3 Things Employees Say That Might Mean Trouble

Listening is noted as a critical 21st century business skill, but many of us are not as good at it as we think. Some might even say that listening has become a lost art with the number of distractions right at our fingertips. However, there is a lot you can learn about employees, and people, if you listen carefully to what they say.   Having read thousands of employee comments and conducting many focus groups and interviews over the years with employees, I have found three phrases that typically mean a problem is present or brewing...even if they don’t directly say it.

1. ‘They’: If you hear employees refer to other departments, the organization, or their peers as ‘they,’ this may indicate a disconnect between groups. Most people will use the term ‘we’ to describe a group they feel like they are a part of and you can test this with people during normal conversations. For instance, you may hear a parishioner say ‘we’ when speaking about their church, or an avid gym goer using similar terms when referencing ‘my’ gym. The biggest red flag is when you hear ‘they’ in referencing the organization because I have found that many employees who use this term do not feel part of the company, which may mean that they are at risk for leaving. On the flipside, employees who are highly committed to their work are more likely to use terms like ‘mine’ or ‘our’ when describing the people they serve, such as customers, students or patients.
2. ‘Management’: This is a form of ‘they,’ but in my opinion, even worse. It typically means that there are clear power lines drawn within the organization and employees are feeling a loss of control.  I normally find that employees who refer to ‘management,’ or in some environments the ‘Administration,’ it means that they feel that something is being done to them by this group that they cannot control or their input is not valued. On occasion, however, you might find more inexperienced managers using this term referencing themselves or managers above them, which provides an excellent coaching opportunity. People don’t want to be managed by ‘management,’ they want to be led by ‘leaders.’
3. ‘Pre-schools or Prisons’: These are extreme examples of phrases I see on employee surveys when they describe their work environments, and certainly you can imagine why they could be problematic. With the caveat of course, if you run one of these types of organizations. Otherwise, the employees probably feel that there is a lack of autonomy, decision making, and or, respect. Often this is due to command control types of leadership styles or heavily regulated work environments that offer employees little flexibility. Even if you don’t hear or see words like this, you may hear people make comments about certain areas in the workplace like the ‘executive wing’ or ‘headquarters,‘ which illustrate a separation in their minds between themselves and the places they are describing.

So what do we want to hear? We see it in children at an early age, pulling a toy to their chest and shouting ‘mine.’ Then as they grow older we teach them the even more valuable lesson of ‘we’ when referencing their teams. Like families, organizations are made up of people and so they will never be perfect, but they can still be ‘ours.’ As humans, we want to have ownership, control, flexibility and relationships with others, all while also feeling connected to something larger than ourselves. As leaders, we need our employees to take personal ownership for their work while also feeling commitment to our organizations.  So I encourage you to listen carefully to what are you hearing around your workplace and ask yourself what you can do to maintain or change the conversation.