Workplace Communication: Is Your Language Clean?

If you want to achieve good results at work, effective communication is a good starting point. You may be inadvertently undermining yourself in your use of language. There are three dirty little words in the English language that need to be used very carefully! 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 remove it. It’s not logical, it’s psychological. So when you say “Don’t forget to log out when you leave”, people are most likely subconsciously accepting the message to forget to log out, rather than doing what you think you’ve told them.

‘Try’ is a treacherous little word. If someone says they’ll ‘try’ to do something, they probably won’t, since they’re giving themselves a way out from the start. So be careful of your language when you say ‘I’d like you to try to hit this deadline.’ As Yoda said in Star Wars “Do it or don’t do it. There’s no trying.”

‘But’ is a word that creates barriers to effective communication. Take a look at this statement: “That was a great presentation, but he lost them a little bit in the middle.”
What is your colleague going to get with this? They will probably delete the compliment and focus on the message they messed up. Although your intention is to help, you have inadvertently had an impact that will prevent them from acting confidently.

Start listening to these words and where they come up in your conversation. You’ll also quickly realize how much other people use them! Once you’ve spotted them, you can decide when it’s appropriate to make another choice: clean your language! – and see if this one has a better answer.

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