There is a four-letter word I want you to start using at work. You can…put an exclamation point after it, but ultimately, it’s something that’s happening inside your own head—its work is invisible, except to you. The results can only be detected by what you say or don’t say, do or don’t do. W.A.I.T. — is one of the most useful communication tools you have never heard of.
As a consultant to internal communicators, I spend my days helping people and organizations communicate about change. Lately, that work has morphed along with the growing interest of people to reconnect with themselves, each other, and more compassion and empathy. I call it “connective” energy. And yet, even I need a circuit-breaker sometimes to interrupt the emotions. Something to interrupt the reflex. The fired-off email. The Teams message sent in frustration. The comment in a meeting that felt like a satisfying comeback (as we used to call them decades ago) in the moment that was the last word, the closure, the victory over another combined with the satisfaction that “I’ve showed them.” W.A.I.T. is that circuit-breaker.
On the internet — reactive communication is practically the native tongue and unfortunately, that climate has found fertile soil in our workplaces, not just in content you find on social media, in entertainment, and in the news.
What W.A.I.T. Actually Stands For
W.A.I.T. is built around four questions you can ask before you speak, hit send, or respond to something that made your blood pressure and emotional response tick up:
- Why am I triggered?
- What am I thinking?
- Why am I talking?
- Why (or what) am I typing?
These four questions are doing heavy lifting. It’s such a big lift, I encourage you to think back to a past meeting and reflect on your behavior to try to understand. They ask you to pause the automatic and become deliberate — to notice the gap between stimulus and response, which is where, as any student of Nonviolent Communication knows, everything meaningful lives.
Why Am I Triggered?
This is the emotional beginning we likely all feel before a reaction begins. Before anything else, be honest about your internal state. Are you anxious? Feeling unseen by leadership? Carrying tension from a conversation that never got resolved?
Research from TalentSmart found that emotional intelligence is the strongest predictor of performance out of 34 essential workplace skills — explaining 58% of success across all job types. And yet most of us were never taught to recognize, name, or work with our own emotional states professionally. In addition, the cultures and norms we were brought up continue to exert behavioral influence, deep into adulthood. W.A.I.T. starts with triggering is almost never really about the email or text. It’s about something deeper. Your humanity.
What Am I Thinking?
Once you have named the emotional undercurrent, this question surfaces the narrative beneath it. What story are you telling yourself about the situation, the other person, the silence, the pushback?
Our thoughts are not facts, but we treat them like they are — especially under stress. Eighty-six percent of employees and executives cite poor communication as the primary cause of workplace failures, and 51% of workers say it directly increases their stress levels. That stress bleeds into how we think and suppress the cure for workplace judgments and a willingness to be curious and ask clarifying questions before leaping to a conclusion and judgment. What we think shapes what we say. Getting honest about your thinking — not performing calm while quietly spiraling — is a form of integrity and a prerequisite for saying anything useful.
Why Am I Talking?
This is the accountability question and it’s the hardest one for us to be honest with ourselves about. It forces you to examine your motivations before adding your voice. Are you contributing something necessary, or performing? Trying to solve a problem, or trying to feel better? Why are you dominating the virtual meeting or the conversation in-person? Is your talking anxiety a hint at your need for ease from having dialog? Are you trying to fill the space to meet that need of yours? Or is talking a nervous habit of yours that you bring to the workplace. It’s true, some people are external processors. That’s ok if you recognize that in time-bound collaborative and team situations, that behavior affects the people around you.
There is a lot of content out there about the workplace — on LinkedIn especially — that feels like what I call “performative hollow.” It has the shape of thought leadership without the substance. W.A.I.T. asks: does this need to be said, by me, right now? Sometimes the answer is absolutely, yes. Sometimes the honest answer is not yet, or not like this. McKinsey projects demand for emotional skills will grow by 26% by 2030, and the World Economic Forum already lists emotional intelligence among the ten most in-demand workplace skills. These are not soft, decorative capabilities. They are what separate effective communicators from those who are simply loud.
Why (or What) Am I Typing?
Written communication is possibly the most urgent one. It strips out tone, context, and body language. What you type lands through the filter of your reader’s emotional state, not yours. Poor written communication costs organizations between $10,000 and $55,000 per employee per year in lost productivity, and 96% of employees say they want more empathetic communication from their leaders. Empathy in writing does not mean being soft. It means being intentional about what the person on the other end needs to receive.
Have Your Feelings. Don’t Let Your Feelings Have You.
At its core, W.A.I.T. is a self-awareness practice — and self-awareness, applied consistently, changes things. Research from Lefebvre et al. and self-compassion.org links self-compassion a at work to increased resilience, lower burnout, greater job satisfaction, and stronger performance. Slowing down is not a productivity killer. It is a performance enhancer.
The organizational stakes are real: employees of workplaces that lack empathy are 1.5 times more likely to quit, costing U.S. companies $180 billion annually. Eighty-nine percent of CEOs say financial performance is tied to empathy. Employees picture themselves staying 2.5 years longer when their leader communicates with genuine care. When you W.A.I.T., you are not suppressing your feelings. You are treating your inner life as information rather than noise. That shift in “how” — how you show up, how you respond, how you engage — is where real communication begins.
Ready to Go Deeper?
W.A.I.T. is one of the core frameworks inside my Connective Communication series — a program for internal communicators who want to center self-awareness and deep listening as strategic tools. If you are ready to move from reactive to intentional, I would love to have you in the room. Subscribe to learn more about upcoming trainings in 2026.
Humanity needs to return to office. That starts with you.