Are you speaking with them or to them?

Etiquette lessons from my teenage years didn’t leave much of a mark—except for one. While I rarely need to navigate a formal place setting these days, I vividly remember when a tutor challenged my language during a lesson on answering the phone correctly.

She asked why I said I was “speaking to” someone instead of “speaking with” them. Growing up, "speaking to" was all I’d ever heard. At the time, I wasn’t thinking about power dynamics, psychological safety, or leadership theory. I didn’t yet know about service design, user experience, or appreciative inquiry. But even then, the subtle difference in those phrases struck me.

“Speaking to” feels like a one-way transaction—a broadcast. “Speaking with” creates a dialogue, a connection, an exchange. That small linguistic shift has stayed with me through years of study and practice, resonating as a simple but profound principle in leadership.

Leadership, at its heart, is relational. When we speak with someone, we honour their perspective. We co-create conversations instead of dictating outcomes. It’s a small change that can have an outsized impact on how we show up and how others experience us.

As you lead today, pause for a moment. Are you speaking with the person in front of you—or to them? The answer might be more important than you think.