The ‘grammatical competence’ required of business leaders

Competent leadership does not omit these adjectives in order to appear more confident; it uses them to distinguish between what it knows, what it estimates, and what it does not yet know.

Finally, there is the power of the indicative , the mode of reality and action: ‘we decide’, ‘we invest’, ‘we proceed’. Sooner or later, a leader must leave the realm of possibilities and make a decision. But the indicative should come at the end of the process, not at the beginning. Used too soon, it turns a prediction into a fact and a scenario into a destiny; used at the right moment, it transforms an awareness of uncertainty into responsibility.

The grammatical competence of a leader therefore lies in knowing how to switch between moods and tenses: exploring in the subjunctive, verifying in the conditional, comparing in the plural and, only then, deciding in the indicative. The problem can arise when these forms are used as if they were equivalent in order to simplify matters and save time in the ‘post’ phase. When ‘might’ becomes ‘will’, the ‘if’ disappears and one of the possible futures is presented as the only available future. This is not merely a linguistic inaccuracy: it alters the nature of the information and, with it, the quality of the decision.

A projection is presented as a forecast; a forecast takes on the tone of certainty; a scenario becomes a plan that has already been drawn up. Possibility turns into a promise, hypothesis into fact, and a possible course of action into an inevitable destiny. This is how organisations (of any kind) borrow a certainty that none of the tools used actually possesses. The transition often takes place almost without us realising it. In a meeting, someone presents a figure based on a chain of assumptions; on the next slide, that figure becomes a target; on the one after that, an investment decision. The initial conditions disappear, whilst the result remains. The more precise the figure, the more authoritative it seems: 7.3 per cent is more reassuring than a range between 5 and 9, even when the latter figure represents what we know far more honestly. This is why grammatical precision is also a form of managerial precision.

Keeping the subjunctive, the conditional, the plural and the indicators of probability visible means maintaining the distance between what we know, what we estimate and what we imagine. A distance that is necessary not to postpone a choice, but to make it with greater awareness. Language, therefore, does not merely describe what we see. It directs our gaze, establishes which alternatives we consider and determines the scope of what we are able to imagine. This skill becomes even more important in the age of artificial intelligence. Mastery of language is not merely about formulating more effective prompts: it is about ensuring that we do not delegate our thinking along with the formulation of the question. An artificial agent can collect data, recognise patterns, develop projections, make predictions and generate scenarios. It can even suggest which decision appears most rational. But the fluidity with which it produces a response risks obscuring the steps through which that response was constructed. A well-formulated text may seem true to us; a precise recommendation may seem necessary; the alternative presented first may appear to be the only one possible. This is where grammar becomes a leadership skill. It means constantly asking ourselves: is the agent describing what will happen, what might happen, or what would happen under certain conditions? Are they presenting a fact, an inference or a recommendation? What assumptions have been left implicit? What possibilities have been omitted from the answer? The deepest risk, in fact, is not that artificial intelligence will make choices for us. It is that we, out of haste, habit or fatigue, will gradually stop making choices ourselves.

Cognitive delegation rarely takes place through an explicit decision: it begins when we accept an answer without questioning its grammar. For this reason, in the age of artificial agents, ownership of language becomes ownership of decision-making. Retaining control over words — over the ‘ifs’, the ‘might’s’, the plurals and the margins of doubt — means retaining responsibility for our choices. Those who relinquish the words with which they question the future risk also relinquishing the very possibility of imagining it. And those who can no longer imagine different futures will find it difficult to choose which one to help build. Often, underlying imprecise and therefore vague language lies the difficulty of the grammar of feelings and a lack of courage to express them. For emotions do not merely accompany the way we imagine the future: they alter its tense, its mood and even its person. Fear tends to speak in the indicative: it will go badly, we won’t make it, we’ll lose what we have. It transforms what we fear into what we believe to be inevitable. Desire prefers the conditional: we would like to change, we could become. Hope dwells in the subjunctive: may it still be possible, may there be another way. Responsibility, on the other hand, chooses the first-person plural: what can we do, right now? This is yet another reason why grammatical competence will be a fundamental skill of leadership.

It will not merely serve to distinguish a forecast from a projection, or a fact from an assumption. It will help us recognise when a fear masquerades as a forecast, when a wish is presented as a plan, and when uncertainty becomes an excuse for failing to make a decision. Artificial intelligence may help us complete sentences, develop alternatives and envisage scenarios. But it cannot choose on our behalf which sentiment should guide our narrative of the future, nor what responsibility we are prepared to take on in order to build it. We need ‘grammatical leadership’ at every level: to choose our words carefully, to leave possible futures open, and to take on – together with others – the responsibility to keep writing.

* Partner of Newton Spa