Be Careful, Your Team Might Take It Personally

They say love has many languages

Let me tell you a little story…

So, you're a leader. Maybe a C-Suite executive or a regional manager, but in the end, a leader, leading a team. You've read a lot of insightful books and journals about the importance of being an empathetic, kind, and nice leader. Not a boss, but a leader. And after maybe a couple of executive coaching sessions focused on your communication skills, you feel confident that your team sees you as the Mr. Miyagi that their Karate-Kid-like youth and inexperience need and deserve.

But, and I can't stress this "but" enough, some coworkers are still putting the spotlight on your leadership style, and even HR is trying to reach out as politely as they can and dare toward the strong-tempered leader you are .

You mean well, but the little cues your non-verbal communication is sending to some of your coworkers' brains are triggering emotional responses that are out of your strategy.

At the end of the day, you don’t get why, but things are stuck, again, in emotional issues that make it harder to achieve the goals.

Still, with good intentions, you start using your planning, vision of the future, and executive skills, focusing on the tasks, on what’s working and what’s not, and start making changes rapidly without overthinking, saving time and effort for your team, showing them with your pragmatic, simple yet effective behavior that you care about them the best way you can.

But, again, your team seems to not understand, to not get the good heart behind your efforts, and some of them stop everything and say they REALLY need to have a conversation with you. “Ok, what’s the matter…” you say with the rush typical of pretty much every activity you do, and this seems to affect them even more. You just don’t get it… you’ve been doing everything you can, from everything you know, to make things faster and better so everybody can go home early to live their lives, but still… something is missing…

I have some news: your will and good intentions are not the problem… the cause of the problem is actually more subtle yet powerful, and it is your nonverbal communication . Yes, the sound (literally) of your voice, your body language, and even your dressing choices.

Our brains are coded to survive the world by encoding and decoding stimuli from the environment, and in this process, they try to save as much energy as possible. So, they tag all the data from the world, especially from human beings, in emotional boxes stored in your memory. In simpler terms, every time you meet someone, your brain puts the “concept” of that person in a common box according to some common behavior.

Each one of these people-type boxes is named an Archetype. So, we all have different archetypes and, therefore, different (but kind of same-pattern-structure) behavioral styles, thinking styles, and most importantly: communication styles.

But why is this important? Because when we relate to people with far different archetypes, we communicate with very opposite non-verbal codes that may trigger negative emotional responses in others.

So, even when you’re at your best human-race-loving self, if you say something with the wrong non-verbal codes, other people may take things personally. And so does your team at work.

Be careful and try to listen

People have different personality tendencies and , thus, different emotional states. If you, as a leader, have a dominant, goal-focused, decisive personality, your non-verbal communication shows a particular pattern in your prosody (pitch, intensity, pace, variability) that sends a message to the limbic brain of the listener. If the listener shares with you those archetypical behaviors, that personality tendency, you both will probably feel comfortable with each other, and things will work. But if the person listening has an opposite (antagonist) archetype, your voice and body language may be perceived as rude, insensitive, and bossy.

You should then train your listening, making it active and conscious so you can detect those acoustical properties of the person you’re trying to lead. For instance, does that coworker have a high or low pitch? How intense do you perceive the volume of their voice? Do they speak fast, slowly, with or without pauses?

You don’t need to be an expert on reading personality through voice—well, you actually could with 1:1 training with my Yupa Impact? method—to start making things go better. The key is to listen to those prosody characteristics and try to emulate them as much as you can, at least one of those like the pace. By the way, this is a good exercise to practice empathy .

Be careful and try to stay authentic

Although you may have the ability to modulate your voice to connect with a team member, you have to keep being you! Some leaders try to “fix” their communication to sound more approachable but people’s brains can’t be fooled. Our limbic system is programmed to recognize authenticity and an imposed over-histrionical voice may produce a backfire.

Be careful and choose your words wisely

Prosody and non-verbal communication trigger emotional responses in the limbic brain. Verbal communication triggers cognitive responses in the neocortex: the part of our brain where complex cognitive processes happen. If you have a hard time modulating the sound of your voice to create that connection with your team members, you can always benefit from choosing the best words to build your discourse.

Again, it all depends on others' personalities. As a leader, you should probably know that all the personality tendencies pretty much can be summarized in 4 or 5 main behavioral types, so give time to feel to the sensitive, steady ones and try to smile a little with the influent, extrovert type. You should keep in mind that personalities as well as anxiety, comes in many colors .

So, you're a leader. Maybe a C-Suite executive or a regional manager, but in the end, a leader, leading a team. Now you’re aware of how non-verbal communication can affect the way your team members respond emotionally to your leadership style. After all you’ve read about being a great leader, now it’s time to start acting with a more “tangible” strategy. Focus on the HOW and do it NOW, and above all, trust your intuition. It's always right.

You know, and I’m pretty sure, that you love what you do and —there is a big chance that you also love your Karate-Children— you mean well when trying to guide your team to the finish line of your projects, but you gotta be careful with what you say and how you say it, because your team might take it personally.

There's a reason why there is more than one language for love