Leadership Manners

Watch where you put your please and thank yous

In the past few years as I have been working with colleagues on their confidence and assertiveness, I have observed a very simple difference between the sex's communications.......... where you put your manners. You are probably thinking a) what on earth is she talking about moving manners around? and b) why on earth does it matter? Let me try and explain.

Working with women on their leadership presence and confidence means at some point focusing on their 'script', how they formulate their communications both speech and written, and in particular their requests. The very first point for discussion is to limit the use of the word sorry, women often start a sentence or a request with "I am sorry...." (sweeping generalisation on the sexes but one that if not always, is often true). Relatively quickly into the discussion women tend to realise and accept that in a work context to start a sentence with sorry is often not appropriate (unless you have just kicked your colleague in the shins in which case apologise away!). We use it as a softening modifier to a request, but in doing so we undermine ourselves and the request. For example "Sorry to disturb you, I know you are busy, but could I possibly have those charts for the review with our boss tomorrow" can unconsciously to the listener infer that you are asking for a favour, as opposed to asking for the input fundamentally required to run the business, and for both of you to do your job well. Right at the start of an interaction you are apologising for you, your role or your request, when you step back and think about it, not really what you would expect from a leader.

So it is relatively easy to understand the importance of removing "sorry" from the majority of work based communications, but guess what, we then get uncomfortable with the fact that there is no softening modifier and so generally women will replace the "sorry" at the beginning of the sentence with a "please". For example "Please can you possibly......", not what you would call an overly assertive start to a request. This is where it gets tricky because as you point this out women can get a little defensive, and argue that please and thank you are just good manners, and if you can't have good manners and be a leader then they might just think again about their aspirations!

I would, in fact, completely agree but let's take a scan at the following two sentences.

1) "Please can you send me those updated charts"

or more likely “please can you possibly send me those updated charts”, adding a further softer in the form of 'possibly'.

2) "Can you send me those updated charts please"

or even better "I need you to send me those updated charts please"

I don't believe that either second example text is any more impolite, or indeed lacking manners at all, however I do believe that it is more assertive and as such the request has a higher expectation of being met, which in turn means the listener is more likely to action or prioritise the request. The “please” is good manners and it is a communication softener, but as it comes after the request it softens (and improves) the communication overall without impacting the request. One caveat is that if you are speaking the please at the end you should resist using up-speak (where you lift the tone of your voice up at the end of the word/sentence) as that conversational nuance turns the sentence into a question, which again loses some of the assertive impact.

Now guess what, in my work based observations, I see and hear men mostly put the please, if there is one, at the end (again a generalisation but one I have found true more than false).

My take, you don't need to ignore the good manners that your parents taught you were so important (because they were right, they are), however by paying attention to where you put said manners, you can make a difference to your perceived and thus actual leadership.

Why not give it a try? especially in your next few written communications, where you have a little time to pre-process and review what you 'send' out........ see what happens, I'd love to know if you think it makes a difference.