You're sitting in a medical waiting room with this sign on the wall: "Abuse of our staff will not be tolerated."
Nobody came here to abuse anyone. You came to see a doctor.
Just as there's no excuse for patients to be confrontational with staff, there's no excuse for the clinic to be confrontational with patients.
You'll find that same tone in workplace policies, store notices, and membership rules. Rules that talk down to you. Rules that treat adults like children. Disrespectful statements written by people who mean no harm and would never use those phrases in conversation.
It doesn't have to be that way. The strictest rules can still be worded courteously. But how do you point out that a rule sounds condescending without appearing like a complainer?
This book lays out the problem, shows you what well-worded rules sound like, and gives you the language to raise it calmly and effectively with the people who write them.
As one reader put it: "For the price of a beer, you can make your life better."
ISBN 978-1-988749-16-7 156pp
Contents
1. The Sign at the Clinic
2. You're Not Imagining It
3. Where It Comes From
4. Late to the Party
5. The Thorns Do Real Damage
6. The Messages Behind the Thorns
7. What Good Looks Like
8. Speaking Up
9. How to Handle Pushback
Postscript
Appendices
About Lewis Eisen
Lewis Eisen is tired of rules that have a bad attitude. He holds university degrees in law and linguistics and has spent decades in the public and private sectors. He teaches organizations how to rewrite policies so they respect the reader.
Workshops
Lewis occasionally runs virtual workshops on policy drafting — for individuals and teams who want to put these ideas into practice.
If you'd like to hear about upcoming sessions, get in touch through the Contact Me page.
stop-yelling-at.me
Disrespectfully worded rules are all around us. I've started collecting them, along with some particularly well-written ones, at stop-yelling-at.me(opens in new tab).