BuzzFeed junior writer Farrah Penn took on the task of removing “woman in a meeting” language from her every day communications at work and the results were transformative. In an explainer piece on BuzzFeed, Penn proves to the reader how prevalent the soft language is by showing screenshots of her g-chats with her boss and coworkers.
The rules of her week were to not use words, phrases or emoticons like, “no worries” or “I feel like” or “ending emails in a smiley face.”
For Penn, the impact of these changes was noticeable in how more quickly she was able to respond to emails and also helped her realize how a missing exclamation point had the power to have her over-think the tone of a conversation. The social experiment highlights how many of these phrases or actions are deeply ingrained and to some extent affect confidence in the workplace.
Cover image courtesy of Shutterstock.
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