Why is our conscious choice of words so important?
One aspect I consider to be a foundation within my work is to listen very carefully to my clients’ use of language, i.e., listen to the specific way they use words. This enables me to better understand where they are coming from, and by that I mean to get a better understanding of the unconscious beliefs that are reflected in how they speak.
When I hear certain language (and I’ll explain what I mean by “certain language” a bit later), I frequently get a sense of mismatch between what people are hoping to express and the specific words they use to communicate. Knowing that this may be a faulty assumption, I always ask my clients to further elaborate in more detail what they specifically intended to communicate. This, of course, always deepens our conversation significantly, and in many cases does illuminate a mismatch.
The burden of “pulling the cart”
This recently happened with my client Doug, the co-founder of a startup engaged in social innovation. He and his partners are passionate about creating a social enterprise which, as he puts it, is “Fit for the challenging times we live in by becoming a self-organized entity".
I asked Doug to describe the purpose of their enterprise and also share the history that brought them to where they are today. His story was fascinating, and it was quite evident that everyone on the team (12 members so far) is very purpose aligned. But he also talked about the burden of what felt to him like having to “pull the cart." When he talked about the three co-founders, how they got together, and how they actually got started, he said: “From the very beginning, we all agreed that we are committed to empowering our employees.” I prompted, “ Please elaborate in more detail exactly what you mean by that.” He responded slightly irritated, “What’s not clear about what I said?”
I asked him to describe his picture of an ideal workday in the organization. Summing it up, his words drew a picture of people autonomously getting their work done, every individual knowing what was needed, collaborating with each other, and co-creating solutions when challenges show up. Most importantly, no one was waiting for a boss to tell them what to do.
I responded, “Based on your intention to ‘empower your employees’ it might be difficult to achieve that.”
The connection BETWEEN words and mindset
Let’s zoom out of this specific conversation, and take a look at the pattern I observed with Doug’s situation and also with so many of the conversations I have concerning self-organization.
When speaking about self-organization, self-management, teal, responsive, conscious business, agile, etc., what we generally mean is alternate organizational systems compared to the conventional power hierarchy. But in order to actually step into one of these alternatives we also need to understand how, in spite of our best intentions, conventional power dynamics are deeply engraved in our belief systems, and how to recognize them by listening to the language we use.
Take what Doug said: “We want to empower our employees.” Let’s break up this sentence into parts.
First: “We want to empower.” This reflects a very deeply rooted belief, a pattern in our way of seeing the world, namely that it is “I” (me) who empowers others. If/when “I” don’t do that, “they” won’t be empowered. Anything we do that is rooted to this underlying belief will create the opposite of what we actually want. In Doug’s case the use of this language actually creates a dependency on others to take action. And obviously this is the opposite of what he described, if that were to happen it would be very “disempowering.” I told Doug about my assumption that this might me the root cause of his feeling of having “to pull the cart” as he had mentioned earlier.
I have written about this before and - because it is such an important component of the shift into new forms of being and working together - I will probably keep writing about it again and again.
To be truly empowered, we each need to make our own choices. No one else can do that for us.
What we can do for ourselves and for each other is to collectively build a self-organized system which creates the conditions for each of us to step into our individual power, thus empowering ourselves. At the end of the day each of us must decide if these conditions work for us or not.
Now let’s look at the second part of the sentence: “… our employees.”
Please take a moment to let it sink in: our employees. “Our” is a possessive pronoun. Taken literally, it implies that the speaker holds some form of ownership of the employees. I am fully aware that when people speak about “their” employees, they mostly intend to express a type of closeness, a form of responsibility and care. Nonetheless, “our” or “my,” implies ownership. I can’t think of anything less suitable than using possessive language when speaking about the people we work with.
Here are some more examples. Have you heard of them, or used any of these?
“You have to engage your people."
“You have to align your teams around the mission, values, and purpose.”
“I want to support my employees to be self-managed.”
“You need to inspire everyone to take action.”
“We need to develop talent.”
“… the people that work for me…"
“I treat my employees….”
And on, and on. There are hundreds of other examples that reflect a number of mostly unconscious beliefs rooted in conventional power dynamics.
So that’s what I mean when I refer to the use of “certain language.” My intent here is to raise awareness about this pervasive habit. Having read this, you will probably start recognizing it and notice it everywhere. I am sure that almost always “certain language” is spoken with the very best of intentions. Nonetheless, it reflects underlying thought patterns and belief systems that get in the way of the new alternative ways of being and working together that we are trying to grow into.
Challenging our belief systems
When shifting into self-organization, we are all challenged to question so many of our beliefs which is why it can be so difficult. There are two hindering belief systems that I see showing up most in conversations:
The notion of ownership of people, and
The notion of being responsible to “make" people learn, do things and behave in certain ways
The first one is tricky. I don’t know anyone who consciously believes in owning another person, and yet the use of language that reflects this is omnipresent. And because it is mostly unconscious, the underlying belief system is hard to detect and shift. Have you heard yourself say “my employees”, or “my people”, or “they work for me”? When you work in a self-organized environment with autonomous, self-empowered people who collectively engage to serve a purpose that is bigger than themselves, you will not find this language.
The second example is more aligned with the conventional understanding of leadership. There are leaders who have conscientiously attempted to manage with this approach. They are expected (by themselves and others) to give direction towards what should be done, what people should learn and which behaviors are expected, to strive to reach specific goals that have been pre-defined as a success if achieved (and a failure when not). And again: in a self-organized context no one person, or group of privileged people, defines what the employees must do or learn or how they are supposed to do their work. Rather, these issues are treated as systems-based decision making processes, which removes them from responsibilities linked to individuals.
I am convinced that all of the examples I shared today are generally spoken or written with the best of intentions. And I stand by my point:
As long as we don’t shift language patterns like the ones described, we haven’t shifted our underlying mindsets.
Exploring, understanding, and shifting our belief systems is what is required to expand into a new level of consciousness. Only then we will be able to understand and to live the interconnectedness and interdependence that are both inherent in self-organized systems.
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