Suzanne Wertheim, PhD – Why Inclusive Language is Strategic and Effective in Business

Connect with Dr. Suzanne:

• 

Connect with David:

• • 

• david.turetsky@salary.com

Connect with Dwight:

• • 

• dwight.brown@salary.com

Podcast Manager, Karissa Harris:

• HRDataLabs@salary.com

 

Production by Affogato Media

Resources:

• The Inclusive Language Field Guide
• Dr. Wertheim’s Newsletter
• HR Data Labs Season 8 Episode 5
• HR Data Labs Season 8 Episode 3

• “[One] principle of inclusive language is ‘show respect.’ . . . and showing respect for some people shows up differently than showing respect for other people.”
• “Language skills build up slowly over time . . . it just takes time to get to that pattern recognition and get enough data into your brain.”

Announcer: 0:01

The world of business is more complex than ever. The world of human resources and compensation is also getting more complex. Welcome to the HR Data Labs podcast, your direct source for the latest trends from experts inside and outside the world of human resources. Listen as we explore the impact that compensation strategy, data and people analytics can have on your organization. This podcast is sponsored by Salary.com, your source for data technology and consulting for compensation and beyond. Now here are your hosts, David Turetsky and Dwight Brown.

 

David Turetsky: 0:38

Hello and welcome to the HR Data Labs podcast. I'm your host, David Turetsky, alongside my friend and trusty partner and co-host Dwight Brown from Salary.com! Dwight Brown, how are you today?

 

Dwight Brown: 0:48

I am doing well. How you doing today, David?

 

David Turetsky: 0:52

I'm okay. I'm okay. The sun is shining. The dogs are outside. Somebody walks up the they're gonna start screaming, so I'm warning us right now.

 

Dwight Brown: 1:03

I get the same thing, and with my new dog, that's always a treat.

 

David Turetsky: 1:09

You know, we have a really amazing guest with us today, Suzanne Wertheim. Suzanne, how are you?

 

Suzanne Wertheim, PhD: 1:16

I'm doing well, and I'm feeling so proud that I put my phone in the other room because I was just like, I don't even want to deal. What if I forget? So and I locked the door against the cat, so I feel like I'm two for two right now.

 

David Turetsky: 1:27

No, no, you're good.

 

Dwight Brown: 1:29

Well, if my, if my kid keeps texting me, the phone's going to be chucked into the other room in a minute, if not out the window. So

 

David Turetsky: 1:36

Yeah, but be careful, because you're on what floor, Dwight?

 

Dwight Brown: 1:38

Yeah, I'm on the 13th floor. So

 

David Turetsky: 1:40

Yeah, that would be really bad if you chucked your phone out the window.

 

Dwight Brown: 1:45

Yeah, that's true. It turns into a weapon.

 

David Turetsky: 1:48

And this is recorded. So the Phoenix police have a record of it.

 

Dwight Brown: 1:52

Yeah, just my luck!

 

Suzanne Wertheim, PhD: 1:55

So, Suzanne, give us a little bit about your background and how you got to this moment. Sure. So I am a former professor of a field that almost no one's heard of, called Linguistic Anthropology. We do some of the worst PR in the world, but it's really

 

Dwight Brown: 2:09

I've heard of it!

 

Suzanne Wertheim, PhD: 2:10

Well, we've talked before! But people are always like, Oh, it's so esoteric. I'm like, Are you a person? Do you speak or sign? You know, do like, do you use language? Do you communicate with other people? Do you have an identity? Do you have power dynamics and relationships? I'm like, this is what we study. So people are like, Oh, that is really basic. I'm like, yeah, it's central to your life. So I was a professor for a long time, and then I got super frustrated with how much really, genuinely useful information was stuck behind academic doors. I was already consulting for tech, and so I just took I was one foot out the door, then I was two feet out the door. And since 2011 I've been running my own company where I apply social science to help people identify and solve real world problems at work.

 

David Turetsky: 2:56

That's really cool. And we I've actually worked with anthropologists at other companies, and I have to tell you that being able to have someone on your team that understands people is really important.

 

Suzanne Wertheim, PhD: 3:08

And we have all kinds of handy frameworks that we can use. Instead of being like, Oh, how do I solve this problem from scratch? It's like, Oh, I know this one. I've seen it. I've got a name for it. It's a real shortcut. It's great!

 

David Turetsky: 3:20

Right! And you're a problem solver. What could be bad about that? But Suzanne, like we ask every one of our guests on the HR Data Labs podcast, we must ask you, what's one fun thing that no one knows about you?

 

Suzanne Wertheim, PhD: 3:33

You know, I was talking to my nieces the other day, and we were talking about superpowers and how much they wish they had them. And I was like, You know what? When I was a teenager, I also wished I had superpowers, and I would test myself to see if I had if I could do things. So I would try. I was very bored. It was the suburbs. I had no place to go. There were four channels on TV. We didn't have cable. Couldn't walk anywhere. And so I would be like, Can I can I tell what this card is if it's face down and no, can I move things with my mind? No. Plus, we've seen Carrie, you know, you know, can I astrally project to another location? No. So this is a thing almost no one knows about me. And I can't believe I'm putting it out there, but I don't know we think about superheroes so much. So I if you're worried that I'm psychic, I'm not.

 

Dwight Brown: 4:20

I thought you were going to tell us that you did stuff like jump off the roof to see if you could fly. Oh, yeah, ride your bike into a wall to see if you could bust through the wall, that kind of thing.

