Many of today’s senior managers are baby boomers, and these people have a different concept of work than people who have just started out in the past few years. If you tell a 60-year-old electrician you need him to work harder, he won’t work at a faster pace or any less safely. He’s going to understand you to mean one of two things:

1. You want him to spend less time talking about sports or politics and more time focusing on the actual work.
2. You want the job done sooner. This will prompt him to find some way to save time. Maybe he’ll get a bigger drill or get some kind of rhythm going with a coworker. If you’ve seen a couple of these older guys doing the rhythm thing and functioning wordlessly as one work unit, it’s amazing.

Someone from an earlier generation might hear this and understand you to mean:

1. Stop texting while on the job. Dream on….
2. Take less time to do a good job, just get the job done.
3. Cut out unnecessary steps. This is where safety often gets compromised.

Rather than use vague wording that can cause pressure to compromise safety or quality, be specific. For example:

• Todd, I notice your hands are not on your tools as much as they are on your phone. Let’s see if you can make that the other way around today, OK?
• Bruce, why don’t you get out the impact drill to make short work of drilling those holes?
• Tom, I want you and Mike to work with Bill and James assembly-line style on running the raceway. Figure out a system that saves time.
• Robert, can you pre-assemble these on the ground instead of at elevation? That will be faster and safer.

If you don’t have specific advice on how to work harder, then tell the person your specific goal and ask for a specific suggestion on how they can help reach it. For example, “We need to cut a couple of hours off this part of the project without compromising safety or quality. Do you have any suggestions? Is there anything I can do to help?”

Keep in mind that many times the problem that needs to be addressed when a manager is thinking “work harder” is a system problem that only the manager can address.

Many phrases such as “work harder” mean very different things to different people. Don’t assume people from a generation younger or older than yours will understand what you mean when you are not specific. Over the next week, make a conscious effort to see how many vague phrases you use. You might be surprised. Words are tools of communication. Use the right ones for the job.