Family/CommunicationLeadershipReflectionMay 24, 20160The Power of Words…Especially For Leaders

My hus­band and I play a word game that con­sists of fig­ur­ing out the neg­a­tive names and the pos­i­tive names for things.  Here’s what I mean:

• For large prop­er­ties owned by a sin­gle per­son or enti­ty: “estate”=good; “com­pound”= bad
• For some­one who behaves in unpre­dictable ways: “eccentric”=good; “crazy” = bad
• For peo­ple whose job is to exe­cute some­one else’s direc­tives: “staff”=good; “minions”=bad
• For a new­ly formed reli­gious group: “sect” = good; “cult” = bad

We’ve found that there can be a world of dif­fer­ence in the impli­ca­tions of using one word vs. anoth­er to describe some­thing. The two of us play this game because we find it fas­ci­nat­ing, but it also makes me think about how often we can reveal our uncon­scious prej­u­dices and assump­tions about peo­ple and sit­u­a­tions through our word choices.

And when you’re a leader, the pow­er of that is mag­ni­fied.  Let’s say you’re a man­ag­er, and you’re talk­ing to some­one about a guy that works for you who has lots of ideas and enjoys talk­ing about them.  If you describe his behav­iors as “enthu­si­as­tic” or “pas­sion­ate,” your col­league will have a very dif­fer­ent sense of him than if  you describe him as “loud” or “pushy.” Some­times, sad­ly, peo­ple do this kind of sub­tle char­ac­ter assas­si­na­tion on pur­pose — when they want some­one to be seen bad­ly. But too often, we do it with­out con­scious mal­ice, sim­ply based on unrec­og­nized neg­a­tive assump­tions we have about someone…and don’t real­ize the neg­a­tive impact it can have on them.

I was coach­ing some­one once who had three direct reports.  When she spoke about two of them, Emma and Joe, she near­ly always used “good” words. In her descrip­tion, they were for­ward-look­ing, inspir­ing, big thinkers, and risk-tak­ers. These were qual­i­ties that she saw and liked in her­self and in them. The third report, Damon, was very dif­fer­ent from the three of them, and she would describe him as old-school, slow, for­mal, and sen­si­tive. When I point­ed out to her how these words might come across to oth­ers, she respond­ed that they weren’t neg­a­tive words, and that she thought they were accu­rate. So then I asked her what impres­sion her boss had of the three, based on her descrip­tors.  She thought for a moment, and then respond­ed (I gave her high marks for hon­esty), “He prob­a­bly sees Emma and Joe as big assets to the orga­ni­za­tion, and Damon as OK but not great.”

“Is that how you see him?” I asked.

“Not at all,” she acknowl­edged. “He’s real­ly valu­able.  He reins us in and keeps us from mak­ing impul­sive deci­sions. We need him.”

Once she had seen that, it was easy for her to see how the words she used to describe him arose out of her feel­ing less com­fort­able with him and of uncon­scious­ly want­i­ng him to be more like Emma and Joe.  And how those descrip­tors might lead oth­ers to see him in a less-than-pos­i­tive way.  I asked her to think of alter­na­tive, yet still accu­rate ways of describ­ing him that would let oth­ers see the val­ue she saw. Instead of old-school, slow, for­mal, and sen­si­tive,  she began to talk about him as being pro­fes­sion­al, thought­ful, mea­sured, and con­sid­er­ate.

And not only did her altered descrip­tion begin to change her boss’ per­cep­tion of him, I noticed that she, Emma and Joe all start­ed to treat him dif­fer­ent­ly: to make bet­ter use of his com­pli­men­ta­ry strengths, and to more often acknowl­edge his contributions.

I encour­age you to think about how you’re describ­ing sit­u­a­tions or peo­ple in a way that might sub­tly (or not so sub­tly) deval­ue them in your mind or to oth­ers.  How could you describe them dif­fer­ent­ly to cre­ate more open­ness and appreciation?