I often see team leaders, managers, executives talk about their people.

They’re not your people.

Sure as a leader you’re nominally responsible for the results of your team’s work – so the question for you is “what’s the best approach to doing this with the group of people here, what does everyone need?”. In effect, the relationship is flipped – you are their person!

More broadly, the language we use sets the culture we work in. People would rather feel trusted than owned – so find different language that doesn’t infer an ownership relationship.

Focusing on individuals, feeling a need to assert a top down “my people”-ness usually means something has gone wrong.