Avoid These Four Words To Get Promoted.

Many would agree that deeds carry more weight than words. However, in a competitive race for promotion, your words can propel you along on the crest of the wave or drag you down to the depths. Sometimes deeds aren’t enough by themselves.

With your words, you share your philosophy on life. They reflect your attitude towards achieving outcomes, how you overcome the inevitable obstacles and how you bring people with you on your journey.

Two people might achieve identical goals in an organisation, but they can go about it in entirely different ways. They can take the positive “I’ll do whatever I can to make it happen” route, or they can take the “do the least possible but get the job done” option.

Their CVs will record the same achievement, but for their colleagues and their leadership team, there will only be one front-runner. In the tough world of business, where teams live and die together by their cohesion, optimism is the glue that holds them together.

You may think that there are many people you know who talk an “optimistic” talk, but then rarely deliver on their words. This type of misplaced optimism is easy to spot and they won’t be able to get away with it for long.

However, they are not the villains of the piece. The people who dodge the bullets and push people in front of trains to get ahead are the ones to be aware of. They too are easy to spot. My tell-tale four words will give you a solid clue….

So, what are those four words then? The ones that should be used with extreme caution…. The ones that will torpedo your chances of making it to the top:

Can’t. Won’t. Don’t. But.

These words allow people to shirk responsibility. They facilitate denying any involvement. They can help to place the burden onto others and build a wall of uncompromising unhelpfulness. Once you have heard them a few times from the same people, you won’t ask them the same questions again. That is exactly what they want. They want the easy road, a stress-free existence, and from an early age they have learnt that being negative quickly stops people from asking them to do things. They can get on achieving their objectives in their own way, but they will ensure that they add minimal extra value in doing so.

Since when was holding out the palm of your hand and saying “nope, I don’t have to do it, you can’t make me, so I won’t.” something that would be seen as firm and assertive? It is just plain unhelpful and destructive.

There will be a number of contributing factors in securing that all important promotion. The DNA of your language will play a key. So, next time you think about saying one of those four words, have a quick think…. Do you really need to, or is there another way If you hope to get promoted, you need to find that other way.