 

Suzanne Wertheim, PhD: 4:30

My first post college boyfriend jumped off a roof to see because he thought he could fly. But I think there were substances involved, and that's when I met him.

 

Dwight Brown: 4:38

Yeah, go figure.

 

David Turetsky: 4:39

Outstanding. Interesting choice of person too. Actually in college, I did try one of my superpowers, which was, how much could I projectile vomit? Based on chugging too much!

 

Suzanne Wertheim, PhD: 4:51

And I just learned, my partner's a cannabis lawyer, and I just learned about, he and I were talking yesterday about scromiting, which is now making the news. So if you take too much cannabis, there's certain people and like, high doses with frequency, you might end up with both intense abdominal pain and vomiting, and they call it you're screaming while you're in pain and vomiting. And I was like, let me never, cannabis and I don't get along anyway, so it's not a problem. But I'm like, that sounds really bad.

 

Dwight Brown: 5:19

Yeah, yeah, no, thank you!

 

David Turetsky: 5:21

Having been one of those people who've never tried it, never once, not for me, but thank you, but, but now even better, reason not to. And on that note! So we have a really cool topic, which, as you could see, because we're talking to someone who their background is Linguistic Anthropology, we're going to be talking to you today about every single thing you say and write affects your relationship with other people, especially at work. So let's get into the first question, which is a little long. So let me, let me start from from here, a lot of people are worried about language and for very good reasons, but very different reasons. Some are overwhelmed by how much new information they're supposed to learn. Some are really worried about hurting someone's feelings and offending them. And by the way, after I've read several books on inclusive language, that was me, several people are worried about getting canceled, and some people are worried about sounding too woke and turning people off. So what's your take? What do you what do you say to all those worries?

 

Suzanne Wertheim, PhD: 6:36

I say different things to different people, right? So people being worried about being canceled tend to be more executives who come to me. People who worry about saying the wrong things, or people maybe on DEI councils or new managers, right? You know, it's definitely different audiences, so I tailor for different things. But what I say to people is, first of all, don't worry about memorizing a long list of good and bad words. That's one thing that a lot of people, they kind of want the list, but also it's overwhelming. I'm like, you can't take away this idea that you can memorize a long list of words. It's not going to happen. The second thing is that what you need is a framework, like the one that I've developed, which is what you want to focus in on, is principles of behavior that are universal, that are aspirational. So there's this whole idea of Do unto others, you know, et cetera, but that doesn't really work because of lived experience. So a word that's okay for you may not be okay for another person. I'll give an example, which is the word exotic. So I have people complain to me when I do employee experience interviews that their colleagues keep on calling them exotic, and they don't recognize how othering and bad it feels and when people when their colleagues are usually white men, because this is tech interviews, their colleagues have never been called exotic, so they don't know how bad it feels. So they're like exotic is a perfectly fine word, and I'm like, oh, but you have to understand that it lands badly. So I came up with these different principles of inclusive behavior and inclusive language to say, here's what might be going wrong. So you do have to educate yourself about what might land badly on other people and why. But once you've got the principles down, even if you don't know everything, you can still have a productive and good conversation with people to find out what's going wrong and how you can do better.

 

David Turetsky: 8:24

Suzanne, isn't it true that in 2024 we should stop trying to find terminology for people, like calling someone an exotic or, you know what? Why? What? What? What's the context for doing that that would be, that would land well? I don't even understand. I mean, it's one of those things where you gotta that's why my face went that way. For those of you who are listening and can't see my face going all scrunchy. How do people set that context in their brain that that sounds okay to do that, to call to someone exotic?

 

Suzanne Wertheim, PhD: 8:55

I think about this a lot, and I also have a workshop where I lay out that I've had a seven I like frameworks, right? So I've got a seven point I've got a seven point system for every single way bias is expressed in language at work, right? So I have this run this training for different groups, where it's a foundational training. How can you accurately identify bias at work? How can you talk about bias at work productively without using labels like sexist and homophobic? Nobody wants to be called that. And so if you try to use that language with someone to say, hey, this thing you said is problematic, it doesn't go well. So I designed a whole alternate way to talk about it so people can have conversations. And one thing I front load in these workshops and in these discussions is human beings are wired to notice and assess difference, right? And and also, our brains are limited to about 150 people that we can see as us. So it used to be considered like our tribe. We used to be in groups of 150 and that's because of neurology, like the way our brains are wired. And so we're always assessing if something is different and a threat. And so now things are a lot less threatening than on the savannas, right? When you had to have good peripheral vision and be like, is something different? Oh, that's a giant Tiger. Yeah, yeah. So we're wired for certain kinds of survival in a world that has changed, that we don't have to be that way anymore, but we still are. So great for survival as a species, not great in terms of discrimination and harassment at work. And so people are always assessing and the joke I make is like, like, when someone gets a haircut, and it's not good, and in your brain, you're like, don't talk about the haircut. Don't talk about the haircut. And then out of your mouth comes like, oh my god, haircut. And then you have to say something like,

 

Dwight Brown: 10:33

What the hell happened to your head?

 

Suzanne Wertheim, PhD: 10:35

Well, or depending on your relationship, or like, oh look, you got a haircut. It looks so good. And you're like, Why did I say that? We just feel so compelled to comment on difference, and so the exotic is part of that. And the problem is that there are so many of different kinds of people who are showing up as us at the workplace that you've got that ongoing conflict between human nature, where you want to highlight difference and then a successful workplace where people feel welcomed, like they belong, like they can, like they're part of things, and not being othered, marginalized, excluded, etc.

