In the fast-paced world of business and leadership, it’s easy to forget a fundamental truth: your team members are human beings, just like you. The pursuit of targets and the desire to meet deadlines could make leaders forget that their team members have feelings, aspirations, and vulnerabilities. As a leader, one of your most potent tools is your language. The words you choose can either elevate your team’s spirits or crush their morale. It’s crucial to understand that your verbal communication has a profound impact on productivity, confidence, and overall team dynamics.
In one of the corporate offices, Sarah, a seasoned project manager, found herself at a crossroads. Her team’s productivity had plummeted, and morale was at an all-time low. She approached her mentor to discuss the events in the office and how her team members were making requests to leave for other units. After listening to the sequence of events, the mentor gave her feedback: her own words had played a significant role in creating a toxic environment for her team members. This scenario, unfortunately, is not uncommon in today’s fast-paced, high-pressure work environments. It serves as a stark reminder that our team members are human, just like us, with feelings that can be profoundly impacted by the words we choose.
Similarly, there was the case of a brilliant software developer who joined a cutting-edge tech startup with dreams of innovation. He was indeed very good at his art. His enthusiasm was quickly dampened by his team leader’s constant barrage of criticism. He keeps hearing statements like, “This code is garbage” or “Are you really this incompetent?”. This made the young man begin to doubt his competence. Over time, his confidence eroded, his productivity declined, and eventually, he left the company, taking his talents elsewhere. The funny thing is that he blossomed in his new place, and the scenario further illustrates how derogatory words can have severe consequences, not just on an individual level but for an entire organisation.
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On the flip side, I am aware of a regional sales manager who transformed his underperforming region into a region of reference in terms of performance. His secret? He utilised the power of positive reinforcement. Instead of berating his team members for any identified mistake, he used phrases like, “I believe in your ability to improve” or “Let’s work together to find a solution.” He was constantly motivating them and pointing them in the direction of results. He accompanied his team members to the trade to meet retailers and distributors that were proving difficult, and he helped to solve the problems. The result was a team that felt valued, motivated, and empowered to excel.
These contrasting examples highlight the profound impact our words can have on team members’ emotional well-being, behaviour, and overall workplace norms. Derogatory language doesn’t just sting at the moment; it has lasting consequences on emotional, behavioural, and normative levels within your organisation, and it creates lasting damage on multiple levels.
In the next post, we will be reviewing in deep terms the impact of offensive words on emotional, behavioural, and normative levels. The emotional level is the feelings and personal values of your team members; the behavioural level is their actions and reactions to the offensive words; and the normative level is the culture, standards, and expectations in the organisation. All these will be discussed in the next post.
Oluwole Dada is the General Manager at SecureID Limited, Africa’s largest smart card manufacturing company in Nigeria.
