This framework empowers teams to think and act independently whilst maintaining organisational alignment.
Former U.S. Navy Captain L. David Marquet discovered something remarkable aboard the nuclear submarine USS Santa Fe: changing the way leaders communicated changed the culture, transforming results and ultimately changing their world. His book "Leadership is Language" extends this revelation to business leaders facing the complexities of modern organisational life.
In today's networked, information-dense business climate, traditional leadership approaches often fail spectacularly. Leaders don't have full visibility into their organisation or the ground reality of their operating environment, requiring them to harness the eyes, ears, and minds of their people through collaborative experimentation. The language we use shapes not just what we communicate, but how our teams think, decide, and perform.
This comprehensive summary explores Marquet's revolutionary framework, examining how strategic language choices can transform organisational culture, enhance decision-making, and unlock unprecedented team performance. From Fortune 500 boardrooms to start-up environments, leaders across industries have discovered that mastering the language of leadership is perhaps the most powerful tool for sustainable success.
Leadership is Language challenges traditional styles of leadership and offers new language-based approaches to improve team collaboration and decision-making by shifting from a traditional "command and control" leadership style to empower teams to think and act independently.
Marquet argues that most workplace language remains a relic of the Industrial Age, designed to maximise efficiency, reinforce hierarchy, and encourage conformity. However, adaptability, teamwork, and diversity are more important to a company's success in today's environment than rigid command structures.
The book introduces six fundamental "plays" that form the New Leadership Playbook, each designed to replace outdated Industrial Age practices with language that fosters engagement, innovation, and collective intelligence.
Communication records from the sunken container ship El Faro show that collaboration and communication were not fostered onboard, with crew concerns that could have saved the vessel never given serious consideration. This tragedy serves as Exhibit A of strictly top-down leadership styles that need retiring in many arenas today.
The El Faro disaster illustrates what happens when Industrial Age communication patterns prevent critical information from flowing upward in organisations, ultimately leading to catastrophic failures that could have been prevented through better language practices.
At the heart of Marquet's philosophy lies the distinction between two types of work that exist in every organisation:
Red work is the doing work, getting stuff done - resembling active labour and time management initiatives, representing execution in its purest form. This includes:
Red work focuses on efficiency, consistency, and measured outcomes. In the Industrial Age, these tasks were typically assigned to "redworkers" - people whose primary responsibility was execution without decision-making authority.
Blue work is the decision work, deciding what to get done - suggesting creativity, planning and long-term strategising, centered on reflection and defining the decision-making process. This encompasses:
Blue work requires cognitive flexibility, critical thinking, and the ability to navigate uncertainty. Traditionally, this was the domain of "blueworkers" - managers and executives who made decisions for others to execute.
Marquet argues the challenge we face in the 21st Century is the creation of environments where, though we still have red work and blue work, we don't have redworkers and blueworkers. The artificial separation between thinking and doing creates several problems:
The traditional approach to leadership, what Marquet calls the "Industrial Age Playbook," was designed for a different era. Its characteristics include:
Today's business environment demands different capabilities:
Marquet's New Leadership Playbook consists of six interconnected "plays" that transform how leaders communicate and teams operate:
The Problem with Obeying the Clock
Traditional time management treats schedules as immutable forces. Teams rush to meet arbitrary deadlines, often sacrificing quality or missing critical issues. The Control-the-Clock Play resists the Industrial Age Play of Obey the Clock and enables the shift from redwork to bluework.
How to Control the Clock
Make a pause possible to allow for questioning, confusion, or vulnerability, ensuring leaders don't preempt a pause by making it challenging for individuals to question decisions. This sounds like: "We have time to do this right, not twice".
Practical Implementation:
Language Shifts:
Moving Beyond Binary Decisions
Traditional leadership often forces teams into yes/no responses, limiting the richness of collective intelligence. Rather than locking teams into binary responses ("Is this a good plan?"), leaders should allow them to answer on a scale ("How confident are you about this plan?").
The Power of Last to Speak
As the leader, you should be the last one to offer your opinion. This prevents anchoring bias and encourages genuine input from team members.
Implementation Strategies:
Language Examples:
The Difference Between Commitment and Compliance
Compliance focuses on following specific directions, whilst commitment involves understanding and owning outcomes. Rather than expect teams to comply with specific directions, leaders should explain overall goals and get commitment to achieving them one piece at a time.
Building Genuine Commitment
When people understand the "why" behind decisions and have input into the "how," they become genuinely committed to success rather than merely compliant with instructions.
Practical Applications:
Language Transformations:
The Problem with Endless Continuation
If every day feels like a repetition of the last, you're doing something wrong. Traditional work often becomes a series of endless tasks without clear completion points.
Creating Meaningful Completion Cycles
Articulate concrete plans with a start and end date to align your team. Chunk up work for frequent completes and opportunities to celebrate success.
Benefits of Completion Thinking:
Implementation Methods:
Shifting from Performance to Learning
Ask your people to improve on plans and processes, rather than prove that they can meet fixed goals or deadlines. You'll face fewer cut corners and better long-term results.