 

Dwight Brown: 11:09

Well, and you loop in culture with that, and that makes it that much more complex. You know? It's kind of like the Latin American culture. One of the hardest things for me to get accustomed to was that they do comment on things oftentimes it's physical things. And, you know, it's and oftentimes they have Terms of Endearment that in our culture, we'd be like, Oh, my God, you just called your kid a little fatty, you know? And it's part of the culture. So in addition to those other plays, the workplace dynamics. You've got that cultural aspect that mixes into things.

 

Suzanne Wertheim, PhD: 11:45

that showing respect for some people shows up differently than showing respect for other people. So the principle is the same. So you want to be able to talk through. So one thing I talk about a lot more than I used to is autistic people, autistic people at work, autistic ways of being. So for example, eye contact in the US, where we're all sitting, is considered a sign of respect. But eye contact might not be possible for people with autism, depending on what their situation is, and so they can be very respectful, very attentive, really listening and taking things in and just unable to meet somebody's eyes. And someone will say to an autistic colleague or a report, you're so disrespectful, you won't even look at me, not recognizing that the way that the autistic colleague is showing respect looks different than how they see respect. So by having the principle, you can have a discussion and say, I feel like you're disrespectful in conversations. Well, why? Well, because you're not making eye contact. Oh, you might not recognize that eye contact is physically painful for me, and so here's how I show respect. So it gives you a chance to have more nuanced conversations than some strict, this is what respect looks like, because respect doesn't look the same to everybody.

 

David Turetsky: 13:04

But everything you just said has some understanding of the Enlightenment that some people call wokeness, where they the people who are being more respectful or trying to be more respectful, then have to have that as a capability, or have that as a skill, and people are pushing back and saying, I don't give a damn, or I don't give a crap, or they get very belligerent about it because that, then they start bringing up the W word. And I, I find it, I personally find it offensive that people can't just be nice to each other, and that being nice means that you're being called something, you know, and it's a four letter word called woke. Come on, really? We're really there?

 

Suzanne Wertheim, PhD: 13:47

I mean, what's so funny is there's a lot of times that people will change the meaning of a word that's emerged from the left and change the meaning so it becomes negative. So woke originally just meant, oh, my eyes have been opened, and there's stuff I didn't see before, and now I see it. And I'm like, if you're against more knowledge, I don't know where to be. Here's here's where I'm going to come in.

 

David Turetsky: 14:08

Well, that actually says it all, doesn't it?

 

Suzanne Wertheim, PhD: 14:11

Yeah, exactly. I'm like, but here's where I'm going to come in. Because when I was writing my book, I had to think about, how much of my energy am I going to spend convincing people that they should be respectful of other people? How much time am I going to spend convincing people that they should be taking other people into consideration? And my answer was very, very little. And so this is why I'm saying every single thing you say and do everything single thing you say and write affects your relationship with other people. So my feeling to people who are like, I don't give a damn, is that's fine, but there are consequences, and then you have to accept the consequences. And the consequences are, you damage your relationships. You lose trust. If you're in a position of power at an organization, your employee engagement goes down. You start getting churn, turnover. There's whispering networks. Top talent doesn't want to work for you. Your website doesn't attract people, you become what I call an alienator, rather than a magnet, and that's your choice. But then don't complain that nobody wants to talk to you.

 

David Turetsky: 15:08

Has it come to the the perspective that propriety, or even the word propriety, has been lost in our culture, is that kind of, I don't want to make that the blame. But is that kind of where we are? Is that people don't even understand what propriety means anymore?

 

Suzanne Wertheim, PhD: 15:26

I don't think so. I think the problem is that a small percentage of the population is very loud and takes up a lot of space. But I talk to 1000s and 1000s of people, right? Like it's often uni direction, although plenary. So I talk at 500 people at a time sometimes, right? But people will come back so but what I see again and again and again, and I go to all kinds of places I've been in, in Arizona and Texas and Colorado, and I'm not just talking in Berkeley and Cambridge and whatever. And what I see again and again and again is that the vast majority of people want to be a good colleague, want to be a good neighbor, want to be a good family member, want to be a good friend. And they just would like more tools to help them. So I think that we get, you know, like a lot of media stuff, you know, they get paid for clicks, and there's a lot of shock value out there. But what I see is that genuinely, the vast majority of people really just want to be good to other people, and so that's who I'm aiming at. And the more that we, I don't know, the more that we focus on that group of people and say, you're actually the huge majority. I think propriety matters a lot to a lot of people. I think maybe it's an old fashioned word, and people will maybe say something else instead. But yeah, people care!

 

David Turetsky: 16:42

Definitely don't go on any social media, because people are just awful to each other, and there is no such thing as propriety.

 

Suzanne Wertheim, PhD: 16:50

I mean, I'll tell you that on Twitter for years because of my work. And for those of you who can't see me, which is all of you, until you look a picture, look up a picture of me. I'm an ambiguously ethnic person. I'm technically white, but I'm read as not white by most people in my life who don't know me, even people who do know me and just don't know what my background is. And I literally had only my logo on Twitter for a long time, just because, just seeing an ethnically ambiguous person, woman in particular, saying things about here's how to be nicer to other people, willill invite so much hate speech just for being a publicly facing woman. So I was like, eh!

 

Dwight Brown: 17:28

Right yeah, choose the right avatar out there or the logo. And

 

David Turetsky: 17:31

Yeah, yeah. There's a reason why I use my avatar on everything, but it's not necessarily because of that. It's because age and things.

 

Dwight Brown: 17:39

It looks prettier.

