Six Things Not to Say at Work

Business brain episode 455 for Wednesday, June 7, 2023. Greetings, folks and welcome to Business Brain, the show where we take different things in our lives, our businesses, our personal lives, and we run them through the Business Brain filter. Easy for me to say so that we get a different perspective, a better perspective, a more valuable perspect on these things. And the path is it helps us keep living that charmed life. Sponsors for this episode include checker.com businessbrain that's C-E-C-K-R.com businessbrain where you can save 40 bucks off your first background check. And Notion projects a new thing from Notion. You can try it for free today@notion.com businessbrain. We'll talk more in depth about each of those shortly. For now, here in Durham, New Hampshire.

I'm Dave Hamilton and in Lafayette, California, I am Shannon Jean. How are you, man?

Yeah, I'm good. You know, just like it's rock and rolling. It's, it's always weird having like I liked the long weekend. I didn't like the short work week last week. Yeah, yeah, that's all. So that's true, you know. Yeah, it's tough. Yeah.

I was gone for a few days working on a property that we have and I feel, I love unplugging and going. But right coming back, you're just like.

Oh, wow, I've gotta, you pay for.

Gotta deal with this. And yeah, you, you pay for it.

No matter how it is. Yeah. It's the Charmed Life, though. Like we get to do these things. It's fine. It's. It's fine. Yep. Yeah.

The flexibility is amazing.

Oh, agreed.

There is no, there is no freedom as we've talked about. But the flex is, is incredible. Priceless and a huge part of the charmed life that you always mention.

Yeah, absolutely. So listener David wrote in and because he wrote into feedback at BusinessBrain show, he will be entered into our drawing for a MacBook Air. We need to decide now after earlier this week. We need to decide Is that a 13 inch error or a 15 inch error? I don't know. We'll have to see. And. And David wrote in, he says we sent an email to our corporate our company's mailing list in our which has customers in it I would presume a few weeks ago. He says, I thought you might find it interesting. We sent this out, we mailed this out as part of a newsletter years ago and I resurrected it for the email blast recently. It starts with. According to Forbes magazine. There are certain things you can say that will leave a lasting impress, but not necessarily the right one. At work, it's probably better if you don't say the following six things. The first one, Shannon, it's not fair. Don't say that at work. Life's not fair.

Nothing is fair. And you're not going to get anywhere talking like that.

No.

Thinking like that.

It's true. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I like it. Yeah. Life's not fair. And there's no point in complaining. And you don't want to have a culture of complaining. Right. The one thing he says is, if necessary, document and prove your point. Just don't complain for the sake of complaining. Which I like that. That's good. The second one, that's not my problem. It's similar to the commentary with, it's not fair. It's much better if you offer to help solve a problem that you see as opposed to saying, well, that's, you know, that's somebody else's issue.

Yeah. I like the framework of making the comment, hey, I know it's not my responsibility, but here's something we may want to try. Or here's something. If you're trying to help somebody solve a problem, that's the flip side of that. That's not my problem. Because I always. I can't keep my mouth shut. You know, I'll sit there and think, well, you know, I know that's not my department, not my responsibility, but here's a suggestion. You may. Or may.

Yeah. Something offering something that might be helpful. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Speaking of the word problem, he says, when someone says, thank you, the correct response is, you're welcome. Do not say no problem. Saying no problem might be thought to convey the same thing as you're welcome, but it implies that there might have been a problem to begin with. You're welcome implies that it was your pleasure to help. I love that. I do, too. Yeah.

Words are so powerful. I just read an article last week about the power of using two words when you're closing. Every email, every proposal, every phone call. If you're in the business of selling things and instead of just saying goodbye, whatever, you should always say, buy now. Oh, and you know, you're constantly reinforcing, buy now, buy now, buy now. And I was like, oh, that's pretty tricky. I like that.

Oh, yeah, I like that.

Every email, your signature, buy now. Here's, you know, whatever. Not. You're not pitching it. It's just buy now by now. And over and over and over again, it just becomes in your vocabulary and people constantly hear that and that it, you know, changes behavior.

