I believe you’re always leading and influencing on some level.

If you’re in a leadership position, you must understand how to communicate in a way that doesn’t just get people to comply, but gets them to engage.

In this short video, I’m going to share with you language secrets that will unlock the potential of your people, your contractors or anyone who comes into contact with you.

This will encourage them to not just comply, but engage in what you’re saying.

I was chatting with a client just recently and he was telling me about how he was really frustrated with his team. He was using words like “they must do this,” “they have to get this done,” “if they don’t get this done, then they’re going to get in trouble.” I could tell he was so frustrated.

Then I had the opportunity to chat with some of the people in his team. And I could hear in their voice this sense of fear and animosity towards him as a leader.

This particular leader, whether he knew it or not, was creating a culture of compliance. And when you have a culture of compliance, you might get short-term results, but long-term the impact will be a large reduction in motivation and initiative in team members.

So I want to share with you how you can flip that. How to shift from using necessity language of “you should,” “you must,” “you have to,” “you don’t,” all this sort of language that creates compliance and moving into a more aspirational language that will create engagement for your staff.

The way that you create aspiration and engagement in your staff members is to use inspirational or possibility language. Possibility language is words that allow people to have choice. So instead of saying, “You have to do this,” you say, “Is this something you could do?” Even using the word “could” allows them, on some level, autonomy. And in that little tweak is give space for the team to buy into the task, it creates more engagement in a task.

Using the words “could” or “is this something you might be able to do?” or “this is something that we want to do” “this is something that I would love to create”

Using words like “you must do this” or “this must be done” is great when you are in an emergency. But longer term, to build buoyancy in your culture and engagement in your team, use words like “could” “might” “want to” “love to.” Use words and language that move people forward as opposed to getting people to fit in into a particular box. When you switch to this language, it will help people to engage and create more autonomy.

I’d love to hear your comment below.

What language inspires you?