Content marketing

The Infographic Guide to Office Faux Pas

Saying the wrong thing never feels great – but at work, it can be truly horrible. Working life is made up of lots of crucial relationships built on shared values, goals and attitudes. Your ability to enjoy what you do and be successful depends a great deal on your personal rapport with others – and clear expectations and trust around each other’s roles and responsibilities. A phrase that slips out of your mouth in the heat of the moment or when you haven’t had time to think can undermine all of this in seconds.

It’s not just an outburst of temper or a show of poor taste or disdain that can do damage (although these things are certainly hugely damaging). Often the words that can trigger an awkward silence and undermine colleagues’ view of you can seem fairly innocuous in your mind. It’s only once you’ve said them that you realise the negative effect that they have. Sometimes, the damage you’ve done to your credibility isn’t evident even then – it only emerges later, when there’s less opportunity to do something about it.

The everyday phrases that do damage in the workplace
12 Things you Should Never Say at Work
is an Infographic designed to give you early warning of these types of quietly damaging phrases. It doesn’t set out to shock you about office faux pas – rather to make you think twice about the signals you send with everyday language. Its 12 things to never say at work include plenty of phrases that many of us use all the time – but which can badly undermine our credibility at work when we do so without thinking. From “This will only take a minute…” to “You should have…” the language we use with friends and family can produce a very different impression in the workplace.

The Infographic, which has been put together by the small business credit firm Headway Capital, doesn’t just provide a list of office faux pas to avoid. It makes a point of suggesting alternative ways to get across what you really mean – and just as helpfully, three steps to help recover the situation quickly after saying the wrong thing. The suggestions for alternative phrases can feel a little repetitive and robotic – you don't want to sound like Apple’s Siri at work – but they’re a great checklist for what you should be trying to communicate in your own, more human, way. 

Not every problem in the workplace comes down to careless use of language, of course. It can be a huge help to know how to deal with difficult personality types as well. If you find that particular colleagues are frustrating you, backing you into a corner and nudging you towards saying the wrong thing, spend some time with the wisdom of Dr. Jody Foster, author of The Schmuck in My Office. She was a great guest on our Sophisticated Marketer’s Podcast recently, tackling the crucial question of how to deal with a narcissist at work.

This infographic from Headway Capital was first published here.