Episode Transcript

Hilary Constable 00:00
When I would interview people and I’d ask like, oh, how have you achieved a team project? Well, back in college I had to manage a team project, class team. I think that can be a good way to also build relationships at work.

Chris Villanueva 00:18
Welcome to the Grandma Career Warrior Podcast. Today’s episode is for leaders looking to level up their communication game. Today we’re going to talk all about the power and danger of the word should. This is a call it a part two episode, but I brought back Hilary Constable to talk about how we use our words as leaders in how we can effectively delegate and lead our teams to bigger and better places. Here a little bit about Hillary and her background. She’s a writer event host HR professional with over 20 years of experience and a passion for helping people to do the work that truly matters. She is a rare breed bringing together mixture of her MFA in creative writing, three lean, six Sigma certifications and deep expertise in process improvement and human centered hr.

Hilary Constable 02:04
Oh my goodness. Yeah, the should monster is one of my most favorite characters in my life. Everybody has one. It’s this creature. I imagine a creature lives in the back of my head who’s telling me, you should do what, you should work late. You should come in early to get that done before anyone else is even in the office. Is that necessary? Maybe not. But my shed monster says that if I want to succeed, then I have to do this. And your should monster is made up of all the maybe people who said straight up, you should do whatever. Like a teacher. You should not run in the halls, but it could just be all the things, lessons you’ve got from your parents, friends, people on tv, people who seem to have some authority or have it all figured out, and so you latch onto or your brain I think naturally combines all these things into a force that tells you what you should do and your should monster can be self-directed and lead you where it thinks you should go and that’ll fit with the lessons you’ve learned in the past.

Chris Villanueva 03:46
So things that could have possibly developed at a very young age from our childhood manifesting themselves in ways. And so how does this show up in the workplace? I get curious about that.

Hilary Constable 03:57
Yeah, I think one of my favorite examples is a very fantastic engineer. Technically maybe the strongest engineer on the team, but he wants to continue to progress in his career. So he applies for and gets a promotion, because that is the only option available. So that’s what he should do. So that’s what he did. And then he’s a mediocre manager and we’ve lost our best engineer. So this is actually from one of my HR jobs where I was, I came into the group after all of this had happened and the manager had been in place for, oh my goodness, at that point, like 10 or 15 years. And at this point though, we had also kind of like he was a decent engineer on the team, but what he really wanted to be was a manager. And so he could have taken it as a should that he should progress in the engineer roles where he was, but he wanted to be a manager, and so what he turned his should into, I should take leadership classes, I should get a management mentor. I should do.

Chris Villanueva 05:54
So team meeting example here.

Hilary Constable 05:56 
Yeah, exactly. Or the solution to a problem. And I’ve already decided that this is the solution because we should do a complete audit of all the personnel files. Oh my goodness, I just curdled my own blood with that one. Gosh, that’s terrible. It’s the nightmare situation I think, but someone decides that’s a solution, we should do this, and there’s no discussion, and if the person saying should is a leader, there’s less likely to be discussion, especially if in the organization it’s a top down kind of thing and you are not to talk to or question a manager or any sort of leader, even if they’re not making sense or even if you think you might have a better idea, you should keep your mouth shut. The power dynamics and the team dynamics that come out from just using the word should, I would also like.

Chris Villanueva 06:48
It kills creativity, right? Yeah.

Hilary Constable 06:49
It shuts down a brainstorm, it shuts down any kind of collaboration. It can shut down. There are obvious shoulds that are real. You should stop at a red light. You should stop at a stop sign. Those are pretty clear shoulds that we don’t need to debate, but most other things are not actual shoulds. They’re more like, this is an idea or I really just want to do this other thing.

Chris Villanueva 07:17
I want to circle back to leadership in a moment because I don’t want to leave people thinking, okay, so if I can’t use the word should and I’m trying to direct people and give them guidance, then what should I do? What should I do?

Hilary Constable 07:28
Yeah!

Chris Villanueva 07:29
I want to circle back to that, but let’s start internally. So should can come from this childhood conditioning. How do we retrain that internal voice and thinking of that engineer example, thinking about their own career path and where they belong, but how do we go about retraining that voice?

Hilary Constable 07:47
I would say one easy way to start on your own mindset is to catch yourself saying, should I had a new’s resolution once to not say, just eliminate the word should from my vocabulary and instead I decided to replace it with will want or need instead of I should go to the grocery store this afternoon because there’ll be fewer people there. I will. Or I should buy a new shirt because whatever, because I need it. Well, really I just want a new shirt. Let’s be honest. Or I should do the dishes. No, I need to do the dishes. I know what you mean because I am out of forks. So that’s one exercise you can do just with how you’re thinking. Replace the word should with especially want or need, but sometimes there’s just something you will do because you have to do it. I will pay my taxes or should I pay my taxes? There else should. That would be one just a starter exercise I would say.

Chris Villanueva 08:47
Okay, the way that we phrase things, I’m guilty as charged. I’m very, like I say should all the time or you know what I mean? When in reality it’s definitely has to having to do with a phrasing thing, need to want to making that distinction.

Hilary Constable 09:03
And when you’re talking to somebody else, you can also replace should with could instead of you should call so-and-so say, you could call so-and-so, and here’s why. I think that might be helpful, just switching those two.

