The Language of Leadership

Listen carefully. Your manager is telling you how he or she sees your relationship. What we call things tells the world the hidden truth about how we think. In the world of work, the language leaders use to describe their subordinates reveals the true nature of the relationship between them—the hidden dynamic underneath any surface politeness.
Why do some leaders describe the corporation as a family? Why do others use sporting terms (“We’re a tightly-knit team”); or military jargon (“This is D-Day. We need maximum effort from everyone”); or even religious terms (“I want everyone singing from the same hymn-sheet”)?
I don’t think it’s chance. What’s in your mind unconsciously expresses itself in the words you use—something Sigmund Freud pointed to many years ago that has passed into the language as the term ‘Freudian slip’.
Some more examples of significant leadership terminology
• Macho language and sayings come naturally to macho leaders. You often hear them talking about subordinates who “can’t stand the heat” or describing their own role as “kicking butt.” They love winning, in any forum, so they slip just as easily into the terms you would expect of any ultra-competitive situation: “winning is all that matters,” “I’m only interested in results,” or “he (or she) was never a contender.”
• Command-and-control autocrats love to use fighting terminology. If you hear expressions like “being in a fire-fight,” “taking out the bad guys,” or the need to “come out swinging,” you know you have a leader whose mind sees the world as a series of fights to be won and enemies to be vanquished. To natural fighters, winners are heroes, losers are beneath contempt.
• Speed freaks betray their obsession in rapid delivery and characteristic language. They constantly urge those around them to “cut to the chase,” “hit the ground running,” “give me the bottom line,” or “expedite” things. Nothing annoys a speed freak more than being asked to be patient or take time out to listen when there is action to be attended to.
• ‘Greed freaks’ always want to talk about money and rewards. They want to know “where the leverage is” and “what’s in it for me?” They demand to be told the benefits before they will listen to anything else. Discussion bores them, but they will spend hours poring over spreadsheets and projections. They also expect everyone else to be motivated solely by cash and are bewildered when they encounter anyone who is not.
• Habitual talk of teams, liberally laced with sporting terms and analogies, reveals the leader who sees him or herself as somewhere between team captain and coach. That gives the leader license to bully or weed out ‘weak links’ in the team, throw tantrums on the sideline, shout out playing instructions all the time, expect everyone to accept that he or she knows the game better than they do, and determine the ‘game strategy’ the whole team will follow without question.
• Patriarchs (and matriarchs) describe the rest of the organization as a ‘family’ and handle them accordingly. Like genuine family relationships, this can be two-edged. For every set of loving, caring and supporting ‘parents’, there will be the demanding and dysfunctional ones who try to control every aspect of family life, use guilt as a weapon, demand obedience at all times and treat unapproved behavior as the tantrums of naughty children, to be punished ‘for their own good’. Few people can be as simultaneously cruel and sanctimonious as a domineering parent.
Habitual patterns of language reveal any leader’s assumptions and their attitudes to the supervisory relationship. What you say shows how you think. How you think determines what you do.
Since these relationships are inevitably reciprocal, macho leaders demand timid, compliant followers. To a macho leader, anyone who won’t be led is a rival and a threat. Patriarchal leaders need to see themselves as the ‘fathers’ of a business ‘family’, so anyone who opposes them is going to be treated like a naughty, rebellious child in need of a healthy dose of discipline. Autocrats need disciplined followers who react to orders with a salute and cheerfully sacrifice themselves when called upon to do so.