Leadership Language: Why Words Matter

Nelson Mandela said, "If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart." Words greatly influence our thinking and leaders must take great care in the words they use. They aren’t just words, they create emotions in response. The words you use are crucial to clear, effective, and kind leadership.

Some leaders focus on being direct in what they say and forget to have regard with how it lands. They can be perceived as a bull in a china shop leaving a wake of damage as they go. Technically their words are correct and they struggle to understand why others are unable to get on board. Other leaders focus so much on how others will feel, that they forget to share the simplest and clearest form of their message and wonder why the other person isn’t following through with their request. Unfortunately, the other person walked away with a completely different message.

A few times I’ve worked with teams struggling with the toxic behaviour of gossip and the leader was frustrated in each situation that the team couldn’t see or admit that gossip was an issue for the team. When I asked the team members if they ever talked about a team member to others without that person present, they all said yes. I then asked if they ever did so and might feel shame or embarrassed if their colleague knew what they said and how they said it, they all agreed that had participated in this behaviour. For these teams, the word gossip was a shaming word that got in their way of talking about the behaviours and how they could move forward. By eliminating this word, the teams were able to move forward with constructive new team norms. Often, there are what I call “hot words” that can get in the way of effective communication and instead derail you and your team.  

Other times, I’ve worked with team members who are struggling with “violent agreement”. In a conflict, they are agreeing in principle on how to move forward on an issue but are picking apart how the other expresses the issues or the solution when in reality they’re using different words for the same thing. Once one person is willing to shift some of the words they are using, the agreement begins to come together.

Finally, words matter, but so do the spaces between the words. Avoid speaking just for the sake of having something to say.  Just this week I was working with a leader on giving feedback to a team member who tends to either cry or shut down when they receive feedback. We talked through strategies to allow the other person space to process and avoid rescuing them by saying something to make things better. This either leads to making the current situation worse, or by leaving the conversation with regret for not being forthright and clear with the other person.

Try changing up your language to speak to both heads and hearts and see what happens!