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Why 'Should' Is The Worst Word In Business

This article is more than 8 years old.

One of our favorite words in the business world is "should." We use that word all the time! We can hardly get a paragraph out without it:

Joe should have read my email message more closely --  that was his mistake!

I should never left that voice message. Now I can't take it back. Aaargh! I feel like an idiot.

You should have called me. You can't make that decision on your own!

Why should I look at the report? Your name is on it, not mine.

We 'should' all over ourselves and other people at work every day. We decide how the world should work according to us and we let everybody know how we feel.

The problem is that 'should' is a terrible word. It assumes something we can't safely assume -- namely, that all of us see the world the same way or that all of us are playing from the same playbook.

In any job we learn the rules of the job, but the rules of human behavior always trump the specific requirements and protocols of any job or any company. The rules of human behavior are innumerable and complex. They vary by culture and age group and many other factors.

We hurt ourselves and other people, not to mention our customers and shareholders, when we assume that our understanding of "should" is identical to anyone else's -- much less identical to everyone else's!

Anybody who has ever been married or in a long-term relationship knows the feeling of being gobsmacked to hear about their spouse or partner's utterly foreign conception of an understanding you took for granted.

Your shock comes from the fact that you and your sweetheart never discussed the issue on which you realized you have very different views. You thought your viewpoint was the only one any reasonable person would have. You never thought to discuss it. Maybe your spouse or partner felt the same way. Now you know -- there is something to discuss, after all!

We only learn and grow when we are forced by circumstance to stop and think, or to stop and have a new experience. When we are in our fixed mental boxes doing the same things and thinking the same thoughts we always do, we're not learning a thing.

Our tendency to jump to "should" is a way of staying in our cozy box. The other person must have a problem if they don't know what every thinking person should know (there's that "should" again!) -- namely, how to behave in the situation that just occurred.

Everyone should know that -- right?

If you want to gain altitude on yourself, your job, other people and the world around you in 2016, make a conscious effort to drop the word "should" from your vocabulary. Here are alternative responses to the same four scenarios in which our protagonists employed "should" a few paragraphs back:

Joe, I think something in our email communication got tangled. Do you have a minute to get it straightened out now?

I left a voice mail message that wasn't my best ever. Now that I think about it, there's a better way to handle the situation and now that I'm re-hearing my screechy voice mail message in my head, I'll do it differently next time.

Tell me the story -- how did you come to make that decision? I want to understand so that I can be a support to you the next time you're in that spot.

I'm flattered that you'd like my help on your report. I don't know if I can help but I'll look at my schedule. When do you need it back?

"Should" is a word that comes from fear. If other people were smarter, better-organized, more mature, more professional or more like us, they would act in accordance with our wishes. Our frequent use of "should" signals our frustration that people don't do what we want them to do, and that we ourselves don't always conduct ourselves as perfectly as our critical brain would have it.

We can tell our critical brain to hush up. We can be human at work and replace the word "should" with softer words that don't rest on a worldview that makes us little emperors over all of humankind. People are different, thank goodness. When we can soften, dig in to learn more about the thoughts, concerns, hopes, ideas and fears of the people around us and listen more than we speak, we learn. We grow. We build trust between ourselves and other people. We blossom then. The people around us do, too.

Can you take the step of dropping "should" from your vocabulary and moving away from fear and into trust?

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