 

Announcer: 17:43

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David Turetsky: 17:54

Let's transition to question two, which is and probably follows on nicely to that. Can we talk about some examples of how context changes this so language might land okay with one context, but not another. We touch on a little bit already.

 

Suzanne Wertheim, PhD: 18:10

know, it's still you never know what managers. Oh, I mean, I know what managers are saying. I've read a lot of employee experience interviews, and then I give reports to like, the head of people, head of HR, executive teams. I'm like, here's what's happening on the ground. And your executives think that their talk is landing well. And I'm going to tell you, especially with Gen Z, some of the things they're saying are landing really badly. So in the spring of 2024 the Kellogg CEO went on a TV show and talked about Kellogg's marketing, and he said stuff that's nothing particularly offensive, like no bad words, no racial slurs, didn't say bad things about poor people. But he said, we're marketing. We're aiming our marketing at people basically, I'll translate as having like, food insecurity. So food is so expensive right now, right spring of 2024, groceries are a horrific burden for many, many people. And he says, we're saying, let's say like you should have our cereal for dinner instead of other food. And so they there's Tony the Tiger, and it's like, don't eat that chicken, which is nutritionally dense and good for your children, you know. But like, have cereal instead. And the internet went wild. And if you search on this person, his name, it is endlessly, endlessly bad, like, he has the worst personal brand right now, right? And it's like, let them eat flakes and this and, you know, like, like, comparing him to Marie Antoinette. And because, also, you know, his company raised a lot of prices and did shrinkflation. It's not like, it's not like some so I was impressed, because I see such terrible things that nobody cares about, I'm like, this stuff he said wasn't that bad. But the internet was going wild, and so I ran an analysis, I wrote a newsletter, and I'm like, you know, if somebody's neighbor says to you the same thing, Hey, I've, you know, like, I'm trying to stretch my food budget and I'm thinking like, I'm giving the kids breakfast for for dinner once a week, and it's like, cereal and toast, and they have the best time. And it really helps stretch the budget. Nobody's going to care, because it's somebody in the same position, right? But I know how much he makes, because he said this on TV. So they're like, people like, how much does Kellogg, CEO, Gary Pilnick, make? And I'm like, Oh, now I know, I know he makes $5 million a year. And so when a wealthy, well groomed, expensively suited white guy goes on TV and says, Oh, poor people, try feeding your kids cereal. So that context is everything, right?

 

Dwight Brown: 20:32

Sure.

 

Suzanne Wertheim, PhD: 20:33

Here's one that's a little more HR relevant.

 

David Turetsky: 20:36

By the way, Suzanne, there's nothing to say to that. It's like it literally is so obvious, right? It's the, and I will not say the poor guy, the guy went on television. Food Insecurity is a huge challenge right now, not just for families, but for children. Right? There are children who are going to bed hungry. To me, it's, maybe it's the word as gets overused, but tone deaf, right?

 

Suzanne Wertheim, PhD: 21:02

Just just, you just search, and you'll find all the words. People had lots of words. Definitely. Tone deaf was definitely one of them.

 

David Turetsky: 21:08

And probably one of the nicer ones too, yeah.

 

Suzanne Wertheim, PhD: 21:10

But the thing is that Kellogg's didn't take a hit stock wise, he's not punished in any way, like people. People talk about getting canceled. The worst thing is that you search his name and bad stuff comes up. But there's not really consequences. I agree with you. I mean, it's like, well, especially for gain, you know, he's not like, saying it's not altruism. Kellogg's is worried about child hunger, so we're donating resources.

 

David Turetsky: 21:35

That would have been the best headline.

 

Suzanne Wertheim, PhD: 21:37

Right? You know? And also we're suggesting that people might want to consider cereal for dinner.

 

David Turetsky: 21:42

But by the way, he probably does do that. They probably Kellogg's who they have been kind of synonymous with food, especially breakfast in the country. I mean, you can't go to a supermarket and not see Kellogg's waffles. You know, the french toast sticks, the pop up, whatever. You know, they just had that, that huge Netflix with Jerry Seinfeld, that that, that I forgot what it was called frosted or something?

 

Suzanne Wertheim, PhD: 22:07

Pop Tarts Movie?

 

David Turetsky: 22:08

Yes, exactly, but, but, I mean, they are synonymous with, with breakfast food. I'm sure they do a lot of, you know, donations and a lot of things for charities. But now it's all lost on the fact that this guy was, you know, said something kind of boneheadish so.

 

Suzanne Wertheim, PhD: 22:24

Well. And this is a lot of people are surprised at the examples I give in workshops and plenaries. And in my book, they're like, Oh, I never thought this was a part of inclusive language. Like they think it's only about race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation. And I'm like, it can be time zones, when you when you don't, you know, like when you schedule, like, parental status, veteran status, socioeconomic class. So if his comms team had had my book, you know, then they could have gone through the list. I've got a safety checklist for your comms. I'm like, make sure you're not forgetting about people losing your audience, and they would have hit socio economic class. It's like the pilot walking around with the with the clipboard, right? And I'm like, here's your clipboard for your comms. If you've got comms that are going out there, check it out. And obviously they didn't think about class, and it came around and bit them in the butt. My other example is more relevant for HR people, because people, I have a name for a thing. But let me give you the example first. So in 2008, no 2003 a reporter was at

 

