When I ask people to guess the one word that can tell you whether or not someone is a
The word that you should strike from your vocabulary ASAP? Actually.
I recently had a perfectly pleasant conversation with a peer. We touched on pop culture, municipal infrastructure and our respective careers. The first couple of instances of actually irked me enough that I decided to keep count. My acquaintance (downgraded from peer now) used the word no fewer than eight times - in an hour and a half. I would state an opinion and he would begin his response with, "Actually..." At the end, it was all I could do not to excuse myself to the ladies room and try to escape through the window.
Why should you avoid actually?
You're claiming reality for yourself
When you start a sentence with actually, you are implying that you're about to deliver the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. You know how things are and now you're going to share that understanding with your customer, client or colleague. But a heck of a lot of professional conversations you have are going to be subjective, fluid negotiations instead of courtroom interrogations, so you need to be able to demonstrate flexibility and empathy if you want to put people at ease and gain their trust. If you approach situations with black and white thinking and can't resist imposing your rigid ideas of correct and incorrect in conversation, you mark yourself as someone who's going to be difficult to work with.
You undermine the other person's input
With actually, instead of graciously accepting that someone's viewpoint differs from yours, you're showing you feel the need to school them on facts. You make your conversation partner feel devalued or downright dumb and, over time, more reluctant to share their input with you. This is a particularly dysfunctional dynamic to establish with subordinates. If your employees feel as if they're going to be corrected like a third grader ("Actually, Jayden, it was Lincoln who gave the Gettysburg Address, not Ringo Starr."), they're going to stop offering you their ideas and opinions. You better have plenty of brilliant business strategies of your own, because your dismissive responses have cowed your colleagues into withholding theirs.
You sound defensive
Sometimes, people really do make factually inaccurate statements that need to be corrected. "Well, Mr. Larson, we've heard that you're selling the company to a cabal of subterranean Mole People and that makes us very reluctant to place our order for next quarter." The trick is to disabuse them of their off-base ideas without making yourself seem peevish and defensive, which can't be accomplished by leading off with actually. You want to sound sympathetic about the stress this wrong information has caused your client or customer while also easing their mind with a confident, self-assured delivery of the true state of affairs. Compare, "Actually, that is completely false." to "I'm sorry you've been upset by this inaccurate information. I want to assure you that ownership is not changing hands."
