Baktari MD

20 Inclusive Phrases You Should Use in Your Business (2024)

• Jonathan Baktari MD

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Welcome to episode 44 of Season 2 of Baktari MD! In this episode we give you the best 20 phrases that will make your team feel more included in all parts of the company. Rather than "acting" like a boss, BE a boss. Real CEO's listen to their team and make them feel heard and listened to! All of the tips and trick you need are right here! Find out all of this and more in the full episode! 

So don't let perfect be the enemy of good so when someone has an idea or you have an idea, but you're just getting bombarded because you haven't crossed every single T, dotted every I doesn't mean you can't move ahead. Hi. Welcome to another episode of Baktari MD. As you know, this season we are doing Crash CEO School, where we're going to go over many tips on how to improve leadership and how to take your organization to the next level. Today, I have an amazing, amazing concept I want to go through with you, and that is how to avoid having a top down organization, right? How to build culture in a way where everybody feels included, everybody feels like they're a part of it and everybody has a stake in it. And this is really done from top down. So this video I'm going to show you step by step phrases and strategies you can use. So you can have an organization that's inclusive and not everything just coming from the sky down to the regular staff where they just have to deal with whatever upper management has to say. So I'm going to show you that by the end of this video, you should be pretty clear on how to set up your organization, how to run your organization so that doesn't happen to you because only bad things will happen if you have a top down organization. I'm going to go over why? So let's talk about what is going to happen. If you have a top down organization, often you are going to lose even when you win. Let's talk about that. You are going to lose even when you win. So you may think you're the top honcho in your department or your organization and you're going to you know, you're you've done all this work and you've been trained and you finally are in leadership and you are going to, you know, be calling the shots. But there is a danger in that. And let me tell you the downside of that, even if every decision you make is amazing, which it won't be, but even if it were, you are going to pay a heavy, heavy price if all you do is bark orders or bark agendas metaphorically and think everyone's going to follow. Let's talk about the downside before I go over how you can not do not have this kind of organization. First of all, if you are a top down organization, you are going to get a response from the people who are hearing this, which is number one, going to involve often lack of energy and enthusiasm. Nobody wants to throw their weight or energy into an idea that wasn't theirs. They didn't have a say in it. They even they don't even know where it came from. All they know is there's this new policy, new agenda, new new strategy. And now they're asked to execute it. Well, you know what's going to happen. At a certain level, people tend to put their back into things that they had a part of creating or part of, you know, initiating it. And if that doesn't happen, what you're going to find is often there's a lack of energy, a lack of enthusiasm and a bunch of other intangibles. But I think you know what I'm talking about. It's not going to be good. Number two is similar. You're going to have often a very passive aggressiveness because, you know, at the first sign that it's not working out, you're going to get blowback and you're going to hear all about how it's not going smoothly. in a way, you're you are not going to get optimal performance. Number three, job satisfaction and staff retention. People don't want to be in an organization where everything's just delegated to them, to, you know, as decided from above. So you're just given tasks and given new strategies and new agendas that you're going to have to implement. So what you're going to see is the job satisfaction level generally can go down and you can have high, high turnover. And so if staff retention, employee retention is a big part of your organization where it costs a lot of money to, you know, train new staff, hire, fire, it's not worth it. So often, if you can deploy some of the strategies we're going to talk about today, you could actually improve jobs, satisfaction and staff retention, because if people feel like they're a part of the decision, they're going to feel like it's their company. Next thing next advantage of doing this is it fosters leadership, right? When people feel like they were included in many of the decisions that were made or even if they had an idea, but their idea was taken seriously, it's going to foster them to become maybe, you know, more of a leader. Wow. So they really feel like I'm important. My my opinion matters. So that generates a sense of I need to step up my game, maybe go out of my lane a little bit. And number five is similar, but it fosters initiative and ingenuity. So basically, when people feel like their input is taken into consideration, they may actually, you know, drive home from work, say, I wonder if there