Leadership communication decides more than most leaders assume. A leader’s choice of words shapes the mood of the team, how people read the situation and, in the end, how they perform. The words are usually chosen in seconds and remembered for months.
In April 2023, Forbes asked 16 members of the Coaches Council how leaders can use language more mindfully and why their effect depends on how people perceive their words. I was one of them. Here are the 16 tips as I read them today.
One pattern across the answers: Almost every tip is about the receiver. What the leader meant counts for little. What the team heard counts for everything.
Angela C. Hill names three qualities: Clear, inclusive, open to feedback. Inclusive means language that shows respect for every team member and avoids anything that excludes. Leaders who stay open to feedback keep improving how they talk, because the team tells them where it lands wrong.
Adriana Kosovska adjusts style and word choice to intention, audience and outcome. Target setting is her example: What does the team need to hear to read key performance indicators as goals worth having and as room to grow? Jargon hides that. Plain words show it.
Glenn Taylor asks leaders to pause a few beats before they speak or reply. The pause makes the answer deliberate. Without it, people communicate impulsively or with too much emotion and come across as abrasive, reactive or unclear.
Jennifer Carrasco points to the obvious that still gets missed: No offensive language, no sweeping generalisations about groups of people. Miss it, and trust between leader and team breaks; people feel unsupported and disrespected, and they stop telling you things.
Neena Newberry shifts the focus from the risks you want to avoid to the outcome you want and why. The energy follows, and so does how you show up in the conversation. Focus on what worries you instead, and you hesitate, overthink and seem less than genuine.
Dorota Klop-Sowinska reminds leaders to know who is listening and to shape the message for them: Simpler language for people outside the technical core, adjusted language for other cultures and backgrounds. A message built from the receiver’s perspective gets accepted more often, and it builds trust along the way.
Mary Gregory watches how people engage with what a leader says. Words such as «you», «them» and «they» push people away; «we» and «ours» pull them in. In feedback she uses descriptive, responsible language: «I noticed when …» or «The impact that had on me was …». The sentence owns the observation.
Words create worlds, says Rachel Bellack. Analogies from sport or pop culture work only if they mean something to the team; members of cross-cultural and multi-generational teams get left behind when the metaphors keep missing them. Her fix: Ask the team for its own metaphors for the situation.
Kristin Andree hears too many leaders declare and inform where they should invite. Word choice and tone should open a dialogue. If the team answers the way a teenager does, with a flat «okay», the message has probably passed them by.
Vered Kogan has leaders drop one word: «but». «You did well, but there is room for improvement» cancels the first half of the sentence and plants a limiting mindset. «And» keeps both halves alive and leaves room to grow.
My contribution to the panel: Leaders are more mindful of language when they speak in positive, solution-focused terms that invite collaboration and growth. The alternative creates a negative, unproductive atmosphere, and from there demotivation, conflict and falling productivity follow quickly. The words of a leader shape how the team thinks and behaves, which is reason enough to choose them with care.
Christy Charise turns the usual focus around: Most of us think about what we want to express; effective leaders think about how the message will be received. An email that opens with «I’m confused» reads to a confident team member as an invitation to help, and to a less secure one as a passive-aggressive insult.
Julie Kantor matches the medium to the message. Text alone (email, Slack), text with voice (phone), voice with visual cues (in person or on video): Each step adds information that prevents misunderstanding. «Report due on my desk by 3», sent on Slack because you are leaving early, lands as being shouted at.
Joshua Miller has his leaders wear a bright ribbon around the dominant wrist. The ribbon is a prompt: Choose the words with care. A leader who talks without awareness sets up confusion for everyone, himself included.
Thomas Lim ties word choice to believability. A leader who sounds less than authentic creates distrust, because the message and the perception no longer match. Ambiguous words and evasive language have a price: The leader gets written off and stops being taken seriously.
Karina Ochis assumes nothing about shared meaning. People understand words through their life and work history, so the same term lands differently in every head. «I value punctuality» says little; «Be there five minutes before the meeting, that is what I call punctual» says everything.
Leadership communication is the topic my clients raise most often, and almost always in the wrong place. They work on the slide deck, the town hall script, the big announcement. The team, meanwhile, forms its view of the leader from the small sentences: The reply in the corridor, the first word after a bad number, the tone of the Friday email. That is where the 16 tips earn their money.
One exercise has proven useful: For a week, write down the first sentence you say in every meeting. Most leaders find a pattern they did not know they had, often a «but» (tip 10) or a declaration where a question would have done (tip 9). Change the first sentence, and the meeting changes. How this plays out when the stakes are high is in the article on difficult conversations; the groundwork belongs in leadership coaching and Executive Coaching Zurich.
Further reading on hofmann.coach: Difficult conversations: 15 ways leaders get the best outcome · 16 leadership behaviors that set a bad example for the team · The power of impathy in leadership excellence
Note: This page goes back to the Forbes Coaches Council expert panel “16 Tips To Help Leaders Harness The Power Of Mindful Language”, published 24 April 2023. The 16 tips come from the members named; tip 11 is my own contribution. The framing is mine.
Cristian Hofmann is an executive coach in Zurich and Schaffhausen (MAS Coaching & Supervision BSO, Forbes contributor). Over more than 20 years he has coached more than 1,500 leaders: CEOs, executive boards and leadership teams in Switzerland, with measurably agreed goals and, on request, pay-for-results. More about Cristian Hofmann.
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