Chris Villanueva 09:14
So for leaders, so someone who is looking to coach a team, lead them to a common goal, whether it’s improved sales or implementing a new technology, whatever it may be, how do you run that giving people that direction without should all over the team? To my notes, I thought I would put that out there, but using that type of mentality.

Hilary Constable 09:39
When you have the time to do a little thinking before you go into a meeting, I would say do a little thinking before you go into the meeting.

Hilary Constable 09:46
Think about what the message you want to convey, questions you have for the team. If you don’t have any questions for your team and you’re just flooded with all thinking of all the things they should do, try to convert some of those things into questions before you tell people how they should solve something, ask for their input. Start a conversation as a leader, whether that’s an official leader, your title says that, or you’re just a strong person on the team for tactical competence or whatever. That’s a good way to make sure that you’re not making all the decisions for everyone. It shows that the people that their opinions are valuable, that you’re open to hearing what they have to say. So converting your shoulds to questions if the could trick doesn’t work.

Chris Villanueva 10:36
Well, especially in the beginning, right? Before making any sort of call or direction. It’s like it’s being open to that. I think that’s a good theme in general of leadership and I think as we mentioned, kill the creativity and shut people down too quickly by shoulding making these imperatives.

Hilary Constable 10:52
Thinking from the perspective of somebody who is in a job search, who’s trying to manage their career in a way that they’re currently unemployed or they’re looking for their next step for their own development, being able to talk about how you led a team by pulling the good ideas out of the team, then you’ve got a real example of something you did and how you empowered a whole bunch of other people or how you really got natural buy-in. When I would interview people and I’d ask like, oh, how have you achieved a team project? And they’re like, well, that in college I had to manage a team project, class team, a project team. But I think that can be a good way to also build relationships at work.

Chris Villanueva 11:33
Agreed

Hilary Constable 11:34
Build trust with people.

Chris Villanueva 11:35
Pulled that story out in an interview too. I mean, that’s great leadership right there. Yeah, that is great.

Hilary Constable 11:40
Absolutely.

Chris Villanueva 11:41
There’s probably a CEO out there who is listening to this podcast saying, okay, great. My mind is opened a little bit. But there are definitely moments when our team should and needs to do that. Heck, I’m trying to save people from getting laid off now or I have to boost revenues right now, or they don’t have to be a CEO to say these types of things, but people who have to take that sort of direct action there. So where is the line between input and openness and accountability? Good open leadership with should directives? We have to do this here. I think it’d be great if you can give a real world example.

Hilary Constable 12:25
Yeah. Gosh, I mean, I hate to say I’ve been part of laying off, well, 1,572 people over the course of my career and there are a lot of decisions that come before, oh gosh, things are so terrible that I can’t possibly take input. But I agree, also, I worked for an organization where our headquarters was in a place where consensus building was the foundation of everything, and as Americans we’re like, who’s responsible? We live with, the buck stops here. Whereas they wanted to, let’s talk about it and everyone should come to an agreement. So there’s a line for all of these things, and I would say that sometimes there are urgent things that have to be settled right now, and sometimes especially as maybe the most senior or most experienced person in the organization, you are the best person to think about to make a recommendation or to tell people, or the team wants someone to tell them what to do or to be the final word on a breaker tie, even lower stakes. But you’ve got to decide and the group is kind of split, so you are chosen as the tie breaker and it’s really, it’s just a judgment called in a situation where you feel like we’ve got to make this decision right now and there isn’t time for discussion.

Chris Villanueva 14:58
So Hilary, you’ve been an awesome guest and thank you so much for coming back. I just want to ask just as a final sort of wrap up question here. So for the folks who have that should monster folks who feel like their should is doing more negative things in their lives, and we may have people who are struggling listening to this podcast, and I try my best to lift those people up as much as possible, but what if somebody is wrestling with their inner voice saying, I shed in my career, I should be further ahead. What’s one way of widening that internal voice and make more of a powerful monster or more of a positive monster?

Hilary Constable 15:34
Retrain that monster take you where you want to go. I would say an important first step is to find out what exactly that should means. I should be further in my career because someone I graduated with, same degree, same year and everything, and they’re further along than I am. What does further along mean.

Chris Villanueva 15:52
Yeah!

Hilary Constable 15:53
So get clear on that because that could also become just the 10 steps or the five steps that you need to get your life on track for where you want it to be. It could also help you discover that you know what, yeah, that person, I definitely have peers from college who are directors of HR and VPs of hr, and I’m like, wow, but they partied all the time and how come I’ve never, I’m not

Chris Villanueva 16:18
Like Eddie Murphy said party all the time. Yeah!

Chris Villanueva 18:10
Listeners, this wraps up today’s episode of the Career Warrior Podcast. Thank you so much for joining us. When you check the description, you should see writersep.com as well as my LinkedIn Hills, LinkedIn, and additional resources that can help you as a listener. I just want to say thank you so much for being a listener of this podcast. As I’ve mentioned, been doing this for years now, and it’s you who keeps me encouraged for coming up with new fresh topics. So I invite you to connect with me on LinkedIn. Let me know what you thought about this episode, let me know what future episodes you would like to hear as a listener. And I just say thank you so much and I’ll see you next Monday!