was another way to implement that blah, blah, blah. And what you're going to see is creativity and ingenuity, and it's all going to be a plus for your organization if you can implement this strategy. So how do we do it? A lot of it has to do with language, right? The language we use is easy when you're the boss to walk into a room and say, I've decided this and I've decided that and I think we're going to do this. We're going to get rid of this product, we're going to get rid of that service, we're going to add this service. We're not going to add that service. Even if you don't say as snarky as that. If it comes off as that often, you're going to have some of the downsides we talked about. So what are the phrases? What are the strategy? And I'm going to go over 20 of them, 20 separate ones. Some are big, some are small. But I think you'll get the idea that if you're talking like this, this message will get sent down to everyone that this is an inclusive company. Now, this strategy is for mainly two big categories. When you have an idea and you're pitching your idea, okay, instead of you just barking it out, you're going to you're going to use some of the strategy to let people know that this is your idea. Also, when people come to you with ideas, right, maybe it's a bad idea, but you can't just shoot them down and say, never mind, forget it. So whether it's your idea or their idea, there has to be this language, this dance that occurs in the conversation, which makes people feel included and which make people feel like they're important. Now there are some advantage of this that we mentioned above, but more importantly, you will get insights into the topics in ways you couldn't if you immediately shut someone down or if you just immediately bark out your position with in an intimidating way where no one gives you feedback, you're going to lose both ways. So here's 20 ways where you can really convey a sense of inclusivity. Everyone's important and you're going to find out information that you never dreamt, dreamt of before. You, you know, you presented the idea. So let's talk about the first one. So when you're talking, there's certain ways of saying it. So instead of saying, hey, let's I've decided we're going to get rid of this service, instead of saying it like that, there's a phrase the number one is, I was wondering right. I was wondering. This kind of leaves the concept that it's already not been decided. So, you know, I've been wondering what would happen if we, you know, raised our prices 20% or I was wondering what would happen if we, you know, got a new vendor to help us with the marketing. This idea of, I was wondering, is a soft way to introduce the idea, but it doesn't sound like it's already been predetermined right? Now it may be predetermined, right? You may for sure want to get a new marketing team, outside marketing team, or you may for sure want to get rid of a service. But I was wondering allows people the opportunity to feel like the position can still be challenged or people can add to it. So coming out and just saying, I've decided we're going to get a new marketing team often is not going to work in your favor. And the I was wondering and we're going to do similar things like that And number two, have we ever thought of, right? Have we ever thought of... again is similar to I was wondering, I want to give you some similar stuff, but slightly different. But have we ever thought have we ever thought of, you know, expanding how much we do on social media? Have we ever thought of cutting back on social media? Have we ever thought of adding four more people to that department? Again, this this language of inclusivity allows your idea that you may be hell bent on doing right, but you don't want to come in like a bull in a china shop and say, Boom, we're doing this. Okay, so let's meet with number three. Let me ask you a question. Right? So let me ask you a question. Is a very soft way of asking a question that really goes to your agenda anyway. So like the previous example, have we Well, let me ask you a question. Have we thought of maybe changing the marketing department? Let me ask you a question. Have we thought of blah, blah, blah? So it's actually a can be a preamble to some of the other questions. But let me ask you a question allows you to ask questions in a way that you've got permission to ask the question, which actually makes it even softer. And I'm going to show you how you can use this, let me ask you a question with other questions that are on this list. Right. So number five, what are the pros and cons? So when you're talking about either your idea or some someone else's idea, let me ask you a question. What are the pros and cons of what you just said? Or let me ask you a question. What do you guys think are the pros and cons of that idea I just threw out? Right? So that idea I just threw out again, you may be hell bent on doing this, but this kind of language does many things. Okay. And I'm going to talk about some of the upside that you may not think of by presenting it this way in a little bit. So similar to what are the pros and cons, you know, just sometimes say, help me understand what are what are the downside, right? What is the downside? This allows people to really percolate and and give you feedback