It does. That's interesting. The one I, I agree with this 100%. Saying no problem in, in place of your welcome can offer implications you did not intend. However, the phrase you're welcome, especially with, with a lot of Gen Z folks has been replaced at least in part with of course say, oh, thank you so much. And they say of course. And I, and I like that too. It says the same thing like, oh, of course. It's, you know, I was happy to help you. It, it communicates the same you're welcome message, but it is part of that group of vernacular. And so I find myself, I find myself adopting that depending on who I'm talking with and, and whether. Which I think will land better. You're welcome versus of course. Right. Like, you know. Yeah. So I, I share that it is reading the room is, is a good thing. And I, I do try to mimic the language of people that I'm, that I'm immersed with too. Yeah, to a degree. Yeah. Yeah.

And I like that. Of course it's good. And it's. Now that you bring it up, I hear my, my kids using that quite frequently.

Well, they're gen zers.

Yes, there you go. But one of the things that I like added to that is a phrase that reinforces the fact that you did something for someone, but also builds some future, a bridge towards the future. And that is saying something like, oh, of course, and adding, I know you will do the same for me.

Oh, yes, because you're you.

That's why you're doing it. You have this connection. It's all about reciprocity.

Yes.

You're, you're trying to add value to the relationship. But, but it's just a good little reminders like, oh, of course I know you will not. You would.

Oh, interesting.

I know you will do the same for me because, you know, someday you may need them to do the same for you.

Whether it's. That's a little aggressive. I would not say will. I would say would in those scenarios because will implies like will is a command. Right. Whereas would you softly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's a command versus a sentiment, you know, But I mean like I, I'm not saying if you choose to say will instead of would, that that's wrong. I'm saying I, I will use the phrase would to deliver it a little more softly.

Yeah, any, any grammar, AI will change that and say don't use a Passive voice.

Yes. Oh, I know. Yeah, yeah. But it would. It's very calc.

I got it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's interesting, though. Yeah. I'm going to think about this now. I like this feedbackusbrain show if you're thinking about this too. This is a great email, David. Thank you for sending it to us. It is to bring this home. The last three start with the one phrase it's better not to say at work is, I'll try. And the reason is if you ask someone if they can have something ready by noon, you don't want to hear, I'll try. That implies they may fail. You want to hear, I will. That small change speaks volumes. Yeah, yeah. It's the Yoda, right? I mean, always think of Yoda. Do or do not. There is no try.

Do not.

Yeah, yeah.

If you need more time that you need to have that discussion right now.

More time.

It's like, okay, I can get it to you, but I, I think I'll. Well, I will need till 1pm or whatever.

Yes.

You can't get it done.

Being just as confident with needing more time than, than hitting the, you know, the, the deadline, I think is. It's good. Yeah. Yeah. You want to communicate confidence. That's what we're talking about here.

I think I mentioned that last week when I always would ask, how much time do you need to get it done? Let them tell you.

Yeah.

It works out better than you setting the deadline.

My favorite one on this list is number five. Shannon. The phrase not to say, but we've always done it this way. If somebody says that to me, I am now, hell, Ben, Changing it like I like, like, like to my own detriment. I like. I just don't. That is not a reason to keep doing things. It's. It's a reason that it's a red flag. It is a reason that the human mind likes that we like patterns. Patterns become our shortcuts. Right. We do all our brains do all kinds of things where it. It, like it always does it this way and it will continue doing it this way unless we change. But. And that way we're not thinking about these things all the time. But saying we've always done it this way. No, no, that's not an excuse. That is an observation. We've always done it that way. That's correct. Let's talk about whether or not it's worth changing. Yeah.

Doesn't make it right.

Doesn't make it right. It makes it. It makes the statement correct. Perhaps, you know, We've always done it this way. And the answer is probably no. We've done it this way for the last five years. But before that we did it a different way. You know, it's, it's the. But the, the. My management counter to that is let's try something new for two weeks. Right? You know, using the two week experiment. Yep, yep. So, and the last one on this list, Shannon, that's impossible. Someone says that's impossible. Oh, yeah, I don't, I think the.

The, the, the way, the response to that is like, well, what if it were possible? How would we, how would it be implemented? How would we do it to get that mindset thinking and changing the whole frame of the discussion to, you know, if you had every resource at your fingertips, if you had all the experience and education you needed, how do we make it possible?

