To be precise with meaning, leaders have to choose the words they use carefully. If you’ve ever had to deliver a presentation, make a speech, or update your staff on the latest developments in the business, you’ll know exactly what this means: crafting draft after draft in the hours and days leading up to the event.

The words you use, the way you arrange them and the tone in which they are delivered require consideration. In your typical workday, expressing yourself also requires split-second decision making and imagination, and there are occasions where feedback has to be delivered appropriately to inspire change and new action.

One of the unique features of human language is creativity and using words to make sentences – the way you typically do this makes up your communication style.

Although it’s the most ‘visible’ aspect of communication, your communication style is the tip of the iceberg. It’s what others ‘see’ in a carefully crafted sentence. They do not ‘see’ your years of work experience informed by company culture and your world view and, in the case of the English language, how comfortable you are using a language that may not be your mother tongue. Your choice of words is influenced by:

• assumed and acquired beliefs about yourself,
• unconscious biases,
• your mindset, and
• the way you have decided to brand yourself as a leader.

Furthermore, when using language in everyday conversation, you’re engaged in a complex feedback loop of internal and external cues: environmental circumstances; prior behaviour in conversations with similar participants; body language; gestures; eye contact; and tone are all further complicated by whether the conversation is virtual or in person. We’re not only talking about words, sentence structure or syntax. There’s also how much you, as the leader, choose to listen as well as the quality of your listening, which will determine the quality of your response.

Effective leadership communication is a two-way street

When Setjhaba Molloyi, MD at Accenture South Africa, first entered the world of work, he says that communication was about ‘giving instructions’ to chase an end result.

Twenty years later, the word ‘agility’ is top of mind for him when it comes to communicating. How does he show up for work and ‘demonstrate’ this agility? Most days Molloyi wears jeans and sneakers to the office. It’s part of connecting to people, which is at the heart of effective communication as a leader.

Rather than telling teams what to do, he now chooses to engage with them through a lens of curiosity and learning. Instead of giving instructions, he communicates by asking questions which encourage team members to explore, find solutions and continually improve.

This perfectly illustrates that language is not so much what you say, but how it’s heard. Jasmin Pillay, Microsoft’s Director: HR Consulting – Middle East & Africa, is a fountain of wisdom on collaborative communication and language use.

She suggests these five practical guidelines for collaborative language use in the workplace:

1. Develop an awareness of words and tone. It’s vital to developing the people you lead.
2. Build trust. Both ordinary and awkward conversations are built on trust.
3. Use your company culture to guide you. It’s the foundation that underpins both personal or professional conversations with team members.
4. Shift from activity-oriented words to impact-oriented words. Action words and instructions will elicit ‘proving’ and ‘performance’ actions. Impact words will encourage them to improve and learn.
5. Use inclusive language and be deliberate about your choice of words and tone.

How this MD learnt to communicate bad news during Covid-19

What happens when your largest client is a major network of airports and the world is ensnared by a pandemic that stops people from crossing borders? MD of Market Decisions, Sheny Medani, had to make a series of difficult choices which dramatically changed the structure of her company. After the hard stop at airports in March 2020, her team of 27 experienced many losses: some lost their jobs; stability and productivity was also lost, not to mention the loss of loved ones.

Medani’s experience over the past two years required authentic leadership. Her ‘secret sauce’ has been to increase the frequency with which she communicates with both clients and staff. It also required her to intensify the humility, honesty and compassion with which she normally approaches her position as company leader to be able to provide the necessary support.

Grief literacy is one aspect of emotional literacy, something that allows leaders to view others’ behaviour and reactions more empathetically. Emotions like anger and grief are just that – emotions. A worker who is angry and perhaps overreacting isn’t a bad person. They may just lack the tools and skills to manage and express their emotions in a more appropriate manner at work.

The first steps towards a grief-literate organisation that can provide employees with the support and resources they need include: providing therapeutic support, reviewing your company’s bereavement-leave policy and offering leaders grief training.

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