All Posts by Bob Lewis

|In: Business Ethics|Last Updated:

La plume de ma tante est sur la table.

This popular phrase from my high school French class, combined with last week’s excursion into the land of pronouns, leads to a number of questions.

Starting with this: What’s the point of having pronouns in the first place?

Answer: Take the short paragraph, John Smith has blond hair. He also has blue eyes.

It tells you the person named “John Smith” has blond hair and blue eyes. It also tells you I’ve either inferred John is male because in my experience most people named “John” are male, or else that John has told me he’s male.

Pronouns, like acronyms, make writing and speech less repetitive and more compact. Were I to write about robotic planetary exploration, I might explain that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) landed the Curiosity rover on Mars to help us understand that planet better. NASA should be proud of what it has accomplished.

If I did, you’d understand what NASA refers to. Had I spelled it out in the second mention my writing would have been unnecessarily clumsy and bumpy.

What you wouldn’t understand was whether I was saying NASA should be proud of its accomplishments or Curiosity’s.

I violated the first rule of pronoun usage – that the antecedent must be clear.

We use pronouns to make our writing and speaking more compact and graceful. Their purpose is not to demean or categorize anyone – an accusation a number of correspondents shared with me in response to last week’s commentary.

I disagree with this view. Gender-specific pronouns don’t demean, because intent defines the crime. Unlike the pejorative and belittling terms used by bigots to refer to various racial and ethnic groups, not to mention some of the repulsive terms used by the rabidly insecure to refer to women, pronouns weren’t coined to derogate or to bolster one group’s need to feel superior to other groups.

There is a difference between outcome and purpose.

Pronouns, whether gender-specific or gender-neutral, exist to provide a less bulky way to refer to someone or something who (or that) has already been clearly identified. Our cultural traditions being what they are, we used to think gender agreement – “he” vs “she” vs “it” helped clarify the antecedent.

Clearly, that’s no longer the case. But those who advocate re-thinking how we choose third-person pronouns aren’t doing themselves any favors when some of the proposed pronouns lack clear definitions, or, in some cases, any definition at all.

Again, the first rule of pronoun use is making sure the antecedent is clear.

Gender-neutral expression is easily accomplished. Just accept the singular “they.”

The gender-aware pronoun landscape is complicated, and made more so by having no nouns, newly coined or otherwise, for the new pronouns to refer to.

As I understand it, a person’s gender refers to a combination of personal traits – at a minimum their anatomy, genetics, hormonal physiology, psychology, and maybe sexuality. Each of these might be male, female, neither, or both.

We need, that is, between 16 and 20 nouns if we’re going to sensibly identify a person’s gender. We have, by my count, four (male, female, hermaphrodite, asexual), making pronouns based on just one or two personal traits ambiguous.

Because of this unsolvable ambiguity, my opinion continues to be that, when communicating, erring on the side of gender-ignorance (“they” for all third-person usages other than “it”) is a logical and inoffensive interim solution.

When dealing with interpersonal relationships, on the other hand, personal preference, even to the extent of someone choosing a syllable at random, ought to guide our pronounal choices as a matter of evolving good manners.

Bob’s last word: Getting back to my aunt’s pen, reforming French to avoid gender-insensitivity is even more complicated than English.

Should the French insist on defaulting my aunt to a grammatically defined gender of female because the noun “la tante” is female?

Or should her personal gender assignment govern the decision, making “mon tante” the right phrasing should my aunt consider themself to be male?

An estimated 75% of all languages have gendered nouns and face the conundrum of what to do when a noun’s definitional gender (“la tante”) and personal gender (“mon tante”) conflict.

Our English-language challenges seem, in comparison, downright benign.

Bob’s sales pitch: Projects push change into an organization. That’s what Bare Bones Project Management is for. But organizational change calls for pulling even more than pushing.

That’s why I wrote Bare Bones Change Management. It complements project management with proven techniques for pulling change through the organization.

