The ICT Job Hunter Blog

Although, according to Albert Mehrabian, words are the things that we pay least attention to in cases where words, tone of voice and facial expression don’t all match up, the words that we choose to use are nevertheless important and there are certain ones in particular that we need to be careful with.

Of course it should go without saying that swear words and profanities have no place in the workplace and, even if those around you choose to use them, you would be well-advised not to follow suit.  Many people find swearing deeply offensive, while others just consider it to be ignorant and demonstrative of a poor vocabulary.  If your own or another manager hears you swearing regularly at work, his impression will automatically be that you do or would behave in just the same way in the presence of customers or clients and so he’s not likely to be at all impressed.

Aside from swear words though, there are a few seemingly innocuous words in the English language which can do much to demonstrate a less than positive attitude and which therefore can be quite damaging.  The word ‘can’t’, for example, is one that no manager wants to hear.  As an employee, you get paid for finding solutions, not for telling the boss that things are impossible.  Okay, so what he has asked for may well be impossible, but instead of saying ‘I can’t,’ you should be looking for practical or feasible alternatives.  ‘I can’t,’ simply puts up a block and offers no way forward, as well as demonstrating a negative attitude.

Another word which is great for putting up barriers to communication is ‘but’, and the reason these three letters can be so damaging is because they force the listener to concentrate on the negative, even if something positive came before.  Imagine, for example, that your boss asks you to prepare a particularly complicated report and get it to him first thing in the morning and your response is, ‘Yes, I can certainly handle the report, but I doubt whether I can get it to you before midday.’  Instead of singing your praises for the first part of your statement, all he will really take on board is your inability to meet his deadline.  Similarly, if you sit one of your staff members down and say ‘I really liked that presentation you gave the customer today, but I think it might have been clearer if you’d used a flip chart,’ you might just as well not have bothered with the first part of the sentence as all your staff member will take away from the conversation is the fact that his presentation wasn’t clear.

‘Try’ is another three-letter word which is best avoided if you don’t want to create a bad impression, because this one immediately sets the listener up for disappointment.  By saying, ‘I’ll try and get it done by midday’, what you are actually doing is letting yourself off the hook for missing a deadline before you’ve even started and perhaps demonstrated a lack of commitment to meeting the requirement.

I’m not sure what it is about three-letter (as opposed to four-letter) words which makes them so potentially troublesome, but ‘you’ and ‘why’ have a nasty habit of coming across as being accusatory, especially if accompanied by the wrong tone of voice.  ‘You always/never do x, y or z,’ not only condemns the listener wholeheartedly, but it also gives him no motivation to change.  ‘Why didn’t you do x, y or z?’ meanwhile, is often not even intended as a real question.  The speaker doesn’t really require or expect a response, he simply wants to make a point, but again this approach is highly unlikely to motivate the listener into improving next time around.

Aside from individual words such as these, messages which attack, blame, preach or threaten are also serious no-nos.  Even if you say it with a smile on your face and in a nice tone of voice, the sentence, ‘Anyone with half a brain could see that that wasn’t going to work,’ is never going to go down well, any more than, ‘If you’d done it the way I suggested, we wouldn’t be in this mess.’  Sentences which begin with ‘You don’t seem to understand/appreciate that…’ or ‘You obviously don’t realize that…’ might just as well have said ‘You’re an idiot’ and ‘If you don’t do x, then I’ll do y’ is just asking for a fight.

Sometimes we just get used to expressing things in a certain way without thinking about how it comes across to the listener, but it can be useful to take note of how you put things so that you don’t block communication or cause unnecessary offence.