Personal pronouns: Tiny words that echo loudly

Identity pronouns resonate far beyond the forms they're written in, signaling inclusion and respect.

“We want to do everything we can before we meet people to remove barriers,” said Leighann Miko, founder of Equalis Financial and a financial advisor. “Money is already hard enough to talk about.”

That’s why proactively indicating pronouns is becoming a version of a virtual handshake: a way to extend acceptance by indicating which pronouns accurately reflect one’s own identity, thus signaling to someone else that they are welcome to do the same.

“It’s not about me. It’s about respecting the client,” Miko said. “You have to get to know the people in front of you before you start asking them intimate information like, ‘What’s your asset allocation?’”

Gendered and gender-neutral pronouns have become a political and cultural flashpoint. The Human Rights Campaign, a leading civil rights advocate for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer Americans, tracks state laws intended to control LGBTQ rights and LGBTQ-related language used by public employees. At the moment, the group lists six states that have passed laws dictating how public employees, at least, may and may not refer to people whose identities are best described in the second person by words they choose.

A new national poll by job listing site Glassdoor found that for LGBTQ people, the workplace is fraught with uncertainty: 45% reported that they suspected that their identity would invoke career barriers and 55% said that they have personally witnessed anti-LGBTQ comments.

While the debate continues, financial advisors and related firms have to decide if and how they adapt the language they use for business and relationships.

Etiquette experts — reliable sticklers for the proper — are on the side of pronoun respect. No less a luminary than Judith Martin informed readers this month in her daily Washington Post Miss Manners column that the best way to decipher someone’s preferred pronouns is to ask, “How would you like to be addressed?”

“It’s a courtesy. Any time that we’re talking about identity, it’s one of the courtesies that we as Americans tend to put a high value on — getting their name right, their title right,” said Lizzie Post, the great-great granddaughter of etiquette doyen Emily Post and co-author of the newly published Emily Post’s Etiquette – The Centennial Edition. “Etiquette is about making people feel comfortable and respecting them. It’s worth it to get identities correct and pronouns are part of identity.”

Brian Thompson, who operates advisory firm BT Financial, makes sure that his he/him/his pronouns are included across all touchpoints, from email to social media tags to Zoom labels. Confirming clients’ pronouns is a standard part of his introductory process: “I ask for name, pronouns and ‘what brings you in here today?’” Thompson explained. “Being intentional is important to me and I hope other people will feel that way too.”

Advisors note that software starting to accommodate multiple types of pronouns, allowing more options for gender identity across client and operational forms, databases, records and reports. The moment of bureaucratic truth is a chance to invite clients to share their identity, codifying it across documents. All staffers need to handle that moment in the same way, in line with the firm’s operating philosophy, Post said. “Make it part of the system. That goes leaps and bounds to normalize things.”

An initial guide to the emerging standards of pronoun usage has been compiled by NPR.

Email signatures are a good place to start, Post advised. “Even if you have a name that is closely associated with a particular gender, it’s helpful and inclusive for others to see [pronouns listed] as a standard practice.”

Consistent email signature formats across a workplace signal the norm, she explained. “If we all do it, it’s something we all do.”