David Turetsky: 23:22

Sure. a party in New York, and she wanted to drum up news stories, and she didn't really know people there, and she was talking to she was going around. There was someone else on the margins, and so she approached him, and she was chatting with him, and she's like, Oh my God, this guy is so charismatic, he's amazing. And so she gets his contact information, and she's like, I'm gonna pitch a story about you. And then not long after another author, an author, it's a publishing party, so a famous author, she doesn't say who it is, but a white man pulls her aside, and the man that she'd been talking to is black, a light skinned black man. And he pulls her aside and he says, who's that guy you were just talking to? And she's like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, why? And he says, I asked him to get me a drink from the bar. Oh. And so she says she in there in her write up in the Wall Street Journal, she uses the word fetch, because fetch is so loaded when it comes to African Americans in particular. I'm like, unless I know for a fact this dude said fetch, I'm just gonna say, get right? But so he saw a guy in probably a tux, because it's a fancy party, maybe held by the New Yorker or something, right? And so it's like, it's a fancy party and he's in a tux. It was like, oh, black men in a tux, go get me a martini. But why do I know this story? Because he was now president elect of the United States, because it was Barack Obama. Oh, my God. So the name I have for this is an unconscious demotion where you're the bias. All the biased data that you've been fed in your life has created mental models in your head that don't reflect reality. That's my first principle of inclusive language, is reflect reality, right? What's the actual reality? And so you put your foot in your mouth that man for the rest of his life, if he's still alive. Yes, is like I asked the President of the United States to fetch me a drink from the bar because I thought he was a waiter. That's his whole life. This happened all the time at work, all the time. I mean, especially for anyone who doesn't fit the stereotype of a job. I have so many examples of women who were assumed to be their boss's Secretary when they had a tech role and they had to move their desk or again and again and again, oh my god, a tech company executive was walking through a hall, and it was secretary's day, and so he said something to the senior director on that floor who he didn't know. And so when she saw him at a meeting next week, she's like, hi, not not a secretary actually run that floor that you were on. I mean, I have example after example after example after example. And HR people don't even know what to do with it, but it's terrible. And these things live in people's hearts for decades, they remember it's so painful to not be recognized for who you are. Not to sound really flip about this, but Dwight wasn't there one an example of this that happened in the US Senate. There was a meeting on it had something to do with airlines, and there was a pilot who was testifying in front of the Senate Committee, and the senator kept calling this pilot, who's a female, he called her a stewardess.

 

Dwight Brown: 26:22

Yeah, I think I've heard about that,

 

David Turetsky: 26:24

And I'm a pilot. What are you doing? I'm a credentialed pilot. I mean, it's people have this thing in their mind. They see somebody, they say, Well, you know, gender roles, this person couldn't be a pilot. No, no, she's a pilot. She's a credentialed commercial pilot.

 

Dwight Brown: 26:43

Right.

 

Suzanne Wertheim, PhD: 26:44

It's perfectly fine to say to somebody who's actually waitstaff, hey, could you get me a drink from the bar? I'd love are you taking drink orders? I'd love this. But it's not okay to say that to a state senator who's at the party as an invited guest, right? So here's the idea of context, right? You can't make a list of words. It's all, you have to be context sensitive and be navigating in the moment according to behavioral principles, rather than because it would have been an unremarkable thing to ask, wait a wait person to get a drink. That's my whole now, now I've closed the envelope.

 

David Turetsky: 27:15

Got it

 

Dwight Brown: 27:15

So, but I'm going to further that thought a little bit with a question. You know, our contexts are constantly changing. I mean, literally, within an hour, I can go and have three different conversations, and I'm going to be in three different contexts of things. Do you think there's a downside where you almost reach this point of paralysis, like, oh my god, I just I can't switch my brain that quickly? Do you think that's a hazard that goes with that?

 

Suzanne Wertheim, PhD: 27:44

Yes and no. Language skills build up slowly over time. If you know children, you'll know that they can speak grammatically long before they speak appropriately, right? So, like, like, funny things kids say, I mean, sometimes it's that they're using the wrong word, but often it's just they haven't figured out what the social norms are. But we acquire unbelievably complicated things about language over time, and so we we have amazing brains that work a lot on especially with language, what's called pattern recognition and even very subtle patterns, like, like, like, for example, how long do you pause between conversational turns in a conversation, right? Is a thing that's regionally variable. So I'm from New York. We have no like, and Mediterranean descent, we have no pauses, right? So that's called an overlap culture, where you hand the baton over everybody, like, people are still talking. There's a point in a conversation where two people are talking at once, and then you hand it over and give it over to somebody. But for other people, it's to the point of milliseconds where you can measure it precisely. In Denmark, it's this long and in this in Minnesota, it's this long, and people get to this level. Linguists can't figure out how we do it because our neurons don't fire fast enough, right? The pause length is so precise, and our brain shouldn't be able to do it, but we do. If we can figure out that level of pausing, we can figure out how to switch. It just takes time to get that pattern recognition and get enough data into your brain. Your brain will start picking up stuff about language, without without anything. This is why I'm always telling people who are trying to figure out, where do you focus your your language training? I'm like well, one of the best things to do is get the most important or influential people in your company trained up, because once they change their language, people pay attention to how they speak, and the words that they use will naturally start organically showing up in other people's speech. So figure out who like your who should your early adopters be? Have it be your most influential people? So it's a challenge, just like I had to learn multiple languages in grad school, and sometimes my brain felt like it was being pushed through a cheese grater. I'm like, Oh, I have to speak this one. Now, when I was living in Russia, I'm like, Oh, I have to switch. How do these people speak? But eventually your brain gets used to it. It just takes. A little, a little stressful, like, like, you know what? Like, if you want to run, if you're somebody who has the capacity to run, you're not going to run a marathon right away, but you do a little training in your legs ache, and you do stuff, and eventually you build and build and build, and then you can run a long way.

