Can Careless Words Kill a Team?

I had breakfast this morning with a friend who shared a cautionary tale about her boss.

In a recent staff meeting, someone proposed putting employee bios on the company's Web site. The boss's response? "I don't want to do that, because I don't want people to see how unqualified we are."

Talk about a slap in the face to your team. And that's just the latest example of some of this manager's zingers.

Needless to say, morale in that office is running pretty low; my friend says the turnover has been close to 100 percent in the last few months. And no wonder. When your boss impugns your credentials to your face, it pretty much sends the message that you're not valued or respected. Who'd want to stay in a job like that, even in this economy?

It could be the boss had a valid point (of sorts). Maybe the shareholders would want to see more MBAs on the roster. Maybe she felt like the competition had a deeper talent pool and she was nervous about a public comparison.

But a boss who cares about morale and teamwork (and clearly, she's not one) could find a better way to frame the information.

In The God of Small Things, the winner of the Man Booker Prize in 1997, author Arundhati Roy writes, "When you hurt people, they begin to love you less. That's what careless words do. They make people love you a little less."

While leaders don't seek love in the business world, they do seek loyalty and support. And careless comments, like those made by my friend's boss, can make a team a little less loyal and supportive. And that hurts everyone.

Just something to think about.

(image by Luckie 13 via Flickr, CC 2.0)