Business, what a marvelous thing! It has helped to create a nice lifestyle for many of us. Business can build fortunes and produce great joy, it can also cause monetary problems and produce anxiety as well as sadness and of course it can lead us into every emotion in between.

Why does this invention called business or commerce or whatever moniker you may want to call it so often cause us to be driven into such turmoil?

Certainly money seems to have a lot to do with it. And power, control, expression, inventiveness, goals, vision, trappings, recognition, a desire to help others, and a bunch of other intangibles that also appear to fall into the equation. Depending on your point of view each one of the items I’ve listed has either a positive or negative connotation, or both.

So why does it seem that we spend such an inordinate amount of our time in business trying to figure out how to communicate with other people in order to accomplish what we want?

Maybe it has to do with the way we’ve been conditioned to interact and communicate in the first place.

Perhaps it’s me but I’ve found that many folks have a tendency to need to be in charge. Now, I don’t think that that’s necessarily a bad thing, but what I do sometimes have trouble with originates from the fact that too often the person in charge (and that goes for all levels of management, supervision and so on) tends to direct with statements that are either black or white. If fact we have a tendency to do this throughout our non-business life as well.

Why? Because it may seem easier and creates less of a need to think. When we say something is or something isn’t it becomes absolute. This can lead to a lack of discussion and other opinions, stifle new ideas and suppress the growth and broadening of the corporate culture (and in our home lives as well).

Have you ever insisted upon something, holding your ground firmly, only to find out that you were, heaven forbid, wrong! You were probably IS-ING. This can be attributed to our love of the verb to be and its other forms, such as, is, am, are, been, was, etc. Of cause there are times when the use of to be is appropriate. If someone asks you the time and the clock says 8:00, well then (assuming that you don’t have a malfunctioning time piece) it is 8:00.

In business however, we should be more open when issuing dictates. It can help in alleviating the, “Who does he/she think he/she is?” syndrome. Sure we’re not going to do away with our love for to be totally, we’ve spent our entire lives having an affair with it. However using it in communication obsessively can lead to a demoralized staff, withered creativity and sometimes a lack of credibility.

The boss who keeps saying that, this or that is going to happen, or the person who relays that a co-worker is a jerk, or the salesperson that says the sale is a done deal may wind up regretting their words in the future.

Understanding that those we work with can be affected by our communication should lead us to measure what we say and how we say it. It may behoove the boss to recognize the fact that empty promises could lead to demotivated employees. The co-worker may be better off relating that their colleague acted like a jerk in a particular situation (which might not make him or her an absolute jerk all the time) and the sales person would be better off, for their own sake as well as the company’s, to wait for the signed contract and the check! If they need to report to their manager on their sales progress with the client/prospect it may serve them better to say, “Things seem to be going well”. Even though so many salespeople tend to be optimistic by nature and would just love to count that “sale” in the closed column.

Getting away from the overuse of to be can take you into new territory. It forces you to think, really think about what you want to say. It enables you to forgo generalizations and gives you the ability to create more substantive images and understanding.

Businesses today live, to a large part, on how well the channels of communication function. We may have become overly sensitive to how we interact. Which might be part of a maturing process. However, we have seen that dictates don’t seem to work like they used to and that people react more positively when they are treated with respect and consideration. And when communication is clear of generalizations, and free of direct yet non-descriptive inferences new efficiencies can be formed.

It all boils down to looking at what you write, in memos, in e-mails and other company communiqués and listening to what you say and how you say it.

Are you just spewing to show your muscle, saying things the easy way, and making statements that may be interpreted as absolutes when they’re not? Well then, stand back and think about what you mean, break it down, spell it out. It may change you as a person. In fact it may change the way you interact forever. Once you start to realize that you may need to clarify what you mean, you may start thinking in a new manner. This could lead to a more effective and efficient you, your team and your presentations.

Now, don’t get neurotic about to be, (and all its forms), just use it sparingly.

And remember when faced with To Be or Not To Be go with the Not To Be as much as possible.

Dan Goldberg, MBA, is President of Dan Goldberg Consulting L.L.C. a training, coaching and business development firm located in the Philadelphia, PA area. He is the founder and former owner of "For Eyes" the highly successful international optical company and an internationally recognized keynote speaker. Dan is the author of the book "Stand Back A Second, Just don't fall off the edge," and of "The Six Steps To Solid Sales Success" and "The Seven Elements Of Successful Management" programs. He is Executive-In-Residence at Kutztown University and has been the subject of stories in Newsweek, Business Week, Playboy, Successful Business, Investor’s Business Daily, major newspapers in New York, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Boston, Baltimore, Miami, San Francisco, Oakland, St. Louis, Chicago, Los Angeles and many other national and local publications. In addition, Dan has appeared on Good Morning America and other national and local television and radio programs. You can contact him at dg@dangoldberg.com, visit his website at http://www.dangoldberg.com or reach him at (215) 233-5352