Why what leaders say matters.
Leaders’ words powerfully impact trust, culture, and business performance.
FACT 🙂.
Trust drives culture, and words inform a context for trust. These are not soft skills; a nice-to-have. They are the quietly humming engines behind great teams.
Irrespective of what the posters on the walls or marketing campaigns say, leaders’ words and their engagement style drive and shape culture, and culture is what drives discretionary effort. Just like you, most people want to deploy their talents within a culture where they feel valued and can make a real difference.
Culture is “why” people work for organisations.
Leaders have the power to transform the lives of thousands. They can create environments where people thrive, not merely survive.
Have you ever noticed that when certain leaders speak, people are inspired to do great things? Yet when others start with the blah, blah, blah, people dive nose first into Facebook, Instagram, or anything that can distract them from the blah, blah, blah. Often this is because they know all too well that nothing this person says can be trusted or believed.
When leaders choose to change their words, they start impacting cultures and recoding futures. This is the power of a leader’s words.
Talking about coding, I want to remind you that words are powerful data points. I shared my very enthusiastic thoughts on this topic in a prior blog called “Coding the Future”. So fear not, I will not be delving into the topic again; however, a few salient points must be shared, since we are deliberating leaders and the impact of their words, right?
Words = data
In this data crazy world, most humans need a little reminding that words, too, are data. They are the inputs into everything in an organisation. I certainly haven’t seen any organisations born out of and running on miming, hand signals, and dance movements. Yes, they may be unstructured or semi-structured qualitative data points; however, they are no less important than the much-loved structured, qualitative data we believe runs the world. Who runs the world? Data, data, data runs the world (I feel a song brewing, you?)
Ok, back to words, those unstructured qualitative data points (emails, conversations, leadership communication, collaboration), often ignored within organisations, actually drive between 60 and 70% of business performance Spoken & written words could make up 40-50% of total enterprise data, depending on the organization’s reliance on email, chat, and documentation.. Yet, most effort (and money, and time) in organisations is spent measuring quantitative data, even though it only drives 30 to 40% of business performance!
Structured data is essential for measuring productivity; however, it’s the highly underestimated unstructured data that has a far higher impact on driving performance, engagement, and trust. Imagine that data enthusiasts 🙂.
Why this matters
It matters because culture, brought to life by words, can allow organisations to reach entirely new levels of possibility. Possibilities that are not available from mere soap-box rhetoric. However, this requires that leaders stop having conversations only about the bottom line or how to leverage AI to improve performance and start having conversations about purpose and shared significance. As this happens, people start working together, leveraging collective insights to build competitive advantage rather than trying to convince each other of who has the monopoly on the truth, who runs the show (often without even noticing that no one is watching).
People are so damn tired of being told what to do, how to do it, and what they should think (often referred to as career preservation), that after many years of being bossed around, of re-engineering, downsizing, mergers, and power plays, most are exhausted, cynical, and focused only on self-protection. Oh, add the AI job displacement fear to the mix, and humans are done, medicated, and barely hanging on for the false promise of that “guaranteed” pay cheque as long as they “behave” and follow the “rules”.
Margaret Wheatley reminds us that we now, more than ever, need leaders who create an atmosphere fostering creativity, contribution, and passion. This requires trust, and as leaders, we are expected to do what we say, speak truthfully, and refuse to act from petty self-interest. Wake up call, people: no one leader has all the answers; everybody’s creativity is required to find our way through an ever-changing world.
An unknown future
When the future is unknown (and let’s be honest, it is a tad volatile currently, right), the quality of leadership in organisations creates a platform of stability for employees. Humans find security in leaders they can trust and who can connect them to purpose, not plans. As the world continues facing increasing change and complexity, how will organisations survive if people within them continue to have the same conversations?
Have we forgotten that, beneath the material trappings, meaning and purpose are the most powerful motivators to human behaviour, and people gain energy and resolve if they understand how what they do every day contributes to the greater organisational purpose. It’s leaders who have the responsibility of sharing this purpose with their teams, and the words they use when sharing it will either inspire people to go way beyond the job description or drive them further into silence.
Have you ever thought about how organisations are started?
Well, they are spoken into being; the words of leaders within these organisations drive life, innovation, and engagement, or NOT. Their word habits are creating the future of these organisations, and their choice of words is responsible for driving sustainability and value for both shareholders and employees. Employees do not work for organisations; they work in the conversations they are having about them, and these conversations are hugely influenced by their leaders’ words.
Wheatley believes that information is the difference that makes the difference – information shared across a system, ensuring continual re-creation, is the nutrient of the organisation. Only when information belongs to everyone can people organise rapidly and effectively around shifts in customers, competitors, or environments, and relationships are the pathways to the intelligence of the system.
Relationships are built on trust.
Trust: the quiet engine behind great teams
I love Wheatley’s comment stating that most employees do not drive to work thinking about how they can mess things up. Rather, they wonder how they can get things done despite the organisational craziness, the bureaucratic nightmares, the mindless procedures blocking their way, all within an environment (culture) where they are seldom even trusted to make or be involved in decisions that directly affect their work.
Only leaders can change this, and it’s their words that reveal whether they are shaping a culture that fosters or inhibits trust. Words that convey transparency, support, and honesty contribute to psychological safety, enabling employees to feel secure in expressing themselves, leading to higher levels of engagement, motivation, satisfaction, and retention. On the other hand, dismissive or controlling words inhibit trust, contributing to a toxic work environment, and perceived negativity leading to disengagement and higher turnover rates.
Language reflects the underlying values and culture of the organisation, and employees who feel valued and respected by leaders they can trust are far more likely to outperform their peers, contributing to sustainable organisational performance.
AI: the last word
This is a topic for a different blog; however, in closing with the growing focus on AI in business, culture underpinned by trust continues to play a pivotal role. A 2019 Deloitte study shows that business executives worldwide have identified organisational business culture as the primary obstacle to widespread AI adoption.
An AI-friendly culture has three critical characteristics (1) data-driven & analytical thinking (2) curiosity seen in innovation & experimentation (3) collaboration and trust.
Before I end, just hit pause for a sec, and you’ll see that curiosity, innovation, collaboration, and trust all depend on one thing – words, those unassuming qualitative gems, the real rock stars within organisations.