The Language of Winning Teams

The Language of Winning Teams
What do your Monday mornings look like? When you arrive at work, you want to be walking into a Team atmosphere that has a tangible aliveness, a sense of unity and purpose, a feeling that as a group of people you are engaged in making something valuable happen. So how can you help create and sustain this within your Team? Here’s one idea to consider..
 
As the saying goes, “You get more of what you focus on”.  But what guides what we focus on? Conscious choice, yes, is a key driver of what gets our attention.. and we can support this through making plans and checking on progress. It is not the only one, of course. And some of these other drivers of our attention are not so obvious. 

One of the lesser discussed influences is the language we use. As Linguist Antonio Benítez-Burraco [1] highlights – language, thought and culture are all interrelated.  He proposes that language acts as as a “filter, enhancer, or framer of perception and thought”.  

Put simply, our choice of words not only reflects – but also influences – what we notice,  how we think and how we behave – that’s quite important then.. 

In Teams the same arguably applies – the language that’s active between members can, not only mirror, but also impact how the Team collectively thinks and operates. Watch any interview with a member of a sports Team, and you will clearly hear it – the desired Team ethos and chosen behaviour are there in the words and phrases they use – “we showed character”, “we dug deep”, “we got it over the line”, “we focused on playing our game”, “we’re looking only on the next match”… 

 
So have a listen to the language within your Team. Pick up on the wording and phrasing that’s being articulated by you and your colleagues. Does it underpin the essence of the Team, and the ways of working that together you want to create and maintain? See if you can find ways to tune it, to help further grow the Team spirit, and shape how you collectively want to ‘show up’?
 
Listen in, and start to have your language be part of who you are as a Team.. after all, you get more of what you focus on.

 

— Brian Morrow
[1] Psychology Today (2017) “How the Language we Speak affects the Way we Think” [Online] Available at https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/the-biolinguistic-turn/201702/how-the-language-we-speak-affects-the-way-we-think?amp (accessed 6th November 2017)