 

Dwight Brown: 30:15

No, that makes total sense. I mean, and, and some of it ends up being very obvious. I mean, it's the it's the stuff that's not so obvious, the the nuanced kind of things that you have to learn how to pay attention to and learn how to process.

 

Suzanne Wertheim, PhD: 30:30

I recommend that people practice. They practice in the in the privacy of their own homes, practice, practice, practice. So then when you actually have to do it in public, your tongue has had that practice, and you don't have to fumble. I want to give people a lot of grace and say, like, especially young people these days, do a call out, real fast, real fast, and they'll just say things like, do better. And I'm like, Well, do better doesn't help the person fix their mistake, right? You're like, language takes a lot of time to learn. I mean, it really, genuinely does. There are some words that you can switch out right away, like, if you go to a restaurant and it's a cuisine you haven't tried before, you can talk about the new dish you had no problem the next day, right? Unless it's super long, but you're like, oh, this new thing that I've had. But there are other things that take longer, like I'm always recommending, with apologies, that people remove guys. Hey guys, and you guys, because I have stories of $4 million deals that got tanked just because a person, a sales rep, said he and guy to talk about the woman that was in the room, that held the position that he that he didn't know. Oh, talk to your top IT guy. He'll tell you what's going on. Yeah. And so the person I interviewed was like, I watched that deal end right there. She leaned back in her chair, she folded her arm, she closed her notebook. That deal was dead in the water, right? And that company never knew. She didn't bother to tell them. She's like, Yeah, this guy's been such a jerk to me, I'm not gonna bother to educate him. That company never knew why that deal went away. So the problem with, say, removing Hey guys and you guys is they function differently in your brain than a noun, like, like, a rabiata or something like, oh, that new delicious sauce, oh, Arab style or abiada, right? You can say it, hey guys, and you guys function differently, and so it really will take it. Really will take practice. You have to, if you want, like, with any change, you have to be mindful, and you have to practice, just like you ever do a food log. And then you're like, oh, is this what I eat?

 

David Turetsky: 32:21

Yes, right.

 

Suzanne Wertheim, PhD: 32:22

It's shocking. The same thing if you recorded yourself linguists. Linguistics changed drastically when we had access to recording devices, because the way people think they speak and the way they actually speak, there's enormous, enormous gaps, enormous gaps.

 

David Turetsky: 32:35

Absolutely.

 

Dwight Brown: 32:36

Interesting. Yeah.

 

David Turetsky: 32:39

Hey, are you listening to this and thinking to yourself, Man, I wish I could talk to David about this. Well, you're in luck. We have a special offer for listeners of the HR Data Labs podcast, a free half hour call with me about any of the topics we cover on the podcast or whatever is on your mind. Go to Salary.com/HRDLconsulting to schedule your free 30 minute call today. So now I'm going to complicate it a little bit. That gets us to our third question, which is, because of the changing political environment, court decisions, legislation, it's really going to hit hard on the LGBTQ plus people as well as women. So how does that change our language, respect and being more accurate in how we speak?

 

Suzanne Wertheim, PhD: 33:26

So let's go back to the sounding woke thing, because I've got clients who are in I want to say like, just more conservative in terms of culture, like financial services, right? So I've got clients who are banks or financial service providers, and sometimes they'll say to me, Well, you've made a change in your language. Should we make that change? And I'm like, Well, my brand is inclusion. People hire me to be cutting edge, and I have, I'm B2B, right? And you have 20 you're B2C, and you have 20 million clients, right? You've got 20 million customers. So you can't make the changes that I can make. So there are ways that you can change your language and not sound woke and trigger people, right? There's a lot of ways. So one of my examples was guys, right? So what I've learned is that guys lands badly on people who are not male, either because they're non binary, or because they're women. And there are all kinds of semantic tests you can do to prove that guys is still male, although I just learned recently that in Quebec, it might be genuinely starting to be gender neutral. So I have to, I have to read up on that. But in general, like, if I say to my friend, who's that guy at the table over there, and there are two people sitting, they're not going to be like the guy in the dress or the guy in the suit and tie, like everybody knows that I'm talking about the male presenting person, right? So there are ways that people like, well, if I if like, some people will say, sometimes people will say, oh, say, folks. And folks sounds kind of doesn't taste right on people's tongues a lot. But I'm like, you can go through things and replace things with multiple words that's not going to trigger anybody's radar. You can say, All right, everybody, let's start the meeting. Okay, team, let's move forward. Okay, you all. I'd like to thank you for this, and you just rotate through it doesn't have to be a one to one, and so you can still be inclusive. And then eventually people on your team are like, Oh, Joe, I never feel excluded in meetings with Joe, I just realized he never says guys. Or if you're doing benefit stuff and you're writing about it instead of saying your husband or wife, right? You say spouse or partner. Nobody's looking at spouse or partner and being like, well, or if you're talking to a crowd and you're like, Okay, ladies and gentlemen, let's, you know, everybody, everybody. Let's get started. Or you know, ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to welcome you. Well, I have interview data that shows that ladies and gentlemen, makes a lot of people feel excluded when they're non binary, right? But you can say esteemed guests, or you find whatever works for you. So there are lots of ways that you can still be careful to reflect the reality that there are people out there who aren't male, who aren't cisgender, who aren't straight, and then have language that feels okay to you, is respectful and doesn't set off alarms for people who are looking to start a fight.

