Using Language Shifts to Spur Change

Several nerve-wracking communications are coming down from the federal government that have the potential to paralyze essential education programs and workforce initiatives. 

Every day, we collectively wait for the Wall Street Journal push notification to tell us what language has been banned, which funding has been cut, and which office is being absorbed. It’s hard enough to focus on the work at hand, let alone support an equally disheartened team. 

But this is where leaders step in. More specifically, this is where adaptive leadership comes into focus. Adaptive leaders mobilize teams to walk toward the burning building. They depersonalize change and make it a collaborative problem-solving process. 

Much of change involves how we communicate it. Raise your hand if you’ve received a memo from the CEO or were in a meeting with senior leadership where they told you something was changing, and you were less than thrilled with the communication. Yeah, I’m imagining a lot of digital hands.

In past pieces, I’ve talked about how change is not inherently evil and that discomfort creates opportunities for innovation and progress. But that’s assuming the change has been articulated in a way that everyone is on board with and that you’re meeting the usual resistance. 

So, let’s explore how communication calibrates a team toward change and how our words can mitigate resistance. 

Bad Words

Let’s start first with what not to say. Now, this is not an exhaustive list of the ways you can screw up communicating your change initiative, but it's a decent categorization of the major faux pas. 

Blasé

The intention to help your team members stay calm under pressure isn’t bad, but being too blasé in your languaging can severely undermine both your credibility and efforts going forward. 

By burying the lede or sweeping details under the rug, you’re signaling you either don’t fully understand the change's impact or don’t care about the stakes. If it doesn’t sound like you care, there’s a good chance your team won’t either. And if they believe you don’t care about the repercussions, you’ve bought a one-way ticket to Resentment Town.

Change has real consequences. Funding cuts, job losses, restructuring, or other shifts have serious implications for program administrators and those affected by them. Not talking about these consequences is easier, but it will only become more challenging as the consequences rear their heads as the change unfolds. 

Not only is being blasé unmotivating—imagine if “Just do it” was “Well, just try and see what happens,” for example—but it also misses an opportunity for shared ownership. Saying, “We’ll figure it out like we always do,” robs the team of a shared sense of purpose and urgency that can spur innovation and collaborative solutions. 

Dramatic

On the other end of the spectrum is the manager fanning themselves in front of the group, panicking about the impending change. They’re rushed, anxious, and unnecessarily tense, creating a palpably unsafe environment. 

Using dramatics to communicate change (think anxious sputtering, crude language, or shiftiness) will only create more anxiety and panic around the the situation, leading to overwhelm and a team focused on one thing: survival. In survival mode, groups turn toward each other, pointing fingers and to themselves, only looking out for #1. 

Dramatic framing also shifts the focus from the change initiative to the fear you invoke. Everyone joins in on the panic and is now part of a circular conversation about how bad it will get. Losing funding has spurred discussions of the department being shut down, but there is no evidence to show how we got here. This endless cycle is dangerous and can lead to stonewalling and increased fear, not collaboration and problem-solving.

Too Tactical

Somewhere between the too-cool manager and the one fanning themselves at their desk is the one who bottles their emotions deep down and jumps right into the plan. This is also well-intentioned in that if you just get to work, you won’t have to face the realities of how tough change can be. And this approach can work for a while. But we all know what happens to repressed emotions after some time. Boom. 

Getting too tactical in your language—“Here’s a workflow,” or “Follow this process”—dictates to the team how they should process change rather than giving them the space to truly collaborate on what this means for them. Overlooking the emotional reality of change—loss, disruption, frustration—creates compliance, not commitment. For a change to truly take place, it must be solved collectively by a team that owns the problem and the solutions.

Jumping straight into action planning also limits your team’s adaptability over time. While tactics might have worked once or twice, you will get frustrated when the team has an atrophied change muscle and constantly looks to you for direction over minimal disruptions or shifts. You’ve taught them that they are to be dictated to, not collaborated with. This leads to low self-efficacy and a team of executors, not creators. 

Managerial

And somewhere in the middle of the spectrum is the widely adopted managerial change response. At first glance, there’s nothing wrong with this. You’re the senior leader, and you’ve made a decision, and now you’re telling the team what they need to do. They listen intently, nodding along and taking notes. Maybe they will ask a few clarifying questions, and the meeting ends. You walk back to your office, and the team quickly scatters and goes about managing the change. You’ve communicated change, and it’s time to jump into the next Zoom meeting.

Not exactly.

Let’s start with the first part: you’ve made a decision.

Who was involved in the decision? Did the people most impacted by the decision know it was being made? Did you ask them? Are they the ones that have to make the change? No? Then who is responsible for changing things for them? 

People are more likely to support decisions when they understand that a decision is being made and feel they are a part of shaping the outcome. When leaders dictate a decision to a team, it can lead to a sense of powerlessness and make the change feel imposed rather than co-authored. 

