Rules Have a Tone of Voice

Guest article by Lewis S. Eisen

If you run a business that has employees or customers, you actually produce a lot of rules. Whether you call them “policies,” “terms and conditions” or simply “instructions,” essentially they are rules for other people to follow, for example, you might send out instructions for preparation or information explaining how you work. Your web site contains a notice detailing your privacy practices. You might have a cancellation and refund policy. We all have to do it; it’s impossible to operate without rules.

But how are those rules heard by others? Too often they sound confrontational or condescending—not because we want to come across that way, but simply because we didn’t pay attention to our tone of voice.

Examples of an overly aggressive tone that are particularly egregious are statements opening with gambits like “Customers must” or “All employees will,” and those that end with a wagging finger, such as “will not be tolerated,” “is unacceptable,” or the terse sentence “No exceptions will be permitted.”

Does the tone of your rules make a difference? Absolutely. Rules that sound positive and helpful encourage compliance more than those that sound like orders from a drill sergeant. Call it “catching more flies with honey than with vinegar” if you like, but the reality is that adults instinctively resist being told what to do. The phenomenon is called “psychological reactance,” and you’ll find lots of literature on it. Successful businesses today foster a collaborative, respectful, and non-discriminatory environment.

The dictatorial approach to rules is a vestige of a time when a command-and-control hierarchy was considered the paragon of organizational management structures, social class was more determinative of rank, and people generally were expected not to question authority.

Whether the aggressive language was appropriate in the past is a question for social historians, but clearly it is outdated today. The most serious offences in society are those contained in the various penal codes, and most of them use language that’s more respectful than many corporate policies.

So why is the old wording still so common?

True, written language evolves more slowly than spoken language, but there’s more to it than that. Tone of voice has a generational dimension.

As a baby boomer, I remember the days when questioning authority was considered a mark of disrespect and when bosses could yell at their employees with impunity.

No longer. Millennials do not react well to condescendingly delivered instructions. They didn’t hear them growing up and they sure don’t want to hear them now. The incoming corporate workforce and customer base demand to be spoken to — and written to — with respect.

When I went to law school we didn’t learn how to write policies, so don’t let lawyers mislead you by insisting on legal language for everything. Not every rule has to sound like it’s part of a contractual agreement. Contacts can get away with heavy-handed language because they are fundamentally adversarial documents.

But operational rules are different. They need to be collaborative because the goal is for people to want to buy in to them. Compliance in a healthy organization means cheerful cooperation, not begrudged obedience.

It’s a world of difference.

Lewis S Eisen, JD CIP CVP
https://lewiseisen.com (https://lewiseisen.com/)
https://www.linkedin.com/in/lewiseisen/