Useful Emotionally Intelligent Phrases
It is not always easy to communicate your message in a way that your employee is willing to hear it. Emotionally Intelligent (EI) managers have to be able to translate.
You manage people which can be stressful and may give your communication an edge. But you need to communicate with your employees. How many of us have written the email we want to write, hit delete and then wrote the email we should write? If only we could take what we really want to say, put it in Google Translator and it could come out PC, EI and OK.
Political correctness (PC) changes constantly — I was recently informed the master bedroom is now the primary bedroom. However, it occurred to me that Emotional Intelligence (EI) doesn’t have hard and fast rules for formulating communication. So I thought I would share a few suggested phrases to inspire EI communication. Let the translating begin!
| Message you want to communicate | An EI way to communicate it |
|---|---|
| “Because I’m the boss and I said so.” | “Let me explain why we need to do this.” |
| “I don’t care if you are sick. I need you here.” | “You are a valuable member of our team and I’m sorry you aren’t feeling well. I hope you will be able to recover and return to work quickly. We need you.” |
| “I don’t care what you think.” (aka “That’s stupid.” “You have to be kidding me.” and “WTH”) | “I have heard your thoughts and appreciate that you took the time to share them.” |
| “No!” | "No. But here is why (fill in rational reason.) |
| “Why can’t you be like (fill in best worker)?” | “I’ve arranged for (best worker) to meet with you so you can share best practices.” or “Do you see how (best worker) does that? Give it a try and let me know how it works for you.” |
| “You are doing that wrong.” | “I have seen a different way to do that. Let me show you/tell you about it.” or “Do me a favor and try it this way. It should help you accomplish that task.” |
About the Author
Carli Kistler-Miller
Carli Kistler-Miller, MBA, has over 20 years of experience with communications, event/meeting planning, marketing, writing and operations. Email cmiller@pmpa.org at PMPA.
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