Why Your Language Matters: Four Ways Your Words Create an Underperforming Team

Even though it’s widely thought the majority of communication is non-verbal, and ‘actions speak louder than words’ you’re gravely mistaken if you think the words you use, don’t matter. Senior managers and executives are scrutinized more than ever by their teams. Unfortunately for us, it’s all too easy to do great injustice to ourselves, our teams, and our organization when we are haphazard about the words we use.

As leaders, you are also teachers even though your associates and employees can be highly experienced, qualified individuals. Part of your role is to steer them in the right direction and empower them to remedy mistakes or errors. One of the biggest errors you can make is not being tactful about how you draw attention to mistakes they have made.

“You did this incorrectly,” “You made a mistake here,” “You did this wrong”.

No one likes to be wrong. Being wrong means you’re acting against the systems and rules you agreed to follow in assuming your role within the business. It communicates ‘you’re incompetent’, ‘you’re not good enough’, ‘you’re careless’.

If you imagine being on the receiving end of such statements, you can almost feel the unpleasant physical weight of the words. Such language has greater potential to trigger unpleasant thoughts and emotions. Neuroscientific research findings show that when this happens, the fear center within our brains (the amygdala) signals stress hormones (e.g., cortisol) to flood our systems. Such language can cascade a domino effect of the brain automatically tapping into similar unpleasant memories of making mistakes. Over time, the unpleasant memories can become strengthened and can further result in a loss of motivation, decreased productivity, and a loss of willingness to care.

Targeted, isolating language used this way is the opposite to inspiring and empowering language (see Four Ways to Use Language that Ignites Superior Performance in your Team) which research commonly shows produces a more desirable performance from our employees.

With today’s time pressure to be more productive and provide better quality service and goods in less time, you rarely stop to smell the roses. With time constraints, you have become conditioned to reactively put out fires as opposed to proactively undertaking activities that celebrate and inspire brilliant performance. Your words come to focus mainly on improvement, making things better. This is not to deny that focusing on improvement is important. It’s more the absence of deliberate but genuine celebratory words that contribute to individuals feeling they are in a state of lack.

While focusing on improvement is central to a growth mindset, it can actually backfire if there is an inadequate balance between wallowing in self-congratulation and anchoring a positive emotional experience to a complete and positive accomplishment.

Effective communication is as much the responsibility of the receiver as that of the messenger. When you fail to recognize and adapt to the language of your receiver, you miss opportunities and in fact, everyone loses.

Let’s consider the human resources manager (HRM) who is trying to obtain buy-in from their company’s director to invest in soft-skills training for their senior executives. In conversation, the HRM focuses on how the skills will improve the communication and culture of the team. However, the director is focused on how much the program costs. What will the return on investment look like, and what fruit will it reap the business? The director who needs to dig and find their own answers to their questions when it’s the HRM’s job to reveal these will likely say no to the training proposal. Despite the fact the program will improve the senior executives’ networking efforts and prospecting of new clients, the HRM failed to emphasize this in a way that makes simple sense to the director: revenue and adding margin.

Opportunity is lost on all counts. Everyone loses.

Whilst emulating leaders you admire is encouraged to become a better leader yourself, parroting and demonstrating a carbon-copy version of your inspirations reduces your own integrity and appears false. The lack of authenticity can be sniffed out a mile away from the most detached, disinterested employee that you’re trying to be/emulate something you clearly aren’t.

Using words and language that are unnatural for you, you come across as fragmented. You make it difficult for your team to believe and buy-in to you. The most brilliant speeches become shallow when the words being spoken are not the speakers’ own.

You might think your team is weak if they can’t handle being on the end of blunt criticism even though it’s well-intended or isn’t as encouraging as they would like. Toughen up, buttercup! However, the more effective emotionally intelligent leaders play to their team’s strengths, observe and adapt to their team’s language, mind their Ps and Qs, and pay attention to the way their people respond to what they say.

You always get to decide which language you want to speak, but your team will quickly feedback to you what language is the better one to be spoken.