 

Dwight Brown: 36:05

Yeah.

 

David Turetsky: 36:06

And I've been actually practicing saying everyone or all or people instead of guys, because I've caught myself doing it. And having two gay children, one which is non binary, as well as one which is he's openly gay. It actually matters to them a lot. And so making mistakes by saying she or her is a problem. And I've been working on this for years, and you know, it's something I constantly challenged on, me personally, and I'm doing whatever I can to make sure they feel and know that I'm supporting them and I love them and I care about the way I make them feel. But it's hard. It's really hard, and trying to practice that or doing that practice is not hard. It's simple, and it's not has nothing to do with my politics. It has to do with love. So this is something I'm doing for myself, and, you know, I'm not sure about others, but I have to do this because it's so personal, you know?

 

Dwight Brown: 37:14

Yeah, I've been doing a lot. I've been doing a lot the same where my automatic for years was saying, Hey guys, and just getting out of that habit and and it was more awareness on my part that that motivated me to do it, but really trying to find, like you talked about Suzanne, what are those words that you can replace it with that it doesn't make you sound woke? And you know, honestly, I'm not even worried about sounding that way, but being able to find those words and and honestly, there's a little bit of fun to it, because I try to find a new word and and see how it fits. But yeah, it's practice, and it's giving, giving ourselves grace, as we, you know, fall off the wagon if you want to say that, then, okay, yeah, I missed the boat on that one, but I'm gonna keep, keep working on it. Keep trying it.

 

Suzanne Wertheim, PhD: 38:08

An example I like to give is that nobody complains that we say you to mean a single person, because that change happened hundreds of years ago in English. And I would love to find, I'm desperate to find somebody complaining about young people these days, why are they saying you instead of thou? They sound so French. We don't say you like Luke here. You know, I'm looking for these things, but the change happened in our past. So we're like, you for one person, you for multiple people, right? Two people. Like, nobody complains about it. Nobody's like, Oh, you're so woke saying you for one person. But we have all of this political stuff happening around they for one person, right? But 50 years from now, I think most people won't care. It'll just be like, oh, there are three ways you can refer to a single person, she, he and they. You know? It just will be the grammar. And if you talk to somebody who came up, our grammar gets fixed in our brain around puberty. The brain stops devoting things to language acquisition and starts devoting things to puberty stuff, right? So that's why we can talk about being a native speaker of a language and then a foreign language, right? Like it's the difference is, when did you learn it? So there are a lot of young people who are entering the workplace who have native they for a single known person, it's that's part their grammar system is different than the grammar system in our brains. And so eventually it won't become a thing, and people will look in shock and be like, what? Why is this political? This is just grammar or my that's why my number one rule of inclusive language principle is reflect reality. The reality is that people show up in all kinds of different ways. And if you pretend that people are only one kind of person, you're going to shoot yourself in the foot if you pretend that there's only one skin tone you've lost out on whatever your customer base is, etc.

 

David Turetsky: 39:51

But bringing it back to the workplace, though, how you treat your colleagues around you on a daily basis. Relatively speaking, the workplace is relatively static, right? We have a group of people we typically work with, either remotely or in person on a regular basis, and that rarely changes. Sometimes we get new people, some who come in to the organization and to our groups. Sometimes we get transfers. Sometimes people leave. And so the comfort we feel with them should be gained over time and respect gained over time through our language, right Suzanne? So it's not like, I mean, we're having these regular conversations typically, small organization or large. So customer relationships are different because that happens much more transactionally, but on a regular basis. We're, I mean, we live with these people. It's almost like we're, they're part of our family. So wouldn't there be that necessarily some sort of modicum of respect and appreciation for that?

 

Suzanne Wertheim, PhD: 40:51

I think what we're talking about now is related to psychological safety.

 

David Turetsky: 40:56

Okay.

 

Suzanne Wertheim, PhD: 40:56

Right? So you can have a static team with very low psychological safety, and you can have a static team with very high psychological safety, right? So can somebody dissent? Can somebody point out a problem? Can somebody ask for a change? Can somebody say, Oh, this word doesn't really work. You know, the outcomes are very, very different depending on team culture and psychological safety, and that ties in with language as well. So I have different examples of I again, I run a lot of interviews. I've got a lot of data. So sometimes somebody will say to their colleague, can you please stop calling me exotic? It bothers me. And that person's like, Oh, wait. Can you explain why I don't get it? Oh, my God, I'm so sorry. Yeah. And then if it slips out, they'll catch like, oh, sorry. Let me walk that back, right? So that'll be like, respect, higher psychological safety, listening to people. But then there are other people who dig in, and they'll pull up the dictionary on their phone and be like, here's the definition of exotic. It's a perfectly okay word. And so that kind of denial of somebody else's experience, it doesn't bother me, therefore it shouldn't bother you, that shows up in language. I feel like language is the tip of the iceberg, but then you can see it shows up in all kinds of other problematic team dynamics. So yeah, so the answer is, it depends on context, right? Can you tell somebody, Hey, this is a problem especially upwards, right? There are a lot of people who resist any critical feedback that comes from below them, and that's not, that's not great.

