Do you have prepared phrases for when things get tricky at work?
Whether it’s telling an employee they need to improve their hygiene, pushing back on someone taking credit for your ideas, or bringing up serious complaints to HR, it’s always good to feel prepared. Work often means dealing with conflicts at all levels, and having planned statements for when things get awkward can make all the difference when it comes to setting boundaries. How would your work life improve if you had a pocketful of diplomatic phrases to use at a moment’s notice?
Alicia Bassuk is a leadership coach, speaker, author, and founder of the leadership development firm Ubica. Her clients include professional athletes, C-level executives, presidential appointees, and entrepreneurs. She's currently working on a book for McGraw-Hill titled When No One is Looking Take the Lead.
I recently interviewed Alicia for the LEADx Leadership Podcast, where she laid out the 7 phrases we all need to get through those tough moments. (The interview below has been lightly edited for space and clarity.)
Kevin Kruse: When someone at work takes credit for our idea, what should we say?
Alicia Bassuk: When someone takes credit for your idea— and this happens all the time—sometimes it's unintentional, but a lot of times it's really unintentional, so when someone restates your idea exactly, or sometimes they may add a bell and whistle to it, sometimes they'll take it a little bit further down the road and they're actually making it a better idea, but it truly is based on your original idea and they didn't give you credit for that, so whether it was intentional or not, you just let them know, "Thanks for spotlighting my point." Then you continue talking about the point, which is really important because now you are regaining the upper hand in the conversation.
Kruse: How do we say “No,” to a request to stay late?
Bassuk: This is a very frequent one, and what you want to do is simply say, "Excuse me. I have another commitment." You gather your stuff, you get up, and you walk away. What you're doing there is you're signaling to people, "I have a boundary here. I am not sharing with you the details of what I'm doing. I'm letting you know I have another commitment." Now, frequently someone will lack diplomacy, and get all up in your grill and say, "Oh, where are you off to?" Or, "Isn't it something that you can possibly delay? Because we really need to get through this material." It's a really good one to just repeat and say again, "Oh, I'm unable to. I have another commitment."
The great thing about these statements is that they can all be reused twice because they are diplomatic, and what they do is they're setting a wall which is very clear: "This is not to be crossed." Yet it's diplomatic, appropriate and professional, so if someone didn't get the memo the first time, they'll get it the second time.
Kruse: How do we respond when someone we trust snaps at us?
Bassuk: This one works really well if you have excellent rapport with someone. It's a trusting relationship, and it really throws you off because their behavior towards you is inconsistent with how positive it has been historically.
What you should say is, when they come at you with, "I've done so much for you and we have all this great history together. Why is it such a problem for you?" You have to really focus in and tell them, "This isn't about what you do for me. It's about what you did to me, okay?" That allows you to say, "Look, this one thing, this was a problem. Our whole relationship is great. One percent of our relationship has this little problem and it happened in this one exchange that we had, and we're going to talk about it."
Now, people aren't used to zeroing in and leaving out all the other laundry list, and so it's likely that they will again try to throw you back into the laundry list of interactions. This one, again you will refocus them by repeating it. You know, "Yes, all that is true and all that is good. This isn't about what you do for me. It's about what you did to me." It works because you can then dismiss all the complications and talk about the one interaction that caused the problem.
Kruse: What's the right way to say “No,” to someone we care about?
Bassuk: In these cases what we want to do is open up a conversation, because there's probably some way that you can deliver on what they're requesting without saying no. It's just not exactly what they're requesting, so you have to tune into yourself and stop the reaction of either, "No, I don't want to do that," or, "Yes, I will begrudgingly do it and then resent the other person for it."
You want to set those to the side, give yourself a little more reaction time, and simply say, "This is a good launching point." By calling it a launching point, it allows you to then take a creative step and move that ask in a trajectory that is more amenable to what you do want to deliver to them.
Kruse: What do you say when you have to give some tough feedback, for example, on hygiene?
Bassuk: You know, this reminds me that every single one of these came from an actual client case, that I was coaching a client and whatever the topic is came up—and in all of these cases came up many times—but I still remember the very first time, as a coach, I was guiding someone through this. When you have brilliant clients like I do, not only are you guiding them, but they are also guiding you, so in this case the person who had the employee with the bad breath, so this client was the COO of a consumer good company, and I learned so much from him. This was way early on in my career. I learned so much from him about how to approach every employee with an understanding that your own frame of reference is different from their frame of reference. A frame of reference is where you've come from in life, what you know from your experiences, from your wiring, from your culture, from all the ways that you have been indoctrinated and influenced. That's your own frame of reference.
This client was my teacher about how everyone has their own frame of reference, so you come to each conversation truly trying to understand the other person's frame of reference. So this sentence works so well when you have one of these awkward situations of having to give feedback, in this case of dental or oral hygiene, is to just let them know, "I'm here to be for you what someone once was for me," and so now you give them time to sort of brace themselves. "Ok, what's coming? In what way are you being for me what someone once was for you?" Then you can go ahead and say it with the understanding that you identify with them because you were once on the other side where someone had to give you awkward feedback about your own hygiene.
Kruse: What if we need to push back on a decision that we think is a mistake?
Bassuk: We tend to do two things when this kind of thing happens where someone makes a decision they have the authority to make. Maybe we feel powerless, maybe we feel wronged, it's unfair, or we just don't like it. The tendency is either to feel disempowered and shut down and just accept the decision that was made, or we might become angry or confrontational, or we might begin to talk with people around the office about it. The most empowered thing you can do is to let the person know, "This is my preference." In this way, all you're doing is you're being transparent about where you are on this topic. You're not demanding that things change based on your preference. You're simply sharing information. "This is my preference."
Kruse: Our seventh one is when we need to escalate an issue, correct?
Bassuk: Yes, so this a really important one right now with all the conversation that's happening on a national and global level with women finding their voice in terms of sexual harassment. It's also really important in general because we see a major uptick in poor conduct in the workplace, and so everyone is walking around noticing more poor conduct and the question is, "Well, what can you say? How can you handle it?" Not everyone is able to report poor conduct because there's a lot at stake, there's a lot of risk, but for those who are in a position to report it, it's really important for them to do that for the sake of those who cannot. So when you go ahead and report it, if it is taken seriously and dealt with in a way that's appropriate, that's great, but a lot of the times I hear about situations in which it's not taken seriously. The person who's hearing it tries to shut it down.
What you can say in these situations is, "Your response gives me cause to take this further." By saying this, what you do is you let them know, "I'm not backing off. I'm not going to disappear just because you're not taking this seriously or you're trying to shut me down. I will be pursuing this because this is important to me." You do that in a non-confrontational way, and you can also walk away feeling empowered that you've clearly communicated that someone has to pay for the problematic behavior, for the unwanted behavior, but that person who's going to pay for it is not going to be you. It's going to be the person who committed the wrongdoing. If the person you're reporting to wants to be added into that, of people who are going to pay for this, then they can volunteer to do that or they can handle it in the right away, and help you navigate the system in reporting this poor conduct and having it handled appropriately.
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Bassuk’s calm and well-thought-out phrases can help give you confidence the next time something at work rubs you the wrong way. Workplace issues can crop up at any moment, so come prepared with these 7 powerful phrases and defend your value in any situation.
