“What are you guys up to?” or “What’s up guys?”
The two phrases above make the whole difference…
Working at the corporate workspace is quite tricky, you have to be very cautious about what you say and the way you speak it. Especially, when you are at the head or manager position, your conversational style and the words you use to convey your message has a great impression on your employees.
Being at a high position in your company, there are great chances when you are into direct conversation with your team members, choosing the right words will help you build a good relationship in terms of work and understanding.
Team meetings are one such place when managers are high on their minds to get the right data from their team to drive the conclusions, brainstorm new ideas and solve any conflicts or problems that the team faces.
Keeping a check on the words that are spoken or phrases that most of the company heads use during the meeting can make a huge difference in terms of employee engagement and understanding.
Your negative attitude towards the problems or the way you put your tantrums into words can sometimes demotivate them to work further with you.
To solve such issues and to learn what not to say we have curated some often used phrases that all the project managers or company leaders should take note of and stop using them during project discussions or team meetings.
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“Get shit done”
Most of the time when the team is unable to complete the assigned task on time, the leaders tend to get frustrated during the team meetings.
This is the common phrase that is spoken by the managers in-order to let the members know the importance and the urgency of the work to be done. But these words could bring out a very bad impression on the member’s mind. This shows that the leader is just interested in the successful outputs and doesn’t value the efforts that the team is making to achieve them.
What can be done: Instead of pressuring and questioning your team members about why the work has not been done, try to understand the situations by knowing where the time has gone.
“Let’s figure out a quick solution to it”, “How can we manage to get things to deliver on time?” Using such phrases might help you get your work done along with conveying the message that it has to be done as soon as possible with proper timing and team-coordination.
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“Leave your problems at home”
Your employees have a life outside the office too. There might be a time when your employee is completely distracted from the conversation in the meeting or his phone is constantly beeping giving him an emergency sign.
Addressing such employees with the above phrase might sound rude and insensitive. It shows them that you don’t care about their well-being or don’t respect their personal space.
What can be done: Using the phrase Is there something that is bothering you? or just “Any personal issues or emergency?” might make them aware that you feel that something is wrong with them and you are concerned about it. Showing the empathetic side of yours might help them open up to you about their problems.
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“Don’t discuss problems with me, give me solutions”
Some leaders (not all) become very mean when it comes to discussing problems. They are not interested in knowing the negatives and are only looking for a successful graph that the members could present.
It’s very obvious that the leaders or the managers are not always free to sit and look into every problem that occurs or their employee is facing, but giving a straight no answer might also not work.
What can be done: You have to find a way for them, just say “You can list out your problems and show me the solutions that you think might work”, here you are telling them the same thing but in a different tone.
By doing this you only have to choose the appropriate solution from the options they give and this makes them feel worth asking you again.
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“Small achievements don’t make me big differences”
Your small words of appreciation might make a great difference, similarly, the small efforts and achievements that come to your company from your employee might not bring you a drastic change in the number of bucks that your company gains, but could surely boost the morale of the people working for it.
Do not ever use this phrase when you are into a project meeting, where your employees are eagerly showing what they have done or accomplish. Their small accomplishments will combine and lead to project success. So each of them matters equally.
What can be done: “Yeah it’s a great thing we have achieved, but there is much more you can do”. This sentence not only shows the affirmation about their work but also motivates them to do more to achieve the company goals.
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” I don’t have time to talk, be quick”
Team meetings play a major role in work-coordination and project deliveries. As a leader, you have to spend time on these things as it helps you get to know what’s happening in the project and how you can give your inputs based on your experience.
Starting your meeting with such a phrase will ruin the objective for which you and your people have come together into the room. They might have approached you for a reason, it might be anything like validation for an activity or just to know your view-point for their work.
Avoiding such conversations might lead you to regret not giving those few moments that could have changed things.
What can be done: Use the phrases, Is there something very important you guys need to talk about? Can we have some other preferable time to discuss this? using such a tone of the conversation is a life savior. As you don’t always have to be rude to give an excuse.
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“I don’t pay you for discussions, but outputs”
This is the worst thing to say in a meeting or at the team meetups. You know you are an authorized person and you are paying a very high salary to your people to work well. But this doesn’t mean you are free to say the things you like.
There are teams out there who focus more on discussions and less on the implementation, but you can make them work by giving them real-life examples that help them realize that it’s time for the action.
What can be done: Ask them “How important is action for them in terms of urgency?” Questioning them in the right way is the best option to make them feel the need for outputs and performance.
Summing up
Working with the team becomes easier if there is no communication gap between the authority and the people. The way the authorities behave and talk can change the experience that the people working with them have. There are many corporate team building activities that people follow that help both the parties work well with each other also building trust between the people working together.
So leaders, make sure you refrain yourself from using the above phrases the next time you enter the meeting room.
About the Author:
James Vargas is an experienced business expert, consultant, and manager at Get Everything Delivered. With the 1.5-decade corporate experience, he is now sharing his guidance to start-ups to grow with corporate team building activities and project delivery solutions.
