If you lead any kind of team, especially a sales team, be careful of every single word you use right now.

 

How you speak and what you say is a direct pathway into your internal map of reality.

 

This week I’ve had several conversations where my clients have expressed absolutes, that may not even be true, but once articulated, define reality for the entire team.

 

More than one client has said “NO ONE is buying right now” – right in the middle of a conversation about how they could still drive sales during these uncertain times.

 

Each time I challenged the absolute that NO ONE is buying.

 

I simply asked “Is that true? Absolutely NO ONE is hiring or buying right now?”

 

No one in the health sector, in IT, in video conferencing …

 

NO ONE!

 

There must be SOMEONE.

 

As long as the leader believes that no one is buying, so too will the team believe that to be true.

 

They become stuck!

 

The realisation about how their internal maps of reality were spilling out, in such absolute and disempowering language, shocked most of my clients.

 

How could their teams sell well, while their expression articulated such an unproductive absolute … that actually isn’t really true at all.

 

Leaders, in these turbulent times, please choose your words wisely.