 

David Turetsky: 42:24

And I found even that description of below or above to describe hierarchical to be problematic as well, because I'm a CHRO, but I try to tend to speak more of across an organization, rather than up and down, because there's no difference between me and anybody else who works at this company. We're all just people. We all play our own part. We have all our own role. And so what I try and do is encourage people from all of the areas of the organization, level included, to be able to feel free to speak to others just like we're humans. Ask us questions, talk to us, tell us your concerns, because that separation is really, truly a an artifact of history, right? The well, I'm a CHRO, you can't talk to me. You're only an analyst. Well, I don't know where that comes from. I mean, I know where it comes from, but that's not me so. And I'm sorry, I don't mean to pick on one particular point of what you were making, you're absolutely right. But I I tend to like to react to that, because I think what I'm trying to encourage is for people to feel like they're all in this with us, and we're all rowing to the same beat, and they need to feel that way as well. So it's the language I try to use for hierarchy.

 

Suzanne Wertheim, PhD: 43:46

And therein lies the difference between you and many other CHROs and other executives that I deal with. And I'll tell you, remember before I was saying that the human brain is wired to notice difference. Well, in my research, what I found is that we seem to also be wired to establish hierarchy, and one of the things that happens when we first meet somebody is we're figuring out where we stand. In some languages, like Korean, it depends on your grammar. How old are you? Oh, you're five months older than me. I have to use this, this verb ending with you, right? So it can really make a difference. So I don't think it's as true for autistic people, and I'm looking for research on it, but autistic people are dominated by what's called allistic culture, non autistic culture. But human beings really, really care about hierarchy. I've lived in a bunch of industry towns. I've lived in DC, I've lived in LA. Now I'm outside of San Francisco, and I see how people will turn, if I'm with a powerful person, or, if I'm the powerful person, how people will turn and orient towards power. So the question is, how much within the knowledge that people will create their own hierarchies? How can you push against that to make sure that people feel comfortable talking to you, that you're getting communication from people? That people that you're not. Yeah, here's a problem that happens. When people become fancy, move up a scale, it's harder for them to hear indirect speech, but when people are lower in a hierarchy, they often feel constrained to only speak indirectly when they're dissenting or calling out a problem to the point where planes crash. We have sociolinguists who have analyzed black box data, and you can hear that a co pilot is trying to indirectly say to the captain, we should de ice. But they never say, No, I won't let this plane take off, because they're so socially constrained, and then they end up dead five minutes later. So you can't even in life and death situations, people may not give the important information that's negative to someone above them. So if you're in a high

 

David Turetsky: 45:43

That example, by the way, sorry, Suzanne, that example is stupid, because the copilot knows he's gonna die. You better say something!

 

Dwight Brown: 45:50

No, but you would be amazed. You would be amazed. We studied that, and when I was doing patient safety and the hierarchy

 

David Turetsky: 45:57

Really?

 

Dwight Brown: 45:57

and, oh yes, it is so deeply ingrained.

 

David Turetsky: 46:01

But mortality is involved here!

 

Dwight Brown: 46:02

It doesn't matter! It doesn't matter. The it is so

 

Suzanne Wertheim, PhD: 46:02

Yeah. deeply ingrained that oftentimes people will, and part of that is just because the brain also rationalizes and says, Well, maybe we won't die. Maybe this person does actually know what they're talking about. But, but no, I'm, I'm totally with you on the point Suzanne, it's hierarchy is and the way that that then plays into our language, both the language that we use as leaders, as well as the language that people use with us. So I'm always am telling my leaders, you've got to put counterbalances in place. This is just your brain and your nervous system is rewiring. Your vagus nerve is re is changing as you became fancy. So you've got to put interrupters in there and make sure that people are getting you the important information that you need. How can you counteract these very human things? And you know, like, it's not anybody's fault that their brain rewired and their nervous system rewired, it's just what happened. So how can we take that awareness is what I'm saying. Give science to people who can use it. If I say to leaders, you've got this challenge that you didn't have before you became a leader, how can we work around it? Then it's different from Oh, you're so self centered and you can't hear what people say. It's a literal it's a literal nervous system change. So if you have an awareness, then you can be mindful and be like, Oh, my, my way of fixing that is, I say to people, I've got an open door policy. I'm never going to be mad if you and then you show like, what, whatever it is that you do. But these are the subtle ways that you know, even in a stable work team, you can still have these challenges and obstacles that if you don't identify them, they really hit at how well your team is working, or your company as a whole.

 

David Turetsky: 47:50

Suzanne, I can think of a million things I want to ask you, but unfortunately, we're out of time for today. But I think what what I'm going to ask you to do, though, is to come back on the podcast so we can continue this amazing, fascinating conversation, I want to get into brain chemistry and how that all kind of digs into how we can be better HR professionals and still understand that it's it's not necessarily something conscious, but you know how we're wired. So would that be okay?

 

Suzanne Wertheim, PhD: 48:20

Oh, yes. And let me put a pin in just so I don't forget. Let's also talk about linguistic distortions that increase legal liability and and increase risk for HR people when they don't recognize that the distortions are at play. Let's help people unpack that one.

 

David Turetsky: 48:35

That's awesome.

 

Dwight Brown: 48:35

Love it.

 

David Turetsky: 48:36

Thank you so much. Suzanne, you're awesome.

 

Dwight Brown: 48:38

Thank you very much for being with us.

 

Suzanne Wertheim, PhD: 48:41

Thank you. I was so delighted!

 

Dwight Brown: 48:42

We could, we could go on for a long time. Seriously, I'm looking down at the clock and I'm like, oh my god,

 

David Turetsky: 48:49

Yeah exactly. And thank you, Dwight!

 

Dwight Brown: 48:52

Thank you!

 

David Turetsky: 48:53

And thank you all for listening. Take care and stay safe.

 

Announcer: 48:57

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