The Royal "We"

The Royal "We"

Twice in one day after a layoff? Well, I was compelled to write a quickie about pronouns. My word expert is not here today so there may be many mistakes in here but one mistake I try not to make is saying “I” too often. The fine folks at the Harvard Business Review published a nice article about this that I think everyone should read.

In short, when you lead if you hope to have people follow, shut up abotut how much you do. The reality is that teams are successful. Individuals make up teams. Not the other way around. Having talented people helps and it is great to see MVP type effort, but nobody wants to hear about things you feel you did by yourself and to be honest, most of the time these leaders don’t even really mean it that way. They are simply being lazy with their choice of pronoun and ignoring how debilitating that can be to a team.

Words matter folks; especially when you are a leader.