The impact of language on leadership
03/06/2010, Author: Judy Bennet
I found myself musing on language this week having seen one of my favourite Shakespeare plays – Romeo and Juliet - and working with a leadership group of a large organisation. The leaders are aiming to refresh their leadership skills to drive forward their success after a restructure. No, it’s not the warring factions that made me link the two! Whilst there are inevitable areas where trust needs to be built this is gradually happening. I was actually thinking about Juliet’s plea that ‘a rose by any other name would smell as sweet’ -meaning that what matters is what something is, not what it’s called. However, the language we use has a huge impact - not only on what things are called but in the way messages are delivered. Time and time again in the work we are doing with our leadership group (who were giving feedback to each other about various proposals they had come up with to move things forward) we were hearing the old favourites ‘The problem is…’ ‘But we can’t…’ and ‘Yes, but…’ - and this from a broadly positive standpoint! Great work was being done but barely acknowledged (at least out loud). I’m reminded (once again) that working on behaviours with clients pays real dividends if you take account of the language and tone being used in an organisation.
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