What is a word? First of all, a sequence of sounds from the mouth. Letters strung together on paper. It only becomes a word through the meaning a culture gives it – and through what it triggers in the people who hear it.
The sound “rose” evokes the thought of a flower or the memory of a garden in summer. Or the image of a romantic evening. The same word, three worlds.
Words program our thinking. As children, our hard drive is largely empty. All the more strongly do the sentences of the people close to us become inscribed. “Work first, then play.” “God helps those who help themselves.” “You are something special.” “Math is not your thing.” Such judgments become part of the operating system with which we interpret the world and steer our behavior, often without noticing. They keep working even when we have long forgotten them.
With every encounter, we keep programming ourselves. Adults are harder to shape because their operating system is already established. But it is not impossible.
The inflation of words
Anyone who leads must move people with words to follow them. But that is getting harder. Year by year.
Never before has so much been written. Never before have people been exposed to so many messages, stimuli and opinions. Artificial intelligence produces texts in seconds that used to take hours, perhaps even days. Marketing polishes messages until they shine. Politics produces narratives on an assembly line.
The result is paradoxical. The more words, the less impact. The more perfect the wording, the greater the skepticism. Many people scroll through their feed in the evening and then notice that it has left nothing behind but inner emptiness.
What makes words powerful
In this flood of words, attention becomes scarce. What makes a sentence powerful is not its wording. It is the images and feelings it evokes. Anyone who wants to be heard must evoke strong emotions. But these feelings can be genuine or manipulative. They can unite or divide. Encourage or sow hatred.
We live in an era where emotions are stirred up to serve personal power agendas. Advertising, politics, and large corporations polish their words until they gleam—often masking nothing more than hot air, or perhaps even malicious intent.
“They’re not humans, they’re animals.”
In October 2024, speaking about immigrants, he alluded to “bad genes” in the country. This choice of words is no accident. It evokes in his followers precisely the feelings it is intended to trigger: fear, anger, and a sense of exclusion.
It often starts harmlessly – with a joke, an exaggeration. Then the slogans grow louder. Exceptions are made the rule. Whole groups are judged as if they were all the same – even though we know that every human being is unique.
Fortunately, there is the other direction.
“… not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
More than sixty years later, this sentence still resonates. Why? Because it sketches a world in which people want to live. Though not everyone.
The Book of Proverbs already says: “Death and life are in the power of the tongue.” The apostle James found a remarkable image for it: the tongue is like the rudder of a great ship. A small wheel that the course of life follows.
Two messages, two realities
I have experienced first-hand what this means.
When our first daughter Mara was born, my wife and I did not know at first that she has Down syndrome. We were called to see a young doctor. He looked at us warmly and said, in essence: “Your daughter Mara is a special person. She is like a little angel who sees the world in her own way. And she chose you because she knows what loving parents you are.”
The medical facts came afterwards. But he did not begin with risks and deficits. He touched us first – and made us understand that accompanying this child is an opportunity and a task.
A good friend of my wife was also heavily pregnant at the time. Her child was born four weeks later. She was sitting on a bench in the hospital when two nurses were changing her newborn without noticing her. One noticed something unusual. The other said: “That’s typical for children with Down syndrome.”
That is how the friend learned of the diagnosis. In passing. Between two routine tasks. For the first months, she could only touch her child with gloves – that is how deeply the news traumatized her at the time.
Twice the same medical information. Two completely different realities.
Words become valuable through the feelings they evoke. And they become credible through the way someone speaks them.
Why this matters so much for leadership
For people in leadership, this is a particular challenge. It shifts the standard of good communication away from pure work on the text towards work on one’s inner stance. It is not the message that decides, but the inner state from which it comes.
A sentence often attributed to Maya Angelou sums it up:
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
People register far more than words and facts: the tone of voice, the body language, the pace, the inner tension. And even written words reveal whether they were written with feeling or simply churned out.
What someone feels inwardly in a direct encounter is transmitted – through mirror neurons and other mechanisms we are only beginning to understand. Anyone who speaks to their team while stressed inside creates stress – no matter which words they use. Anyone who speaks to the same people while confident inside creates confidence, even with the same sentences.
That is why before every important speech, every town hall meeting, every difficult conversation, there is one minute that decides the impact. It is the minute in which I put myself into the feeling I want to evoke in others. This works best with a memory – of a moment of my own that I associate with this emotion. Then tone, posture and body language follow by themselves. And the audience feels with me.
Preparing an important speech is therefore not primarily work on the text.
It is work on memory.
What counts in times of uncertainty
People in leadership are particularly in demand today. The world is changing faster than anyone can explain it. AI, geopolitical shifts, demographic change, ecological limits – each of these developments alone would be enough to unsettle teams.
Well-written text is quickly produced today. But who is the sender when AI has written it? Anyone who wants to guide their people honestly through this phase goes through three inner states.
- First, honesty. You describe the situation as it is. Not glossed over, not dramatized. That creates trust. People can cope surprisingly well even with unpleasant messages, as long as they do not feel deceived.
- Second, urgency. It shows what is at stake if nothing happens. Not as a threat, but as a sober consequence or honest concern. That creates the willingness to move.
- Third, confidence. It evokes a positive picture of the future that may be demanding to reach, but is realistic. That gives the strength to set off and keep going.
These three states must be genuine. Not staged. Anyone who honestly goes through them achieves something no AI can: they build an inner bond, a relationship that holds even when things get difficult.
Impulses for everyday life
Six principles. They sound simple. They are not.
- Check your own operating system. Which sentences from your childhood still steer your thinking and acting today? What of it is still true, and what can you safely let go of?
- Check your state before you speak. If you are in the red zone – stressed, annoyed or hurt – wait. What is said in anger pours oil on the fire. Two minutes of self-control often save a year of repair work.
- Take time to pause. Remember an experience of your own that triggered in you the feeling you want to evoke in others. Feel it. Carry it into your talk. Then the impact follows by itself.
- Check whether your words are honest. In yourself – and in others. Words become credible when the person speaking proves them through their own actions. What you ask of others, you have to model yourself.
- Less is more. Better one good, concise story than many phrases that sound clever but send listeners into mental standby mode. Every unnecessary phrase weakens the one that matters.
- Listen more than you speak. In a time of word inflation, listening is the good that has become scarce – and therefore the more effective signal. The people who shaped us most were those who gave us their attention.
A final thought
Words have never merely transported information. They shape how we perceive reality and how we respond to it. What has changed is the ratio: the more words are produced, the more valuable the few become that truly mean something.
For people in leadership, this means choosing words with care, speaking with inner involvement and not simply talking away. And being willing to stay silent when silence is stronger than the next word.
Boats with a deep keel hold their course better in a storm. So do words with depth.
Sebastian Morgner · Diessen am Ammersee · October 2026