Avoid using first person pronouns except when talking about personal experiences and possessions.

When you use “I” too often when speaking about your team or your employees it makes you sound like a self-important narcissist. Just stop it. This isn’t about you. You are in your leadership position because the position exists within your organization’s hierarchy, and someone has to fill it, and it might as well be you. Your position might be the culmination of an epic personal journey, and if it is, let PR tell that story outside your company. You might be the most talented leader ever in the history of the world, not just in actuality, but even ever imagined by any human that has ever lived in the history of the world. If so, be satisfied with this knowledge and let others bask in your awesomeness without verbalizing it to them. If so, it will be enough of a privilege for your employees to share the same conference room with you from time to time. But when you talk to your team, or your troops, or your minions, avoid making it all about you. It makes you sound look an a-hole.

“My” is the first-person possessive. It implies ownership. As with “I,” avoid  using “my” as much as possible. When you use “my” when referring to your employees and/or their work product, it makes you sound like an egomaniacal credit-grubber. Nobody likes to be referred to as belonging to someone else. (Okay. Stop it. Obviously there are exceptions. Some enjoy being referred to as another’s husband, wife, love machine. We’re talking about a business setting here. When you make a habit of pointing out every possible exception, it makes you look like a Capital A A-hole.)

If you do not believe me, try this little test: Imagine your boss speaking at a company gathering about your latest success thusly: “My team did a tremendous job growing revenue this year. I want to thank my leads. Especially Shel. That’s right, Shel, I’m singling you out. I’ve never had such an awesome product lead on my team. I’m proud to have you working for me. Thanks to you, I will exceed my revenue goals. When you get back to your desk, you will find a little token of my gratitude. I don’t want to spoil the surprise. Oh, alright! Twist my arm. It’s a framed photo of the two of us at last summer’s off-site. With an inscription: ‘To Shel, the best product lead I’ve ever had the privilege of leading.’”

How did that make you feel about yourself? It made you feel put down somehow, right? All that praise for you and your good work was secondary to your boss’ self-congratulation. Your boss made it clear that without his/her leadership, you would not have been capable of making him/her look so good. Now extend this to you and your team. Empathize with how your employees feel when you talk about them possessively. I know, it’s hard. Empathy is not a skill you have needed to succeed in any of your previous roles. Try. Now try harder.

It is fine to use “I” and “my” when talking about personal experiences, both inside and outside of your business life. (With the caveat: avoid telling personal anecdotes too often in a business setting. It makes you sound like an a-hole.)

It is fine to use “my” when referring to your employees only in some very specific business contexts, such as fighting for resources among other executives (“My team needs a budget increase, not a decrease!”) or standing up for your employees (“If you ever talk to one of my employees like that again, I will cut off your nards with a rusty knife”). Or when you are taking blame for poor results from your team that you really don’t deserve to lose your job over but that you probably will anyway and besides it’s just classy to take responsibility when you’re the leader (“My team screwed up. I take full responsibility for my failed leadership.”) These may be the only acceptable exceptions.

The fix is simple: Whenever possible, substitute the first-person pronoun (I or my) with the corresponding second-person pronoun (we or our). This shares credit. It acknowledges that business is a team sport. The mere fact that you as the leader are speaking using second-person pronouns makes you bigger than yourself, so besides making your employees like you better, it makes you worthy of inclusion in legendary tales.

Okay:  

"I found a pebble in my oatmeal."

"My son just learned to ride a bicycle."

"Have you seen my poster of dogs playing poker?"

"I had a great time at the off-site last Summer."

Not Okay:

"My team delivered superb results this quarter."

"With everyone’s help, I completed the forecast for Q3."

"I am proud to present my new strategy for monetization."

Suggested alternatives:

"Our team delivered strong results this quarter."

"We completed the forecast for Q3."

"I am proud to present our new strategy for monetization."

Okay, But Icky:

"I can’t tell you how proud I am to be leading this team."

"My journey has allowed me to meet and work with some amazing people."

Suggested alternatives to Okay, But Icky examples:

Just try to avoid such egomaniacal statements, okay?