on, on things that one you may not have thought of, but it allows them to also feel like we've really explored the pros and cons upside downside of this idea that either you're suggesting or they're suggesting. Next one, number seven, if the decision was yours, what would you do? This allows people to feel like they're not just trying to make you happy. Okay? Or they don't want to just go with the flow of what everyone else is thinking so isolate it and say, look, if let me ask you a question. If the decision was yours, what would you do? Right? What would you do if we just totally left it up to you? This frees up the person not to worry, hopefully about what they think your position is, where you've staked out a position or other people have staked out. Just say, just, if you can help me, just understand, you know, what would be your decision if it was totally up to you. Okay, number eight, help me understand. The idea of help me understand is that you want to get what they're saying, but you want them to say it in a way that almost convinces you that it's the right idea. You're forcing them to justify their position or their response in a way that seems collaborative, meaning you feel that there is a point there, but you're not digesting it. It's a very soft way to force someone to be accountable for the position they're trying to take. Right? So if someone just wants to take a position for the sake of taking it, help me understand allows them to fortify and justify their position. And sometimes they may realize, Oh jee golly I don't have much to back that up. And sometimes, of course, they'll come out and tell you things. Next one. Number nine, if you could only have one. So often people, you know, are struggling with two different elements of either something you presented or they presented. And if you can sometimes force them to pick one or the other, you'll realize what's important to them. If you force them to make that decision. It also helps to clarify when one thing supersedes another, where you may not need that other thing versus when they're so interrelated that it becomes difficult to say if I could only have one. Again, it helps clarify that. Next, number ten, is it worth the brain damage right in other words, if someone comes up to you, I have this idea for a new service we could have and blah, blah, blah, and we could make an extra 10,000 a year. Well, okay, you can make who doesn't want to make an extra 10,000 a year, But what are you giving up? What- Are we going to set up a whole new department have to write new policies. New procedures? What is the brain damage to get that 10,000? And when you force people to look at it that way, because everything sounds good, why not make every single penny possible? Why not make every dollar possible? But there is a cost to it that is beyond the financial cost, which is how much time, effort and energy are we going to put into it? And brain damage is a way to sort of summarize all those intangibles. You know, what's tell me what what the brain damage would be to come up with a whole new department, a whole new product, a whole new service. And by the way, sometimes you realize it's really minimal. You know, I've said that line. We all said, well, you know what? We already have someone that does that anyway. It wouldn't be much to add that to their plate and blah, blah, blah. And they're like, wow, there isn't much brain damage, but it really vets out the intangibles that's involved in doing something. Imagine what would happen if 80% of your incoming callers turned into clients. Most small businesses close inbound calls at 20 to 30%, which means you're leaving money on the table. But don't worry. You are not alone. There are a few simple rules to taking your inbound call conversion rates from 30% to 80%. Enroll in our High Converting Call Class today and you will see a significant increase in sales and clients. Number 11, this is a phrase many of you heard, but I use it all the time, which is don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Often someone comes up with an idea or I have an idea and we're trying to vet it out and you have someone just pushing and pushing because it's there's this potential, this and that. And so the way I like to frame it is, are we not going to do the whole thing because you know, of this little bit of downside or this not it's not going to be the perfect product. If you have a new service that you're going to roll out, that's going to add 20% to your bottom line that year. But, you know, it may have a few problems or you may have to hire a couple of people or whatever. At the end of the day, you can't say, well, we're not going to roll it out until it's perfect. If there's a way to roll something out or do something that gets 90% of what you want and that 90% is appealing, you know, you don't want to stop and say, until we get the full 100%, let's hold back. So don't let perfect be the enemy of good so when someone has an idea or you have an idea, but you're just getting bombarded because you haven't crossed every single T, dotted every I doesn't mean you can't move ahead. Next one, number 12 is this going to change our bottom line? Again, two ideas are people will say new service, new product, new this or that, often going through all that quote