By olivia.mccoy@smithpublicity.com (Suzanne Wertheim, PhD)

Welcome to Breaking the Blueprint — a blog series that dives into the unique business challenges and opportunities of underrepresented business owners and entrepreneurs. Learn how they’ve grown or scaled their businesses, explored entrepreneurial ventures within their companies, or created side hustles, and how their stories can inspire and inform your own success.

A single word can make or break a relationship, especially in its early stages. This includes relationships with sales prospects, clients, and co-workers.

Most of us were raised to think that language and action are two separate things. That words don’t really matter. That an issue involving language is “just semantics.”

But in more than two decades of researching how language actually works, I’ve learned that language is social action. In fact, every single thing you say or write can cause a relationship to improve or deteriorate.

By paying attention to our language and making sure we’re using the more inclusive version, we can avoid painful mistakes. Here are three ways you can make sure that your language makes people feel recognized, taken into consideration, and valued.

How To Be Mindful of Language in the Workplace

1. Pay attention to names.

A common type of problematic language is being careless or disrespectful of names. This is especially hard on people with low-frequency names. But with some effort, you can make people with “foreign” or “difficult” names feel respected and welcomed.

• Spell names correctly. Look at email signatures or other official sources and make sure you’ve got someone’s name right. If their name includes an accent, like in Renée, then use that accent.
• Say names correctly. When you meet someone with a low-frequency name, repeat it back to them to check that you’ve got it right. Don’t say something like, “I’m afraid I’m going to butcher this name.” Instead say something like, “Can you help me make sure I’m pronouncing your name right?”
• Create and use forms that accept a range of names. This includes very short family names, like Ng, and very long family names, like Barchas-Lichtenstein. It also includes names with a blank space in them, like Yi Shun. When people can’t register with your website using their name, and when they receive emails from you with their name wrong (like, “Hey, Yi!” instead of “Hey, Yi Shun!”) they will not think well of your company. And they may take to social media to complain about the disrespect.

2. Avoid assumptions about gender identity.

A common mistake that deeply harms relationships is misgendering someone. Here is how to avoid using language that doesn’t match a person’s gender identity or sexual orientation — which may not be obvious from how they look.

• Don’t assume you know someone’s gender. For example, instead of saying something like “a man like you” or “a woman like you,” switch to “a person like you.” Until you know for sure how someone identifies, it is best to keep it neutral.

…read more

Source:: HubSpot Blog

      



Author: Aaron