Actions speak louder than words

There’s the boss who tells everyone to stay late, and then leaves promptly at 3 pm to play golf. There’s the supervisor who criticises everyone for spending time on the Internet, but is discovered buying groceries online in the middle of the afternoon, and the CFO who recommends layoffs to stop “unnecessary spending”, but then buys herself brand-new luxury office furniture.

No matter what the situation, a double standard – witnessing people say one thing and then doing another – always feels like a betrayal. How can anyone be trusted who promises one thing, but does another?

Application

• • If you ask a co-worker to do something, make sure you’d be willing to do it yourself.

• • If you implement new rules for the office, follow those rules just as closely as you expect everyone else to follow them.

• • If you criticise people for interrupting, don’t constantly interrupt people yourself. You want people to pay attention to one another and listen to all viewpoints, so demonstrate this by your actions.

• • If, in the spirit of goodwill, you make a rule for everyone to leave the office at 5:00 pm, then you need to do it too. If you stay late to get more work done, your team may feel guilty and start staying late too, which can destroy the whole purpose of the rule. The same is true for a lunch break. For instance, if you want your team to take a full hour to rest and relax, then you need to do it too.

Your actions influence how you are perceived by others far more than your words do, and perception plays a huge role in how respected you are. If, for example, a co-worker breaks her foot and is in a cast, everybody is naturally very sympathetic and sorry that it happened. So are you … but you pick her up every morning and drive her to work. Your actions speak louder than all the expressions of sympathy.

Our Employee Wellbeing Programme (EAP) is available 24 hours a day if you want to know more about workplace wellness.