![]() #I want to kill myself in spanish how toThese two remarkable colleagues and authors suggest we need to consider who is our audience and what is our intent before ever moving towards creating and sharing a message.įinally, when you truly are addressing a suicide, we can again learn from experts how to use language more thoughtfully. Students of mine will recognize its parallel with the AIM Model from Lynn Russell and Mary Munter for which I think I’ve attained super-fan status. It deserves a read by all of us to consider our communication strategy and how we can further a positive narrative, honor the safety of our audience, and respect guidelines developed by experts. In particular I want to call out the Action Alliance’s remarkable framework (to the right) for successful messaging. However, in the research for this blog my respect for groups engaged in this crucial work has grown. My post, as I trust you may have guessed, is directed at business leaders not suicide prevention experts. If nothing else this practice has renewed an intentionality in my own communication choices. Beyond my own speech I’ve gently begun to also correct others, like I did Michael, to try that sentence again differently. I admit my replacements may not be as dramatic or vivid, but they are also less charged. Career/Political Suicide – too much of a career/political risk to take.Bring him off the ledge – we need to hear him out and address his concerns.Pull the trigger – stop discussing and take action.Just shoot me now – I’d rather do anything other than what you asked.I’d rather kill myself – I’m extremely resistant.Jump off a bridge – causes me serious concerns.Drink the Kool-Aid – perhaps followed blindly or unknowingly.So, I’m committing to drop these seven phrases from my communication, and invite you to do the same, I’ve offered some simple replacement phrases to consider below: There’s no reason to needlessly remind them of suicide with careless language choices on our part. We may have no idea who in our organization or audience may have felt the profound impact of suicide in their own family or faces such a struggle in their own life. It’s not about being “politically correct” but striving to be a leader who communicates with strength and clarity, yet also empathy. Today seems a fitting time as any to invite leaders to consider our own language and what we can eliminate or replace. (Tangent…as the Ethics Guy Bruce Weinstein points out it wasn’t even Kool-Aid that Jim Jones used what a nightmare for the PR team at Kraft holdings who owns the Kool-Aid brand, but I digress.)Īs we step into the third year of the COVID-19 Pandemic we see ever growing numbers of people facing depression, attempting suicide, and struggling to connect with others. He said he’s never used the phrase since that afternoon. ![]() ![]() Before sharing this story with all of you I checked with him, and he recalled the conversation too. ![]() Nobody had ever challenged his use of the phrase, or even shared with him its origin. ![]() Admittedly I was only a freshman in high school when it occurred, but the images of the nearly 1,000 bodies strewn in the forest are forever burned into my mind. Twenty years younger than me he had been born in the mid-80’s and was unaware of the Jonestown Tragedy in 1978 (AP photo provided to the left). ![]()
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