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Yeah. Because looking at these, you know, Patrick sent us kind of a snapshot of these notes.

It's great.

It's just an ongoing, simple little list.

It's nothing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You could keep it in the notes app on the Mac or, you know, whatever on your phone or on your other computer. It's really powerful, and it's threaded. You know, it just keeps going on and on and on, which I think is great. I also really like this comment about understanding and being aware of where the employee or person is coming from in their personal life and how it impacts them at work. I think that's a terrific thing to understand and know when to push and when to back off and give a little bit of leeway. I think that's really.

I made terrific. I made the error of sort of mandating that we keep our personal lives out of work very early on when we started, I guess it was Mac Observer. That was the first real business that I started where we were managing people. And I made it clear. I was like, look, you know, whatever you've got going on. Whatever I've got going on, we leave that at home. We do our work. I was wrong, by the way, folks. Like, this is not a good path. And I remember one of my guys coming to me fairly early on. He's like, look, I know you don't want to know about this kind of stuff, but it is impacting. Like, he basically read me, you know, Patrick's reasoning in a different, you know, from a different angle. Yeah. But he's like, look, I've got this thing going on. I think he was moving into a new place. He's like, I need money for a down payment. He's like, is there any way you could, you know, front me my next paycheck or something? You know, it was a. It was a reasonable request for a. A Fine. Reason. Like, there was nothing. There were no red flags even about this, but he didn't feel. He knew that this was explicitly verboten, but he also knew that he had to ask me about this. And as soon as he did, it was like, oh, yeah, that's totally fine, man. Like, yeah, that's great. And then I started thinking, oh, wait a minute. I think we might have set a bad policy here. You know, what I didn't want is people just coming to work every day to complain about all the stuff that wasn't at work. Right. It was like, look, I got stuff I can complain about. You got stuff you can complain about it. Let's just get the work done. You know, that was. That was my great.

It would be great if you could.

Yeah, but that's not how humans work, right? Like, that's.

That's not.

It's just. Yeah, it's just not how it works. So I. I learned that lesson, thankfully, very quickly and pretty much head on it. It didn't take very long for me to realize, oh, okay, wait a minute. And then. And then I remember, like, a year later, I had to tell him, no, no, no, you changed my mind on this. Like, it's okay. We can talk about this stuff. It's fine. He's like, okay. I just didn't. I didn't know. He's like, I remember you saying. I'm like, I know. And that's the other thing. Employees have memories better than elephants on stuff like this.

Yes, they do.

If you tell them something, as dumb as it might be, they will hold it against you. And even after you tell them, oh, yeah, that thing that I said was dumb, ignore it. They know that you thought it at one point, right? Like, because that's why you said it. And so they. In their. In their minds, like, even with this guy, it was like, oh, yeah, I'm so glad you brought this to me. Yes, let's. You know, we can. We can certainly front you the next check or whatever it was, and this is going to be great. Congrats on the new apartment. I was wrong. Feel free to bring this stuff up all the time. He still didn't feel comfortable because he knew that I said it for a reason, and he didn't quite realize that I changed my mind pretty quickly when I'm ready to change my mind. Like, he learned that since, obviously. But it's.

It's a very good thing to understand and try to strike that balance. And I. I found the more casual time, you were able to kind of hang out with people that work for you, the more you just pick that stuff up so you don't have to ask, but you kind of get the.

Sense of just going on and yeah.

And, and we, you know, I, we used to do with our, our lunches every Friday and barbecue and we did stuff and you know, different things and you, you just know and you can sense it and you go, hey, maybe we shouldn't do your, you know, review right now or this, let's bump it a week or kind of see what's going on. So being self aware of that, that is a terrific tip. And Patrick, thanks for sending that in to feedbackusinessbrain show.

And that's it. Yeah. Patrick also gets entered into our drawing to win a MacBook Air this year. We don't know which kind. We don't Even know what MacBook Airs will be for sale at the end of the year when we do this. So who knows, we might talk about some other things. Apple announced this week in our casual Friday show. So make sure to listen for that. Stay subscribed. We really appreciate it. That helps you keep living that charmed life. We'll see you next time.