4 Phrases to Guarantee Your Coworkers Think You’re Soft
We’ve all been there. You want to get work done, and you want people to take orders without debate. It can be maddening when a team of people, clearly with lesser thought processes or experience, slow down execution with discussion.
You are likely the kind of leader who has a command of language and doesn’t waste words. You are also probably proficient at knowing when you need to speak over someone, interrupt, or raise the volume of your voice — to mitigate the chance someone will steer the discussion away from action or down an inefficient path. Even if you don’t have experience, you know leadership means speaking with confident authority. While your instincts have a track record of getting results historically, times are changing. If you want to avoid HR complaints (ironic when you are so successfully achieving your objectives), there are some simple phrases you can weave into your language.
1. “Help me understand.” Utilize this phase when someone is speaking gibberish. Typically, they might be explaining some prior experience that you don’t share (or care about). Your instinct will be to muddle through or move past their point so they stop talking as soon as possible. Instead, try inserting this phrase, then take a pause while the other person speaks. That will be difficult. You are on a mission and you already have all of the information you need. Your world view is the only needed world view. I get it, but not everyone does. You will be thinking, “Have I let the person speak long enough?” while you plan the next words you want to say. That’s natural. If you want to go the extra mile, during the pause — to be clear, that is while the other person is speaking and you are not — you could also try to follow the words they are saying. That’s called listening.
2. “What I am hearing is…” This phrase is useful when people are being stubborn in their insistence on talking gibberish. Your inclination will be towards efficiency: ignoring their commentary completely and using your next words to continue your own narrative. Aggravatingly, the topic you thought you’d squashed might come up again. Or, your misdirection isn’t enough to stop the flow of speech from others. In those cases, try this phrase instead. After someone talks, or in extreme cases multiple people other than you talk in sequence, you say, “What I am hearing is…” and then replay back some of the words other people just said — in your own words. You will be shocked at how much more agreeable they will be to move forward because they know you’re listening.
3. “Does that make sense?” I mean, obviously it makes sense. You said it. Unfortunately, after you state your logical and inarguable insight or direction, sometimes others refer to those facts as an opinion. You’re naturally not interested in the opinions of others beyond their simple agreement. Anything further is a waste of everyone’s time. However, you might remember complaints with the words passive-aggressive, diminishing, invalidating, or maybe even gaslighting. This phrase is going to help you avoid those complaints. After you speak, usually the moment you would typically end the meeting or conversation, try this phase.
4. “I just feel like…” Don’t close the article yet! Hear me out. Understandably, you can’t imagine yourself saying these words. To put it on the table, most of you reading this are likely men, given we know most leaders are men. The phrase I am suggesting is decidedly womanly. You have spent years of your career dismissing anyone who used these words, separately or in combination. When you are in a situation — it will be rare — that you might be losing a debate or not getting your way, try this phrase. Say, “I just feel like…” and then restate your point of view with a few more words explaining why. Yes, it will make you feel weak. But you are strong enough to feel weak. I know you are.
No doubt these four phrases will painfully prolong any discussion. In this sensitive, “diverse” workplace you now have to endure, you can use these phrases in combination to still get the outcomes you need. Others who have implemented these suggestions report that over repeated use, they are able to find these phrases coming to them more naturally. In a few extreme cases, the results these leaders are achieving are even better, with more people predicting work that needs to be done without you even telling them to do it, and oddly sometimes even smiling and laughing together.
After you master these four phrases, you’ll be ready for the next level. Perhaps next we’ll cover how to use three of the most terrifyingly idiotic phrases of them all: ““I don’t know,” “let’s ask someone else” and “thanks a bunch.”
Good luck. You deserve to get what you want without words getting in the way.
Phew. It was kind of gross to even type that all. After reading “4 Words that Perpetuate Gender Bias in the Workplace,” I felt obliged. Since the first workplace leadership course 20 years ago where I was taught that my MBTI was “the perfect leadership type” in a man, and viewed as “brash and ineffective” in a woman, I’ve struggled with the ideas that we have to adjust our styles to fit a workplace standard set through the dominant male lens.
To all of the researchers who have spent years helping us women shape and adjust our communications to the perfect Goldilocks porridge level of just right: please reframe your research. If we each worked on honing the leadership styles that come to us naturally, we would be far better off than teaching minority populations how to assimilate.