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|In: Leadership|Last Updated:

I came of age during the transition from “Miss” and “Mrs.” as the accepted female honorifics to “Ms.”

For a time, polite use depended on each woman’s preference. That approach worked until it collided with a factor familiar to IT professionals – it didn’t scale. Faced with having to memorize each woman’s preference so as not to offend, society gave a collective shrug and “Ms.” became universal.

Which gets us to the challenge of third-person singular pronouns.

As of this writing we have anywhere from the traditional five (he, she, it, one, they) to more than a dozen each for the subject (he, she, they), object (her, his, their) and so on.

Using each person’s preferred pronoun is, I’ve read, a matter of respect, obligatory if we don’t wish to disrespect anyone who hasn’t earned our disrespect.

Especially, anyone who aspires to a leadership role should, given a choice, avoid even accidental expressions of disrespect.

Much as I’d like to support those for whom use of their preferred pronoun matters, I’m faced with two barriers that, speaking just for myself, are pretty much insurmountable.

The first is the aforementioned scaling. I can barely remember names. Introduced to, say, “John Smith,” I feel a sense of accomplishment if, should I bump into this person later, I remember their first name is “John.” Also recalling “Smith” is an even harder challenge, unless and until I start to encounter John on a regular basis.

If etiquette requires that I also recall which one out of more than a dozen pronouns and honorifics John Smith prefers, I’ll have to give up on good manners – not because I don’t want to be respectful, but because I’m incapable of the cognitive weightlifting required to accomplish it.

Add to that a conundrum. Gender preferences aren’t entirely separable from sexual preferences. That being the case, I’d expect many employees would find their manager asking what their preferred pronoun is to be disrespectful, on the grounds that their sexual orientation is none of their manager’s business.

One more point, something I’m still thinking through: I’m not sure people should be empowered to choose their own pronouns in the first place. Semantics isn’t, after all, a matter of personal preference. Meanings are shared or they’re worthless. If someone wants to choose a word or words to be used when referring to them, they already have the options of choosing a nickname or, for that matter, changing their legal name, as was the case of an employee of a company I worked in who changed his name to a four digit number.

That was his (yes, his) choice, and our payroll support team cheerfully tweaked the system to accept digits in the Last_Name field so we could pay him.

So here’s my plan: If I’m introduced to John Smith and John Smith looks like a traditional male I’ll infer (not assume) I should refer to him as “he.” If she appears to be female she’ll be “she.” If for any reason I’m in doubt, they’ll be “they.”

I’ll also use the singular “they” for representative individuals. If, for example, I write about the hypothetical CIO of an equally hypothetical business (ABC, Inc.), I’ll refer to the CIO as “they” and not, as I used to write, “he/she,” (s)he, or alternating between “he” and “she.”

ABC, Inc. continues to be “it” (not “they.” Please!)

Bob’s last word: While we’re at it, we need to revisit honorifics, too, as the currently approved set … Mr. and Ms. … are gender-specific.

I suggest we adopt “M.” – not because I want everyone to self-identify as a French male, but because it’s quick, efficient, and, presumably, inoffensive.

I’d love to know how other members of the KJR community are handling the pronoun challenge. If you’re willing, please share your thinking in the Comments.

Bob’s sales pitch: Your manager has “asked” you to run a small project. They’re telling you it will be a great experience. It looks more like an onrushing bus.

I wrote Bare Bones Project Management for you. At 54 pages it’s easy to read and digest. And as its subtitle … “What you can’t not do” … suggests, I’ve already scraped away everything in the formal methodologies you’d need if you were tasked with building an aircraft carrier, but don’t need because you aren’t.

It costs a mere eight bucks (Kindle edition), so you can afford a copy for yourself, and, even better, for everyone on your project team so they know what you’re up against. For that matter, if you’re leading a larger formal project and have core or extended team members who aren’t familiar with project work, get them copies so they know what to expect, and why.

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