Avoid traveling with your posse.

You might or might not have a posse, a group of favored employees and sycophants who like to follow you around in the hope that closeness to you will improve the likelihood of taking your job some day.

If you don’t have a posse, you are finished. If nobody is sucking up to you and following you around, it is obvious that your value to this company is rapidly sliding toward zero, and you have no future in this industry. Your best hope is to start anew in another industry. You may need to write a fraudulent resume if you want to start higher than the mail room. But the good news is that you’ve started at the bottom before. So you know how to do it. It will be like going to high school for a third time.

If you walk the halls and march to meetings with a posse, if your posse is always crowded around your desk or clogging the doorway to your office or surrounding the entrance to your cubicle, shoo them away. Always being seen with a posse makes you look like a Capital A, Capital H A-Hole.

What you want is to have a posse but not be seen with them. You want a bunch of people sucking up to you, but you don’t want to be seen walking the halls with them trailing behind. You may ask: Huh? If I have a posse following me, it is visual proof of my importance. It is an inoculation against obsolescence. EVERYBODY wants to lead a posse. Me, included.

If you think this way, you do not realize that being a successful leader means being able to connect with everybody, not just the suckups. Let’s put all your employees into two categories in order to illuminate the matter:

Suckups: Your posse, or those who want to be part of your posse. They are sucking up to you for personal, partisan reasons. Each of them thinks he/she is smarter than you, more talented than you and better suited to doing your job than you are. The whole point of keeping in close proximity to the leader is to be in the closest position to take over should the leader falter. You cannot trust suckups, and, anyway, they are incapable of responding to your leadership. Let me repeat this important point: Suckups are systemically incapable (at the capillary and synapse level) of responding to your leadership. You know this. You were a suckup yourself.

Non-Suckups: Your real audience. The people who actually do the work around here. These are the people you have to motivate in order to succeed. These are the people who think you’re an a-hole for traveling around with a posse. You will never have a meaningful conversation with a single non-suckup with your posse around. You will never understand how work actually gets done around here without talking to a non-suckup. The best way to have a conversation with a non-suckup is to venture out among the cubicles, posse-less, chatting with and getting to know people. I know, it’s hard. But you must do it if you want to succeed as a leader. Sure, you can continue to fail upward, holding this leadership position just long enough to suggest you might have done something meaningful if all your initiatives had had time to succeed, but, alas, that competitor gave you that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to put an S in front of your VP, so you had to take it. You can do that trick maybe a handful of times before the non-suckups rebel and you’re suddenly spending a LOT of time with your family and wondering why nobody will take your calls or even offer you a mid-level position at one-third your last salary. So stop the madness and commit to being the best leader you can be, right here, right now, and make friends with the non-suckups. Friend them on Facebook. Non-suckups love that. And it will drive the suckups crazy. They already friended you on Facebook, and here you are initiating Facebook friendship with nonsuckups?! Keep this up, and you will be CEO before the kids finish college.

Banjo’s Best™ Advice: Make a point of walking around and chatting with your employees without a posse for at least forty minutes each day. As a posse begins to form around you, shoo them away. The most effective way to shoo suckups away is to ask a non-suckup a personal question (“How was your weekend?”). Suckups fear that empathizing with the hopes and habits of non-suckups will doom them to becoming like them. This is why suckups never bring lunch to work—it will inevitably mean waiting awkwardly in the kitchenette for a non-suckup to finish microwaving his homemade gnocchi, which is the next best thing to wearing a button with a big slash over the words Upwardly Mobile. This is why suckups want to stand so close to you as often as possible. They believe in Osmosis as the primary force in the universe. As soon as your inquiry leads to the non-suckup describing a weekend of gardening, with details about bulb selection, soil mixtures, etc., the suckups will flee in horror. You know this. You’ve been a suckup. Suck it up and listen. You might learn something. You might be horrified by the patheticness of your work horse’s life. You might realize your personal life is just as pathetic. But you will take three baby steps toward becoming an effective leader.