employee wants to use “we” when referring to themselves

A reader writes:

A member of my staff has asked that we change their name and their pronouns to they/them. We have done that without question, of course, and have delivered training to colleagues. It is not up for negotiation. We honor this request in our company.

As a part of this, they also have adjusted how they refer to themselves, using “we” rather than “I” and asking us to refer to them as a collective rather than a single being. They base this on identifying with the Internal Family Systems Model and feeling they have multiple personalities within them. They refer to personality traits with names and assign responsibility to these personalities for mood, attitude, and work habits. They DO take responsibility for these things personally and are receptive to feedback—they accept and integrate and work on improving skills. In conversations about issues, though, they refer to that being X person’s influence or that Y just isn’t online today, that sort of thing.

This person is not, as far as I can tell, under the care of a mental health professional.

I am not a psychiatrist. I do not play one on TV. And I am not about to pretend I know what’s going on here from a mental health perspective.

What I do know is that when a person refers to themselves as “we,” the vast majority of people understand that to mean more than one person. And, when the person sometimes speaks on behalf of an company or group (but most times do not) people receiving any “we” will, understandably, assume that person is talking about their whole team, department, or company.

This has obvious impacts. They are on vacation and they’re out of office says, “We are on vacation.” They report about a project and they say “we accomplished X.” They are out sick and so, “We are out of the office today.” Does that mean only they are? Is their entire team out? Is the whole department on vacay? Do we celebrate an accomplishment of one person or the whole team?

It is very important to me that I honor the (be it harmless or legally required) requests of the people around me when it comes to their identities and needs. It costs nothing to be kind!

But, this is having a negative impact on others and I cannot take care of one person’s needs while diminishing another’s.

So, what is the right thing to do here? How can I honor the needs of the team for clarity and understanding?

Do I ask this person to use “I” while honoring their “they?”

It is important to respect people’s pronouns, and it sounds like you’ve been committed to that. At the same time, people need to understand the meaning of what’s being communicated in a work setting.

Using “we” for the first person is different than using “they” for the third person because it directly creates ambiguity about who is acting, who is available/unavailable, who completed work, and who is accountable for any given responsibility.

That has nothing to do with whether the employee’s self-concept is valid (which is something you don’t need to, and shouldn’t, get into). The question is only whether a particular language convention is interfering with your business operations.

And when “we” communicates something entirely different than what’s actually meant — particularly to clients or the public, but to colleagues too — “we” doesn’t work. If an employee sends out an out-of-office reply saying “we are on vacation,” people will rightfully think your whole team or company is on vacation, so the employee needs to find different wording.

They have alternatives, though. There’s no reason an out-of-office message couldn’t simply use their name — “Jane Mulberry is on vacation until July 25th” or whatever.

That one is an easy fix; other scenarios are harder. But as a general rule, when it’s important to know who is being referred to, they need to convey that clearly. How they do that is up to them, but in a lot of contexts using their title would work (“the payroll manager did X” or “the facilities coordinator needs to order Y”).

When you talk to the employee about this, you don’t need to say, “You can’t identify as ‘we.’” You can say, “We fully respect how you understand yourself. We also need communications to be unambiguous for colleagues and clients. The word ‘we’ has a business meaning and people understand it as meaning the team or the company. We need business communications to more clearly identify who is involved.”

It’s reasonable to establish concrete expectations like:
* Out-of-office messages need to clearly indicate whether the individual employee is unavailable.
* Project updates should identify who completed the work.
* Status reports should specify whether items apply to the employee, a team, or the organization.

None of those rules require you to take a position on the employee’s underlying beliefs or identity. You’re only regulating the clarity of their workplace communications.

(This doesn’t change anything about how you should proceed but as an interesting side note: the Internal Family Systems Model is controversial! Even if it weren’t, though, it’s reasonable to expect clarity in how people communicate information at work.)

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