I run a workshop on leadership communication a few times a year. Near the start I ask participants to write down three phrases they say regularly to their team. Then we look at them together.
The same three sentences come up, over and over, across industries, across organisations, across seniority levels. Different words sometimes, but the same meaning.
And every time they appear, I have the same conversation.
These aren't terrible sentences. That's what makes them dangerous. They sound fine. They might even sound supportive. But at the level of the brain, they're doing something specific — and it's not what the manager intends.
Sentence one: "Leave it with me."
Usually said with good intentions. The manager is taking the load off. Being helpful. Moving things along.
Here's what the team hears: Don't bother. I'll sort it.
The problem isn't the workload shift. It's the signal. When a manager consistently intercepts problems before the team can solve them, the team stops trying to solve problems. Not dramatically, not all at once — gradually, almost invisibly. They learn, through repetition, that the effort of thinking through something hard isn't worth it, because the answer will be somewhere else by Thursday.
The brain conserves energy. If thinking doesn't pay off, it stops spending the resources.
Replace it with:"What's your read on this, and what have you tried so far?" Harder sentence to say. Takes longer. But it keeps the thinking where it belongs — with the person closest to the problem.
Sentence two: "Yes, but..."
Sometimes it's "That's a good point, but..." or "I hear you, but..." The "yes" is irrelevant. The brain registers the "but."
Research on threat and reward in social contexts — what David Rock's neuroleadership work frames as the SCARF model — shows that feeling evaluated or dismissed activates the same threat response as a physical danger. Cortisol rises. Thinking narrows. The brain moves from exploration mode to defence mode.
When someone hears "yes, but," they stop listening to what comes after. They're already preparing their counter. Or, if they're more conflict-averse, they're already deciding not to raise ideas in this forum again.
Replace it with:"Tell me more about that" — or, if you genuinely disagree, say so directly: "I see it differently. Here's why." That's honest. "Yes, but" is neither yes nor honest.
"That's not how we do things here."
This one lands differently depending on who says it and to whom. To a new team member, it's a closed door on their first day of trying. To a long-standing employee, it's confirmation that nothing will ever change.
It isn't always wrong as a position. There are genuinely things that need to be done a certain way. But as a conversation-stopper — deployed to end an idea rather than evaluate it — it's expensive. It tells people that the cost of suggesting something different is public correction. Most people won't pay that price twice.
Replace it with:"Help me understand what you're trying to solve" — then have the real conversation about whether the approach works. You might find out the person has identified something you've missed.
Why language matters at the level of the brain
None of these sentences are aggressive. None of them are intended to harm. That's exactly the point.
The threat response in social settings doesn't require obvious hostility. It's triggered by subtler signals: being cut off, being dismissed, being corrected in front of others, having your contribution overridden. The amygdala — the brain's threat-detection system — doesn't distinguish between a raised voice and a yes, but. It responds to the pattern.
A team that regularly experiences these micro-dismissals learns, over time, to route around the manager. They bring the easy things and handle the hard things elsewhere. They perform, but they don't contribute their full thinking. And the manager often can't see it because everything still looks functional from where they stand.
The gap between a team that's performing and a team that's genuinely thinking together is hard to see and very expensive to ignore.