"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.
On the other hand, if leaders don’t call out the elephant in the room and their actions don’t align with their messaging - or worse they lay people off without telling anyone - this can be more damaging for trust and faith. I guess leaders can’t be perfect, but I’d always respect a leader for being honest and sincere over one that’s evasive and edgy.
On the other hand, if leaders don’t call out the elephant in the room and their actions don’t align with their messaging - or worse they lay people off without telling anyone - this can be more damaging for trust and faith. I guess leaders can’t be perfect, but I’d always respect a leader for being honest and sincere over one that’s evasive and edgy.
Oof, yes! “no layoffs today” hits harder than people realize.
I’ve found also that even well-meaning language can stall momentum if it accidentally introduces fear.
One shift that’s changed how our teams move: using language as leverage.
It’s wild how many velocity problems are actually language problems.
Here’s the article I wrote on language, if it helps:
https://open.substack.com/pub/growthfuel/p/language-as-leverage?r=3xxrn&utm_medium=ios