unquote, brain damage and doing all that. And at the end of the year, it's a minuscule impact on your bottom line. Of course, we do things not only for our bottom line. Sometimes we do initiatives that help people and are better for the staff and better for the clients. But all of that aside, often you look at some ideas and say, you know, this is not going to move the needle. Another way of saying, you know, is this going to change our bottom line? And that's a way to help people focus that what we're talking about, while it seems important in the conversation, it's not really going to change anything. So doing all that, you know, is going get it is getting a new website, you know, just throwing out our old website and get a brand new website. Yeah, I may look a little better, but is it going to move the needle? Now sometimes they will. Sometimes, you know, your website is so horrible, the user experience so bad that your SEO so horrible. Yes. It will move the needle. Yes, it will. It will change your bottom line. So when you ask that question, you have to be ready for both answers. Next one is similar. Is this a hill we want to die on? Again, another very popular phrase, but it really in a meeting. You'll have staff arguing or discussing, you know, hey, I think this is slightly better. This is slightly better. And, you know, at a certain point you have to say, look, is this a hill we want to die on? Is this really can we just move on and forget it? Because it goes to this is going to change the bottom line is it's going to move the needle. Is this a hill we want to die on? These are all phrases used correctly at the right time that will help focus the conversation and feel and help direct people and not not simply just say, no, we're not doing that. Instead of saying, no, we're not doing that, you're going to say, is this going to change the bottom line? Is this a hill that we're going to die on? And and phrases like that. So you can you're starting to get an idea that this kind of language allows people not to just be cut off, said no or forget or that's a horrible idea, what have you. It forces people to get themselves to say, no, that's, okay, we're not going to do that. So it forces people to come to that conclusion or flip side is, yeah, they say that is a hill we want to die on. Because let me tell you why. Because if we pull this off, our company is just going to be at the next level because of blah, blah, blah. So it's not always like you're just leading down the path of where you want to go. A lot of times they're going to lead you down a path that you didn't even know existed. Next phrase is Tell me how this could go south. Right? So someone comes to your office, great idea, blah, blah, blah. And then you force and say, okay, help me understand. Tell me the downside. Tell me how this could go south. What's the worst picture we're looking at if this doesn't work now? Often, you know, they hadn't given that a lot of thought and it forces them to really think about their idea. And if it was your idea, it forces them to give you critical feedback, because a lot of times people want to make you happy. You're the boss. Say, no, no, no, I know this is my idea, but tell me, how could this go south? I mean, where could this go wrong? I want to know. Okay. Next one, number 15, if I'm hearing you correctly. Right. If I'm hearing you correctly allows the person to say, you know, this guy is or this gal is actively listening, okay? It's not just like he's ready for his response, but if you can articulate their position, even if you do later on, shoot it down. I think people want to be heard and people don't mind being shot down. One, if they're heard. And then if you didn't just ceremoniously say no or didn't spend enough time, explore meaning what you were thinking. So that phrase, if I'm hearing you correctly, is a big part of the language of inclusivity. Next one, number 16. Am I crazy or...” So, am I crazy or is another great phrase that you love to pull out of your back pocket when you need it because it allows people to know that you yourself are not like 100% dead set on something. But while you may be the only person with that position, it allows you to acknowledge that, but then really force people to articulate why you are right or wrong. So am I crazy or, you know, is is it time to change? You know, our marketing vendor? Is it is it time to change our supplier? Am I crazy or is is it just too much? And we're getting too much blowback, too much frustration? Am I the only one that thinks that? Am I crazy? This again allows this idea that other people can chime in and say, Yes, you are crazy or No, you're not crazy. We've all felt that too. Similar to if I'm crazy. It's just another way of saying it is it me. Or is it just me or is it just me? Or are you guys also tired of that vendor? Are you guys also tired of this or are you guys also not happy with the quality of this? Or is it just me or are they the best vendor we've ever hired? I mean, wow, where do who found that person or group again it allows people to chime in. Next one, number 18. Do I have permission to be honest with you? It has to be used correctly, but it is basically asking someone that you're probably going to get the contradictory position to what they're saying, but it allows