The Growth Mindset Connection
Focus on 'get better' not 'be good'. This approach encourages experimentation, learning from failures, and continuous development rather than defensive behaviour.
Creating Improvement Culture:
Language Adjustments:
Flattening Hierarchies Through Vulnerability
Flatten hierarchies in your organisation and connect with your people to encourage them to contribute to decision-making. Reduce the power gradient by demonstrating vulnerability.
The Power of Leader Vulnerability
When leaders admit they don't have all the answers, it creates psychological safety for others to contribute ideas, voice concerns, and take initiative.
Building Connection:
Connection Language:
The six plays aren't independent techniques but interconnected approaches that reinforce each other:
A new approach to leadership emphasizes the strategic use of communication and "oscillates between action and reflection, doing and deciding". The six plays help teams move fluidly between execution and decision-making as circumstances require.
Marquet reimagines the El Faro tragedy as if his New Playbook had been in operation: The Connect Play creates a culture where people can be vulnerable, can dissent, and feel cared for. Controlling the Clock allows crew members to raise concerns, viewing the journey as a series of decision points to assess conditions and respond accordingly. While on the journey, they decide to take a safer route. Collaborate separates the decision-maker from decision-evaluator, with the captain as decision-evaluator not letting his opinion sway the team.
This reimagining illustrates how the New Playbook could have prevented disaster through better communication patterns and decision-making processes.
The words leaders use don't just communicate information—they shape how people think about problems, opportunities, and their role in the organisation. Language creates mental models that either expand or constrain possibility.
Google's Project Aristotle identified psychological safety as the most important factor in team effectiveness. The language patterns in Marquet's framework directly create the conditions where people feel safe to speak up, take risks, and contribute fully.
In complex organisations, leadership must be distributed throughout the system. The right language patterns enable people at every level to take initiative and make decisions within their sphere of influence.
The concept of red work blue work was born alongside agile and the two work together. Many readers familiar with Agile will recognise similar principles, but Marquet's approach focuses specifically on the language patterns that enable collaborative decision-making.
Those familiar with coaching will see lots of congruence with coaching led conversations in the examples given. The New Playbook emphasises asking questions rather than giving orders, similar to effective coaching practices.
Unlike traditional management approaches that focus on systems and processes, Leadership is Language focuses on the micro-level communication patterns that either enable or constrain organisational capability.
Some critics note that changing deeply ingrained communication patterns requires significant time and effort. Organisations with strong hierarchical cultures may struggle to adopt these approaches.
Some readers may find the book's examples and strategies more applicable to hierarchical organisations or larger teams, though the underlying principles remain adaptable to various contexts.
While the book gets somewhat theoretical in parts, it does a great job outlining what "good" looks like and how anyone can do it.
Before implementing changes, assess your current communication patterns:
The New Playbook becomes even more critical in remote environments where communication nuances are harder to detect:
During crises, the New Playbook helps leaders:
As organisations grow, the New Playbook helps maintain agility:
Marquet's vision is helping leaders leave the Industrial Age language behind and use a different, "more blue" model going forward. The ultimate goal is creating organisations where:
The implications extend beyond individual organisations to society as a whole. When more organisations operate with New Playbook principles, we create:
In his last book, Turn the Ship Around!, Marquet told the incredible story of abandoning command-and-control leadership on his submarine and empowering his crew to turn the worst performing submarine to the best performer in the fleet. Now, with Leadership is Language he gives businesspeople the tools they need to achieve such transformational leadership in their organisations.
Implementation timelines vary by organisation, but most leaders report noticing changes in team dynamics within weeks. Measurable business outcomes typically emerge over 3-6 months as new communication patterns become embedded.
Absolutely. The New Playbook doesn't eliminate necessary compliance and safety protocols. Instead, it creates better ways to identify problems, share information, and make decisions within regulatory constraints.
Start small with your immediate team and demonstrate results. Cultural change often spreads through example rather than mandate. Focus on the plays that create the most immediate value in your context.
Address concerns directly by connecting New Playbook approaches to business outcomes. Many traditional managers fear losing control, but the framework actually increases their effectiveness by leveraging team intelligence.
The core principles apply across industries, though implementation methods may vary. Even in crisis situations requiring immediate decisions, the New Playbook helps teams prepare better and respond more effectively.
The New Playbook actually increases accountability by creating shared ownership of outcomes. When people participate in decisions, they're more committed to making them work.
Key Takeaway: David Marquet's Leadership is Language provides six practical "plays" that transform organisational communication from Industrial Age command-and-control to collaborative intelligence. By mastering the language of modern leadership—controlling the clock, collaborating rather than coercing, building commitment over compliance, completing rather than continuing, improving rather than proving, and connecting rather than conforming—leaders can unlock their teams' full potential whilst navigating an increasingly complex business environment.
The journey from traditional to transformational leadership begins with a single word, a different question, or a moment of vulnerability. As Marquet discovered aboard the USS Santa Fe, changing the way we communicate changes everything—our culture, our results, and ultimately our world.