Several years ago, I had intern who spent 12 weeks of their summer working on an assignment that had a broad impact on the project we were supporting at the time. The assignment involved talking with stakeholders in double digits; soliciting their input; assessing everyone's critical needs and wish lists; assessing the options in solution space and making a recommendation on how to proceed. The culmination of the assignment was presenting their findings to a board of high-level decision makers (review board) and pitching the recommendation. As the summer progressed, the intern periodically met up with me and some subject matter experts to ensure they were heading in the right direction.
As the internship approached its end, I met with the intern to help them prepare for the review board presentation. We talked through the options and how they came to the recommendation they selected. It was the day before I was going to be out of the office for a long weekend, so I tasked the intern with putting a couple of charts together while I was away and set up a meeting to review them when I returned. At the follow up meeting, the intern (who'd been crushing it all summer) came in looking rather abashed and confessed that they'd struggled to put something together. I assured the intern it wasn't a problem and we'd work through it together, then asked them to show me their work so I could see where they'd gotten stuck.
As the intern opened the file they had been working on, I realized their struggles were my failure to communicate. To the general population, a chart is a table or graph representing a set of information. To the folks who've worked in the industry for a while, a chart is a PowerPoint slide. That slide may contain tables and graphs, photographs, a bulleted list or a few sentences. More than one chart is called a chart package. I don't know how this came about and it certainly confused me the first time it came up in my career. By the time I was tasking the intern, it was engrained in my vocabulary. Naturally when the intern heard the word chart, they started in Excel rather than Powerpoint. We had a good laugh about it once I explained what I meant by chart. The poor intern had spent a few days struggling and doubting themself because of my word choice. They were so relieved when they found out the problem wasn't them!
Words are powerful, often in ways we can't comprehend unless we stop and think about it. Had I paused to put myself in the intern's shoes, I would have conveyed my tasking differently
As leaders our words often carry more weight. Once a director I worked with was in a document review with a team of early career employees and the director made an offhand comment about how they thought the document should be written in a different tense. That team ran off and immediately started re-writing the document. No value was added and delivery of the document was delayed. Meanwhile, the delay wasn't communicated to the receiver (that would be me), who ultimately got the document late and had to scramble to meet deadlines on tasks dependent on receipt of the document. If that comment had come from a peer, the idea of rework may have been discussed but ultimately have been discarded as a waste of time.
Through trial, error on observation, I've learned a few keys to evaluating my words before I share them:
- Know your Audience - There are unique terms, acronyms or concepts in every job. Remind yourself of your adudience. Unless everyone is a seasoned veteran, it's worth clarifying, defining or explaining what you mean...for the visitor, for the new hire, for someone from a different area of the organization. I've had times I wished I could go back and add context. I've never regretted starting from a place of sharing context.
- Read the Room - Check to see if your message is landing. If so, ask yourself if it's landing the way you expected. If you come up with a "no", it's time to it's time to re-think the way you worded your message. This skill is super important, because as humans, we're bound to get it wrong occasionally, no matter how hard we try. Despite my best efforts, it happens to me regularly. Fortunately I've gotten adept at reading the room, so I can course-correct on the fly to minimize trouble.
- Phone a Friend - A trusted colleague who isn't afraid to tell you like it is can be invaluable. When I have a difficult, complicated or critical message to convey, I like to check in for a second (or third) set of eyes to get feedback before I go prime time with my message.
Can you think of a time when your word choice led to unintended consequences? Do you pause to review your message in your head before saying it out loud?
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