Last week at Accountex somebody made me cry.
I was heading into the restaurant in my hotel for a quiet dinner and somebody recognised me and followed me in. With minor celebrity status (more Z list than A list) in the accountancy world I’m used to people stopping me because they’ve read one of my books or seen me speak.
This time they wanted to thank me for an encouraging comment that I had made when she first set up her business in 2019. A single comment that I made to a stranger and she still remembered it 7 years later. Words really do have power!
As an author I love the precision of words and deliberately dwell on the exact vocabulary to express my meaning as accurately and concisely as possible. But I’m not so careful when I’m just chatting, in person or on social media, as those words are very much ‘in the moment’.
As a mother I was aware of the way that words can build up or tear down my children. Usually after I’ve said the wrong thing!
As a boss I need to remember to take time to thank my team for the good job that they do looking after me and our clients. I’m often busy and just spit out instructions without thinking of the human impact.
We use words in our marketing all the time and our tone of voice, as well as the words themselves, allow readers to imagine themselves working with us … or not.
So, today, I encourage you to look at the words that you use. In seven years time will somebody be thanking you or recovering from a damaging throw away comment that you have made while feeling stressed about something completely unrelated?