I’m no expert, but I just want to tell you about this new Google Chrome extension that actually aims to stop people using undermining words and phrases in their emails.
Sorry about that terrible sentence – and it is sentences like that which the Just Not Sorry Chrome plug-in is aiming to stamp out.
Download Just Not Sorry to your Chrome browser and it will review your Gmails for trigger words and phrases – such as ‘sorry’, ‘just’, ‘actually’ and ‘I’m no expert’ – that can undermine the message you’re trying to get across.
The words will be underlined, as though they are misspelt, and when you hover over them an explanation as to why you shouldn’t use the word will appear.
The explanations come from people like leadership expert Tara Sophia Mohr and journalist Lydia Dishman.
The app was created by Tami Reiss, the CEO of software development agency Cyrus Innovation, who explained on Medium that she was inspired to create the app after attending a brunch for the League of Extraordinary Women, where the subject of women softening their speech in situations that call for directness and leadership came up.
“The women in these rooms were all softening their speech in situations that called for directness and leadership. We had all inadvertently fallen prey to a cultural communication pattern that undermined our ideas. As entrepreneurial women, we run businesses and lead teams — why aren’t we writing with the confidence of our positions,” she wrote in her post.
Just Not Sorry aims to reduce the use of qualifying language in both written and verbal communication and wants people to make more effective communication their goal for 2016.
With Reiss saying they want the Just Not Sorry movement to grow, the company has made its code open source at GitHub.
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Woman typing on computer image via Shutterstock
