Leaders, stop accidentally scaring your team

"Painting a picture" by being concrete and specific is usually good. But when you're talking about negative ideas, you may want to be abstract and vague on purpose.

👋 Hey, it’s Wes. Welcome to my weekly newsletter on managing up, leading teams, and standing out as a high performer. For more, check out my intensive course on Executive Communication & Influence for Senior ICs and Managers. → ✨ The new August cohort is now open for enrollment.

Read time: 4 minutes

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Fun story: I once saw a CEO start an all-hands meeting by saying, “No one is going to get let go or anything today…”

You could immediately see the employees tense up.

The CEO was trying to make everyone feel better. There was news of other companies doing layoffs, the economy was in a rough place, and the CEO wanted to address what was unsaid. People were wary of losing their jobs.

Theoretically, saying “no one is going to get laid off” should be reassuring, right?

Unfortunately, when you say a negative thing, then say that negative thing ISN’T going to happen, people still think of the negative thing.

I’ve written about why you should avoid incepting negative ideas:

Ideas are fuzzy until you're able to put them into words, then they become concrete and real.

• If you want an idea to become more concrete, verbalize it and spend time talking about it.

• If you want an idea to remain in the background, avoid giving it air time.

• Always incept positive ideas.

Incepting negative ideas creeps surprisingly often in daily language, until you train yourself to stop doing it.

The more concrete the idea, the stickier it is. And this can backfire when you’re talking about negative things in super visual, visceral ways.

I don’t think we point that out often enough. We usually talk about specificity and concreteness being good because they make your ideas more memorable. But what if you don’t want your idea to be so memorable? Then you may want to intentionally be more abstract.

I believe founders/leaders face this more because they’re more predisposed to being good at painting a picture. You regularly have to sell your vision and get stakeholders (investors, your executives, your team, customers) excited.

You would normally LEAN INTO your strength of painting a picture with your words, and getting getting folks to imagine what the future could look like.

So it’s useful to point out when you might NOT want to use this strength. When you don’t want negative ideas, scary visuals, or ominous scenarios to get seared into your audiences’ minds.

There are times when it’s more advantageous to be a bit abstract instead of concrete.

For example:

🚫 “We’re not shutting down, and we don’t have to go begging in the streets for more VC money yet. Also nobody is fired as of today. I’m not saying our product is terrible and doesn’t bring any value, but we have some work to do.”

✅ “We’re in a solid position with good runway and the right team in place. We have a lot of work ahead to get our product to where we need it to be, and the next six months will be crucial.”

The “before” has some pretty strong (negative visuals): Shutting down, begging in the streets, fired…

The “after” is less dramatic and less visceral. Notice how I’m not trying to 100% reassure everyone. I still want the team to feel a sense of urgency.

But if your team is already feeling a bit scared, then saying “we have a lot of work ahead to get our product to where we need it to be” is a good level of concrete vs abstract.

As a leader, everything you say will carry more weight than you think. So you want the team to feel a sense of “we gotta buckle down and focus,” but you don’t want to make them too fearful.

Have you heard a leader use scary language that ended up being counterproductive? What was your reaction hearing it? How will you be mindful of avoiding incepting negative ideas in your own communication?

Hit reply because I’d love to hear from you. Thanks for being here, and I’ll see you next Wednesday at 8am ET.

Wes

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Course update: Executive Communication and Influence for Senior ICs and Managers

I just opened a new cohort for August 2025. The July cohort filled up sooner than expected, so the August cohort will be the only other chance to take the cohort this summer.

This course is not for everyone. I share more details on the course page about who this is for because I only want you to take the course if you will get extremely high ROI from it.

For example:

• This is not for you if you want step-by-step instructions for every situation you might encounter with every stakeholder or type of meeting. My goal is to help sharp operators develop even better judgment, not to cover directions for every potential situation.

• This is not for you if you expect to become excellent in communication overnight. You will likely change your behavior within 2 days, which is an ambitious goal and huge achievement. But becoming excellent at anything requires time and ongoing practice.

• This is not for you if you want a slower-paced course over several weeks. This is a 2-day intensive designed for busy operators who want to reduce context-switching between work and the course. If you want something that feels slower or more spread out, do not take this course.

Alright, a few weeks ago, I wrapped up my most recent May cohort. The student reviews are in…

If you’re wondering if this is for you, check out what tech operators are saying:

And more student reviews:

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