you to soften the blow. So when you say, do I have permission to be honest with you, you know, I think it prepares them that one you well, first of all, you're being gracious. You're asking permission. So it shows a level of respect, but it also prepares them for that. You may take a position that's the opposite of what they're saying. And this, I have found, really conveys respect. Even when you disagree. Next one, Number 19, help me help you. Again, this is a phrase that we all know from a very famous movie. But help me help you forces the person to slightly move left to right so you can help them. And I think in a professional manner, in a professional sense, help me help you often is simply saying, look, I need a little more from you so I can then, you know, help you get to the next level or solve this problem. So help me help you is really a quick way to communicate that you're on their side, but you're going to need them to move off of position or give a little more so you can then help them get to the next level. Number 20 and the best one out of all of them, which actually summarizes all of them. If if you owned the company or if we sold you the company tomorrow or today, what would you do? This is really the ultimate because one you're saying, you know, that's how much we think of you, that you know, the phrase that if you if you know, if you own the company or at least communicates a level of respect and and professionalism, that you would even say that. But it also isolates them to say, if I wasn't really worried about the people, my department would think if I wasn't really worried about what you would say if you're telling me, you know, to be honest with you and if I owned the company, what would I do? I think that is a great way to force them to be to give you their unfettered, you know, clean opinion, hopefully, depending on your rapport, to get what you want. So. So let's kind of finish this up. So what does this get you? I think we summarize at the beginning, but some of the cool things about talking like this and having this kind of approach is let's talk about when things go well, right? So you have this kind of dialog and things go well, Well, guess what? If things go well when you did all that, people are going to feel like, Hey, I had I was part of that decision that went super well. I had a big stake in it. I'm it's my company and I'm going to have to start even giving more because, look, they asked me to participate. I had a great decision and it went really well. I you know, I love this place. Next, what what happens when things go south, right? Well, often when things go south and you were the only one that made the decision. Well, they're going to say, well, of course the management made the wrong decision, blah, blah, blah. But when things go south, there's shared responsibility. And often you find that before it really goes into the gutter, they're going to fight tooth and nail to not let it totally fail versus it was all your decision. You know, they may just say, look, I we knew it was a bad idea to begin with, but if as a share responsibly, they're going to fight tooth and nail and just try to, you know, snatch victory from the claws of defeat, if they felt like they were part of the decision. The other benefit of this strategy is especially if you are very inclusive, is sometimes you might have made a horrible decision you’re on the precipice of making a really bad decision. And this kind of inclusivity clued you into things you didn't know, right? Only sometimes people in a certain department or access to certain information know things that you don't know. So by having this inclusivity can avoid you from making a wrong decision, or it can modify or amend a decision you had combined with other people's idea, which goes to true collaboration. So basically what we're talking about is true collaboration, right? And that means sometimes you're wrong and this process will show you how you're wrong. And sometimes, you know, you're going to get you're you want to get what you want because you're pretty firm and you know it's the right idea, but you're not going to be, you know, shoving it down people's throat. You're going to be including them in the decision. So let me stop here. But at the end of the day, it's really important to remember, okay, people love to be in an organization where they're valued, the respected, they feel they're part of what's going on. And in terms of staff or employees know they work for organizations that respect them and value them. And yes, you know, one of the things I've said on previous videos, you know, people can always find another job, I suppose, that pays them a few dollars more, whatever, per hour. But, you know, the one thing that they have to say is I may be able to find another job that pays me more, but I'm not going to find another job where I'm respected more, where I'm appreciated more, where my opinion matters. And I think that alone is so valuable that I think any leader should work hard to try to develop that kind of culture. Okay, well, thank you so much. If you’re still watching this video at this point, I really appreciate it. And make sure you comment like and subscribe. Tell your friends about our podcast and leadership and we will see you on the next video. Thank you.