Why nobody did the thing you asked for

LIFT Newsletter 060

For the past couple of months we have been building this together. Body first, learning to feel what is going on in you before your mind talks you out of it. Then emotion, reading the mood you bring into a room and the mood you find when you get there.

Both of those you learn to notice, because they happen inside you.

This week is where noticing turns into doing. Language.

It is the one part you actually get to choose, because you can feel your body and read your emotions, but your words you pick in the moment, as they are leaving you.

And at work, that choice carries more than we think. So much of the job now lives in a message, a quick call, a line dropped on a thread for someone to pick up later. No tone, no face, just the words you chose.

Clear words move the work, while fuzzy ones leave people guessing, and everything slows down without anyone able to say why.

Which brings us to the smallest act of language, and the one we get wrong most. The request.

A manager tells her team it would be good to get the report sorted soon. In her own head she had been perfectly clear. To them it was a passing comment, the kind you nod at and forget.

A week later nothing has moved, she feels let down and a little disrespected, and they have no idea anything was ever wrong. She never actually made a request, she dropped a hint and left everyone to guess. We do this constantly.

And a real request has five parts, so the moment you leave one out, it slips quietly back into a hint.

Miss one of these and you are not really making a request anymore, you are just hoping, and hoping is where the work quietly falls apart, because the other person is left filling in whatever you left out, and they usually fill it in wrong.

Put all five in and something settles. They know what you want, by when, and why it matters, with nothing left to guess at. That is really all clear communication is, not softer words or more of them, just nothing left out.

So try one thing this week.

Take something you have been hinting at, maybe for days, and turn it into a proper request with all five parts in it, one person, one clear thing, one honest deadline, said out loud or written where they will actually see it.

Then notice how differently it comes back when the other person is not guessing anymore. And if something surfaces when you do, a yes that came easier than you thought, or a no that told you something you needed to know, just hit reply and let me know.  I would love to hear how it goes.

Lead Beyond Yourself. Rise Beyond Limits.

Clearly on your side,

Cassandra Nadira and the LIFT Team.