How you write says a lot about your beliefs. Are you positive or negative? Do you hold back or say things just as they are? Are you formal or informal with your words? Do you speak with self-confidence or do you hedge your words and opinions?
Most of us have a tendency to fall into a certain style or voice and that voice can change depending to whom we are directing our writing. It’s been found that women’s tendencies are to apologize or attach qualifiers to their sentences reducing the value of their words and ultimately, themselves. In the corporate world this is like committing language suicide. Showing fear or reducing your value is not what business professionals want to hear when reading a cover letter, e-mail, or any other type of communication.
To help combat this style of writing, Tami Reiss, the CEO of Cyrus Innovation, has created a plug-in for Google Chrome. Just Not Sorry gives you an opportunity to catch your “weak” language and change it before you send out any communication. It underlines the words and phrases that weaken your true message and describes why this is the case when you hover over each word. The plug-in can also be customized by adding custom words that you’d like to delete from your writing.
Some of the words and phrases you’ll find that the plug-in likes to remove include…
- Just
- Sorry
- I think
- I’m no expert, but…
- Does that make sense?
- Actually
The words and phrases highlighted by Just Not Sorry were found through conversations and readings with women leaders like Sylvia Ann Hewlett, Tara Sophia Mohr, and Yao Xiao. This year, Cyrus Innovation started an initiative to help get 10,000 women to stop diminishing their voices in their e-mail communications. To become part of this movement and help strengthen your communication, you can sign this pact and get the plug-in for free.
Image via Sebastien Wiertz/Flickr.
Spectrum Brands Careers Blog 
February 25, 2016
Career Advice