Lisa Earle McLeod* advises bosses to remember the power their utterances can have with subordinates and temper their remarks accordingly.
When the leader speaks, what is the team thinking?
Think about your own mental talk track, what are you thinking about when someone of importance is speaking?
When the boss stands in front of the team to lay out strategy or report results, the listeners process the information on two levels.
First, what is the boss saying?
Second, what does it really mean? Or more specifically, what does it mean for me?
When someone is in power, whether it’s the chief executive or the shift supervisor in a restaurant, employees make it their business to figure out the boss.
I work with a lot of chief executives and they’re often surprised at how their people perceive them.
Every word the boss says has elevated meaning simply because they’re the boss.
If the boss is quiet, people will read into that.
If the boss is chatty, or happy, or grumpy, or you fill in the blank, people will make assumptions about that.
Employees can attribute strategic intent to even the most innocuous comments.
For example, I’ve seen a chief executive make an offhand remark about a power point or report.
Within a week, one small comment becomes a corporate edict.
The entire organisation is running in circles making changes trying to please the boss.
Half the time the boss doesn’t even know she or he was perceived as requesting a change.
One of my favourite leaders, former Chief Executive of Popeye, Cheryl Bachelder says the people know your motives, whether you know them or not.
During her tenure at Popeye, Ms Bachelder made a point to be transparent with her team.
She recognised what many leaders don’t — if you don’t tell your team what your motives are, they’re going to start guessing.
One of the challenges chief executives face is that they have to be so careful in their language they often lose their authenticity.
Part our work is to help leaders emotionally engage with their teams.
Sometimes it’s as simple as providing the leader with a forum to be their true self.
During a recent project, I interviewed the chief executive of the organisation for a ‘fireside chat’ during a company town hall meeting.
Instead of talking about the numbers or the plan, we took a different route.
I asked him why he got into the business, what were his biggest career stumbles, and why did he care about the business?
He didn’t have to worry about hitting the next point, or making sure he covered a specific subject, that was my job.
So he relaxed, and his true self emerged.
It was transformational.
You could see the employees lean in and connect with their boss on a whole new level.
When he talked about his early career and why he cared about the organisation he connected with his team in a deeper more authentic way than he had in the past.
When the team understands the boss’s motivation, and who he or she really is, they no longer have to guess what things mean. They know.
When the leader speaks, they don’t need a second mental track to process the boss’s intent, they already understand it.
If you’re the boss, people want to know who you are, why you’re there, and what you really want.
Make it easy on everyone, just tell them.
*Lisa Earle McLeod is best known for creating the popular business concept ‘Noble Purpose’. She is the author of Selling with Noble Purpose and Leading with Noble Purpose and can be contacted at mcleodandmore.com.
This article first appeared on Lisa’s blogsite
