In the classes that I taught this past semester, I found myself constantly trying to neutralize words with my students. Teaching Leadership can be a very vague task, and part of it is getting students to understand the value of an objective perspective. So much of what we do in life is subjective, which eliminates our ability to see things as clearly as we'd probably like. That said, whenever we used terms that typically get a negative connotation, "power, ignorant, and self-preserving," to name a few, I reminded my students that we simply perceive these as negative terms because of how they've been framed.
What I didn't get to do as much is look at the other end of the spectrum - identifying words that are typically framed in a positive light, but should also be used objectively. One word that I did share with them was "service," and how our society likes to associate "service" with giving blood, building houses, or serving soup. Meanwhile "service" can also mean the service of any purpose. After all, that's what we as people do, we serve our own purposes. Ghandi and Mother Theresa served purposes, but so did Hitler and Stalin.
