In this episode of Relationships at Work, communications and leadership nerd (and host) Russel Lolacher talks the importance of words leaders use and understanding their meaning in that workplace.
A 2014 Salesforce report found that 86% of employees and executives believe that lack of collaboration and ineffective communication are responsible for workplace failures.
Russel shares why it's important to know what your words mean, what questions to ask to make sure you do and how vital it is to understand your audience.
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| Welcome to Relationships At Work – the guide for emerging leaders to create a workplace we love. I’m your host Russel Lolacher I’m a communications and leadership nerd with a couple of decades of experience and a heap of curiosity on how we can lead and work together to improve the employee experience. This show is a great resource to help us with that.
Every week on the show, I talk with a local or global leader on topics that are help to you to improve the workplace. We’ve tackled negativity, reimagining leadership, imposter syndrome, diversity, communication, empathy, activism, burnout, mental health, and so many other topics. And now, as an added bonus, I’ll be sharing an additional episode pulled from the pages of our weekly R@W Note which you can subscribe to. A quick and valuable bit of information on top of our regular show. So for this week’s R@W N ote I’m passing you… We Don’t Know the Meaning of the Word.
As emerging leaders, we have to know what words mean. Not only for ourselves but for this we’re communicating to. We can’t just use words without thinking. I learned long ago, that communications involves two people – the sender and the receiver: what is said and how it is received. If we don’t consider both, we aren’t truly communicating. This is especially true in the workplace.
A 2014 Salesforce report found that 86% of employees and executives believe that lack of collaboration and ineffective communication are responsible for workplace failures. So it’s pretty important that we make those connections and get our communication right.
So we have to make sure we’re using words properly.
Here’s an example: Safe Space. It’s on posters. It’s in onboarding materials. It’s in DEI training. But we can’t just say the words like it’s a script. My mom told me a story recently where her former boss would repeatedly talk about the psychological safety of the organization he led. How this place he was in charge of was a place of honesty and open dialogue – a SAFE SPACE. Those are all the right words. We’ve heard them before. But there was a problem. He had NO concept of what those words actually meant. Saying the words doesn’t make it true. The culture of his employees was completely the opposite. They weren’t encourage to speak truth to power, they didn’t feel like they could be honest or open. It wasn’t safe.
He sure liked using those phrases though.
As leaders, if we are going to use terms like "psychological safety" and "safe spaces", it's vital we actually know what they mean to those we are communicating to and what goes into making them possible. So sticking with the SAFE SPACE example, we as emerging leaders can ask ourselves:
- Has "safe space" at work been defined?
- Have policies been put in place that support and promote a safe work environment?
- Are employees encouraged to report any incidents of harassment, discrimination, or other forms of misconduct? And what happens with that information?
- Are employees provided with training on diversity, equity, and inclusion?
- Is there a clear code of conduct that sets expectations for behaviour in the workplace? And what happens if not, including for executives?
You can replace “safe space” for any other word. How about Work/Life Balance?
- Has that term been defined?
- Have policies been put in place that support and promote it?
- Is there an example of what it looks like at work that you want to use as a demonstration?
- Are staff provided with expectations and frameworks to guide the work/life balance conversation?
For the benefit of our employees and their mental health... Just saying words, without knowing what they actually mean in that workplace, that culture, under that leadership… doesn't make them true. It just makes us as leaders look like we don’t know what we’re talking about and parroting what we’ve been told.
And that is the opposite of building trust and fostering relationships at work.