Next, the nodding might be in agreement or passive compliance. Silence doesn’t mean alignment; it can also mean disengagement. “I’ve already mapped out the plan” differs significantly from “I have a draft, but I want to hear from you—what’s missing?” They say the same thing—you’re in charge of what’s next—but communicate something entirely different. Teams want humble leaders who approach them thoughtfully and openly and are eager to hear their perspectives. 

Lastly, top-down decision-making fosters resistance, not collaboration. It’s human nature to push back against command-and-control leadership, especially when your change directly impacts them. If you approach your languaging through a managerial lens, you fan the flames of “us vs. them” and now you not only have to enact a change, you have to go to battle with the change-makers themselves.

Better Approaches

But when you know better, you do better, right? Here are a few ways to combat the poor language approaches above and build and sustain positive momentum toward the change you seek.

Be Frank

The opposite of blasé is being frank.

Simply put, people trust people who tell the truth. Friends, politicians, celebrities – we all respond better when we know someone is honest with us. And the same goes for workplaces. Research shows that employees who feel informed about workplace changes are 3.5x more likely to trust leadership. Leaders who withhold information or sugarcoat what’s coming up force teams to fill in the gap on their own with assumptions (often negative ones). Being frank ensures you’re upfront about the challenge and the associated expectations while leaving space for candor and honest conversation. 

Being frank also addresses resistance by acknowledging your team's real concerns. Your team could resist change because they feel unheard or uncomfortable with how it will affect them. A frank leader names the discomfort, validates concerns, and creates space for productive dialogue to get the ball moving. This helps people move from resistance to participation.

Be Empathetic

Empathy is putting yourself in someone else’s shoes, suspending your own reality, and seeing the world from their perspective. You can interpret the situation as they would and feel what comes up for them.

When communicating change, empathy is a powerful tool. Communicating empathetically signals emotional intelligence, a prized trait in leaders. It also shows that you aren’t focused on just the outcomes but on the people who move the change forward. Communicating with empathy helps people process their feelings instead of digging in their heels. Genuine consequences, such as a loss of autonomy, a change in expertise, or unfamiliarity with a process, are recognized and validated. 

Empathy creates a psychologically safe environment for collaboration and paves the way for shared ownership, ensuring that change isn’t something that happens to people but with them. Inviting people to share their thoughts, experiences, opinions, and expertise signals that their voices matter, that you want their ideas, and that you’re committed to their belonging. 

Be Anti-Hierarchical

At the start of the Industrial Revolution, top-down management made sense. Factories were dangerous places, and compliance was vital if you didn’t want to lose a finger. Now, organizations are more complex and people-centric, making hierarchical approaches to change moot. 

Hierarchical communication can stifle collaboration, reduce buy-in, and severely limit innovation. On the other hand, an anti-hierarchical approach distributes power, signals the value of diverse perspectives, and fosters trust. This makes teams more willing to embrace change because they see themselves in the work.

To be anti-hierarchical in your communication, you need to ensure you’re taking a collective problem-solving approach to the change ahead. Instead of saying, “Leadership has decided we need to change our partnership strategy,” you might say, “We’re rethinking how our partnerships are being engaged. Since you’re on the front lines of this work, what do you see that we need to consider?” This slight shift signals two things: you know that the people who do the work know your product or service best and that you value their insights and collective expertise to build something better than you could on your own.

Lastly, anti-hierarchical communication signals that leadership is a team function, not a job title. I’ve never worked with a group that believed their CEO was less of a CEO when asked for their opinions. Conversely, I’ve worked with groups frustrated with their manager, who constantly shut them out of decisions. Anti-hierarchical communication doesn’t eliminate leadership—it enhances it. Leaders who position themselves as change facilitators rather than sole decision-makers create cultures where teams take the initiative, own their work, and actively drive change.

Share a “First Draft” Vision

This is inspired by Brene Brown’s “shitty first draft” or SFD in her cult classic book, “Rising Strong.” In her book, she talks about using an SFD to get all her thoughts on paper to keep them from rolling around in her head. A “first draft” vision is similar: give a clear enough map to action that people aren’t paralyzed by the change, but leave the “how” open to experimentation. 

Leaders are often pressured to have a fully baked plan when rolling out a change. However, that fully baked plan usually doesn’t account for the nuances, details, and experiences only the team can offer. So, when you present your highly detailed, three-ring binder of a plan without including their perspectives, you’re stifling innovation, increasing resistance, and making the team feel they’re just executing orders rather than shaping their future.

A first draft vision is a flexible framework that encourages a team to co-create the change by testing assumptions, experimenting, and taking risks to promote shared ownership. This framework also allows for course correction along the way, reassuring the team that mistakes aren’t failures but part of the process. Co-authoring the final plan fosters collaboration, adaptability, and a learning culture, helping you and the team confidently move forward while leaving room for discovery amidst the change. 

All That To Say

Change is critical. It will help shore up your competitive advantage, prevent budget cliffs, or support a program's sustainability. But how you communicate that change – dramatically or anti-hierarchically – will profoundly impact its realization. Language isn’t just a tool for communicating change – it’s the engine that will drive just how successful your team will be. 

So, are you just telling your team about the next change, or are you calibrating them to move with it?