Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Radical Canter podcast. I'm Kim Scott. I'm Jason

Rosoff. I'm Amy Sandler, and many people will brush off concerns about non-inclusive language

that people are being too sensitive and label people who disrupt bias as the word police.

But we're going to be discussing today how using inclusive speech is about much more than

avoiding offense. It's really a matter of fostering an environment of mutual understanding and

respect. Kim, you will often share how we have certain words or phrases that can shut down communication

by triggering negative reactions. And you call these red words. And this actually really important

if we want our messages to be heard. We need to care about their impact, not just our intent.

What do you mean by this idea of red words? And why is it so important to be willing to learn to avoid each other's, quote, red words?

Well, as we often say, good communication gets measured, not at the speaker's mouth, but at the listener's ear.

And so very often people will say, if they say something that they didn't intend to be offensive,

but that was offensive or that bothered someone in some way, they'll say, oh, I didn't mean it,

you know.

And that's not really the point.

If we pretend like this is about someone stepping on someone's toe, if you were stepping

on someone's toe, you wouldn't stand there, continuing to, and assert your right to continue

to step on their toe just because you didn't mean to step on their toe. And to me, that's kind of what

happens. A mentor of mine told me about red words when I was complaining

because someone who wanted to work at a startup that I was leading sent us a note that began

with the word gentleman. And for me, that's a red word kind of.

Like, if somebody doesn't, just assumes that all of the hiring managers of a company are men

and addresses the letter to the team as gentlemen, that, I mean, that's just irritating to me.

...