This past week, I helped our customer support team with answering tickets. One of the team members suggested that I not use the word âunfortunatelyâ because it triggers a negative reaction in the readerâs brain.
In this weekâs episode of âThis Week in Testingâ, @fullsnacktester said he doesnât use a specific word (argh, canât remember what it was!!!) because it communicates something negative.
@jane_d_cruze, mentioned that she doesnât use the word âdisappointâ. She said something to the tune of âItâs not about disappointing people. Itâs about getting the right quality product.â
Iâm curious. What words do you no longer use because they convey negativity and what words or phrases do you use instead?
I donât understand why weâre not fixing this. If the customer spots it then itâll make us look bad. If we fix this issue now it will save us time in future.
We recently started making small change in jira, we started marking bugs as invalid instead of rejected those which couldnât be recreated on dev side.
This small change was just to reflect the change in thought process that the bug was valid when raised but couldnât be reproduced anymore so it is invalid, which somewhere sounds better than rejected.
Nonviolent Communication (compassionate communication, giraffe language) from Marshall Rosenberg helped me much here.
Instead of using judgements (of other people and their work) to communicate with others, I learned to express way more emphatic, understandable for others and less intrusive.
While I was also trained to express myself in a specific formula, I learned to make that more subtle.
I know that some people use the expression formula of NVC in an aggressive, manipulative way, which let other people learn that this way of expression is harmful.
What I specifically like is the model of components. Observation, Feelings, Needs, Requests.
I use that for expressing myself as well as for understanding others and getting beyond their judgmental expression.
I had a 2 day course over the weekend some year ago.
So Iâm not allowed to call the developers a bunching of ******** idiots?
I donât know about âchangingâ my vocabulary, but very early on in my testing career I learned how to communicate well with most people, and if anything that changed the way I speak to people away from testing.
I still have to make sure Iâm on mute when I talk to certain individuals thoughâŚ
This is a great question ⌠Over the years of testing , I have certainly become more mindful of how language and certain words affects perception, specially in testing and customer communication⌠One such instance may look like âŚWe are unable to do this right now instead of we cant do this , does not not shut the ask and keeps the door still open
I am disappointed
This is different than I expected