Communication in the workplace: is your language clean?
If you want to do well at work, effective communication is a good starting point. The use of language may be inadvertently undermined. There are three dirty little words in the English language that must be used with great care! They are “no”, “try” and “but”.
I could tell you ‘Don’t think of a blue tree!’ What are you thinking? Probably a blue tree! Your mind cannot process a negative. You first have to produce a blue tree before you can kill it. It is not logical, it is psychological. So when you say “Don’t forget to log out when you leave,” people are likely to unconsciously take on the message of forgetting to log out, rather than doing what you think you’ve communicated.
“Test” is a treacherous little word. If someone says that they will “try” to do something, they probably will not succeed, since they are taking a break from the beginning. So be careful with your language when you say ‘I would like you to try to reach this deadline’. As Yoda said in Star Wars “Do it or don’t do it. You don’t have to try.”
“But” is a word that creates barriers to effective communication. Take a look at this statement: ‘It was a great presentation, but lost them a bit in the middle.’
What is your colleague going to get out of this? They will probably eliminate the praise and focus on the message that they were wrong. Although it is intended to help, it inadvertently had an impact that will prevent them from performing confidently.
Start listening to these words and where they come up in your conversation. You will also quickly find out how much other people use them! Once you’ve seen them, you can decide when it’s appropriate to make another choice – to clean up your language! – and see if this has a better answer.
