Do You Know How Much Your Words Weigh?
We were in a meeting talking about potential cost reductions when critical bonus came up. It was expensive and used broadly enough that it was an obvious place to look.
During the discussion the CEO wondered out loud what would happen if we stopped offering it.
There wasn't much reaction when he said it, but soon after the meeting, the directors were told to stop using critical bonus. They were furious. They knew how stretched the staff already was and how important critical bonus had become to filling holes in the schedule. Take it away and they believed people would stop picking up shifts, making an already difficult staffing situation worse. They worried about losing people and what it could eventually mean for patients.
It didn’t take long to find out.
On the floor, their fears came true. People stopped picking up shifts. The staff also heard something in the decision that went well beyond the money. These were people who had been picking up additional shifts when the organization needed them. Now they were hearing that one of the primary tools being used to get them to do that was going away as a cost reduction.
They felt disrespected.
I don't know if there was ever a point in that meeting when the CEO thought he had given direction. Someone else in the room clearly thought he had.
By the time those words reached the directors, the wondering was gone. They received an instruction to stop using critical bonus. By the time it reached the floor, there wasn't a comment to interpret at all. Critical bonus was gone.
What did the CEO do wrong?
Should he have known that wondering out loud could be heard as direction? Should someone in the room have stopped and asked whether he was actually asking for a change? Should the directors have pushed back before the instruction ever reached the floor? And whose responsibility was it to make sure a question didn't become a directive somewhere between the meeting and the people who would have to live with it?
I don't think those questions have simple answers.
A CEO should be able to ask a question. A CNO should be able to test an idea. A senior leader should be able to wonder out loud about something that may or may not make sense. The people around them also have a responsibility to understand whether they are hearing a question, an idea, or actual direction before they act on it.
The difficulty is that the same words carry different weight depending on who says them. When they come from the person with the authority to make something happen, someone may leave the room believing that is what the leader wants.
The return of critical bonus happened much the same way.
A shift couldn't be filled, so someone got approval to use it as an exception. Then another floor needed coverage and another exception was approved. Then another. Eventually, enough exceptions had been made that critical bonus was back to being a tool directors could use.
I don't know that anyone ever went back to the floor and said the original direction had changed. There wasn't a moment when the organization acknowledged what had happened or explained why. Critical bonus just slowly came back.
The staffing problem could be corrected that way. What the staff had heard was harder to undo. They had experienced the decision and what they believed it said about how the organization viewed the extra shifts they had been picking up.
A CEO wondered out loud about a potential cost reduction. Someone heard direction. The organization acted on it. When the consequences became clear, critical bonus slowly found its way back through a series of exceptions.
There is a weight to the words leaders use that comes with the position they hold. The person saying them may not always feel it.
Everyone else in the room does.
What happens after you leave the room?
Senior leaders don't always get to see how their words travel through the organization or how people interpret them once the meeting ends.
Executive coaching gives leaders a place to examine those patterns, including how their communication, decisions, and responses shape what happens after they leave the room.
If you're wondering whether what people are hearing from you is the same as what you believe you're communicating, that's a useful place for us to start.
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