Episode Transcript

What’s up? What’s up? What’s up, everybody? Welcome back to THE a.m guys, welcome back to five minute rants. I’m your host, Michael Abernathy. And this is the show predicated on the journey of life and business. And real quick, if you’re new to the show, the whole point of this show is really to document the journey, as I’m covering a lot of things from the past, but I’m also covering things that are current or future based. And so this is really just to document the journey. And hopefully, everyone else will gain something from this because I wish that there was something like this when we first started business to really document the growth and changes within a business within a company. And in general.

So anyways, I’m going to get out of this real quick, I’m going to jump into today’s topic, and I want to talk about language, and how language is super important. So before I’ve talked about how pizza is not pizza, and how definitions are super important, right? And the definitions of language are super important like that we have the same definitions, we have understanding, because oftentimes, we’ll use the same word, and mean two radically different things. And then before you know it, we’re both in a different book in a different chapter. And the point of all this is because language creates speed. So if you’re looking to better your team, if you’re looking to change your culture, and improve your culture, one of the biggest things to do is to change your language.

So in anthropology, it has been proven that culture and society is shaped with What language people speak. Think about that the language that you speak, whether it’s Japanese, whether it’s Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Russian, whatever it is English, that the way that you speak in the language you speak, shapes how you think, shapes, which then shapes how you act, and then shapes the culture in the society you live in. Now, if you take that and translate it to whatever you’re trying to build, the language is actually going to shape the team and the culture with where you’re at, it’s going to shape the team and the culture with the company, it’s going to shape the business right within the company.

And then as a result, because the culture is now shaped by the language that is being used, speed is now created language ultimately creates speed, it creates speed within a team to get on the same page faster. It creates unity within a team to understand and be unified within the goal. It allows for critique to flow more easily and quickly. It allows for so many things and facilitate so much within the team language is very core. And it is very much a core piece to all teamwork in all production. It’s often times though, the most overlooked thing within the company.

Like one of our big deals within the company is to focus on language with any company that we’re involved in is focused on language for the team, right? It’s so important to focus on language and not just like, hey, Here’s our five principles is like know how we talk, right? To help actually unify the team, create speed, create forward momentum in production. And it’s so important for the team, right? If you think about it, language is very tribal, right? You have different language and unique language that you use with each of your friend groups.

Everywhere you go, it’s in a different friend group, oh, this friend group, they act like this. And so, you know, it’s called code switching to where you code switch that friend group when we talk like that when we talk like this, and everybody does this naturally. And then you go there, and you speak and use different words, different languages, right? Like, hey, I want to talk differently than I talk at home, I want to talk I mean, talk excuse me talk differently than I talk at home. True, but like I met talk at work differently than I talk at home, I want to discuss things with my colleagues differently. I’ll talk differently to my high school friends than I will new friends, vice versa, and so on and so forth. All of that’s language.

And if you have unifying tribal language within the company, everything is going to change. The culture changes the way people think changes, the creativity is different, the production is different. And if you notice a lot of toxic work cultures, like places that I’ve worked at that have been toxic, the language aligns with the toxicity, right. And so if you think about that, it’s so interesting to see how the language promotes that facilitates that or it promotes healthy work, workplace balance, it promotes healthy relationships. It promotes healthy personalities, and decision making, or vice versa.

And I’m saying all this because oftentimes, our biggest problem in leadership or dealing with a team, is we have bad language, and we don’t know What to do about it. And when we don’t even know that we have bad language. It’s just normal. Because Here’s the other thing is as people we get desensitized, we’re super adaptable, and we get desensitized to things that around us you think about how well you can adapt to stuff as a person. And as an individual. It’s the same thing to bad language. And so it takes some effort to recognize and then it takes effort actually playing with the language needs to be and then how do you actually utilize that.

Anyways guys, I’m out of time so I’ll catch you later. Peace