As a former world champion debater, Kate Mason, PhD, is aware of that the best way you talk can matter simply as a lot as your message.
Mason, who lives in Sydney, Australia, spent a decade working in communications at corporations like Google and YouTube earlier than changing into an government coach and founding her personal strategic communications agency, Hedgehog + Fox, in 2017.
Through her work as a communications coach, Mason observed a sample she calls “imposing syndrome”: many professionals, notably girls, are overly self-conscious about ruffling feathers or “being a bother” at work, she says, which frequently causes them to remain quiet and reduce their accomplishments.
These self-deprecating habits have “an insidious effect on their work and their standing,” she says.
“It results in underestimating themselves and their work by extension,” she continues.
Mason’s objective in highlighting these communication patterns is not to level out “all the ways we’re doing it wrong,” she says. Instead, she hopes to offer assets for leaders, particularly girls, who’re curious about altering their communication patterns.
“It’s more like a kind acknowledgment: this is a thing, and if that’s not serving you, maybe you want to experiment a little bit,” Mason says.
She shares her prime insights in her first ebook, “Powerfully Likeable: A Woman’s Guide to Effective Communication,” which debuted earlier this month.
Here are three phrases Mason recommends all professionals keep away from within the office, together with stronger alternate options.
‘It’ll simply take a second’
People who use this phrase are sometimes performing on a “very kind, emotionally aware impulse” to display respect for others’ time, Mason says.
In actuality, prefacing your dialog with “It’ll just take a second” can have the alternative impact, in keeping with Mason.
Firstly, “you’ve set an expectation to the other person that this will be very quick,” she says, however “literally nothing takes one second.”
Providing an unrealistic time estimate can annoy or disappoint the particular person you’re chatting with, Mason says.
“That person, a couple minutes in, is already a bit irritated because they’re like, ‘Wait, this was only going to be a second.'”
Moreover, the phrase additionally units the expectation that no matter you must say is minor or unimportant, Mason says, which might undercut your precise message.
A greater technique to articulate your request is, “I’m going to put in an hour for us next week. I really want to talk through A, B and C. Let me know if that time works for you,” Mason says.
With that rephrase, “suddenly, I look like I’m coming to you with something substantive and meaty and worthy of us spending that time together,” she says.
“It just does the idea — and yourself — a lot more justice to reframe it that way,” she continues.
‘No worries if not’
This phrase is often used to ‘soften’ a direct request, Mason says, however it’s normally not factually true.
“There often is a pressing concern,” she says. “It’s very rare that we make an ask and genuinely think, ‘Oh well, if they get back to me, we’ll see.'”
Saying “No worries if not” communicates that your request is a low precedence, Mason says: “It does a bit of a disservice to the ask.”
For her half, when Mason hears this phrase, she mentally locations that activity decrease on her to-do record, she says.
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Instead, Mason suggests specifying the aim and timeframe of your request. For instance, “I would appreciate if you could send me your edits by this afternoon, because the final draft is due tomorrow.”
As Mason cites in her ebook, a psychological study from the Seventies discovered that individuals had been extra prone to adjust to a request in the event that they got a motive behind it.
With that context, persons are “usually happy to help,” she says.
‘I’m not an expert, however…’
This phrase will immediately make you appear much less credible, Mason says.
According to Mason, prefacing your level with “I’m not an expert” reduces your authority and telegraphs uncertainty: “It immediately deescalates your status.”
People typically reduce their accomplishments after they’re feeling self-conscious, Mason says, particularly in the event that they view themselves because the ‘odd one out’ in a group.
Whether you’re the youngest within the room, or the latest to the corporate, “whatever that imbalance may be, we’re hyper-aware of it,” she says.
Being acutely aware of your house within the skilled hierarchy is not essentially a dangerous factor, Mason says, however as a substitute of downplaying your worth, she recommends embracing the distinctive qualities you convey to the desk.
“You weren’t hired because you have the same expertise as that vice president or C-level exec,” she says. “You were hired because you have your expertise.”
Leaning into your strengths may be “really empowering,” Mason says.
“Once you start realizing like, this is the thing I was hired for, and that is the value I can bring, and that’s what they want from me, it just lets you put down a lot of that hierarchical, status-oriented anxiety.”
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