A life skill coach personal development idea:

The Cost of Lazy Language

BY JAMIE WALTERS

Reprinted with permission. See below.

If you're tired of business jargon and want to be clear in your communication, this article and sidebar will give you a shot in the arm.

"Jargon is what people use to appear smarter than they are."

— Itchy & Scratchy Show Writer, The Simpsons

Achieving synergy with Best of Breed partners to provide World Class Service utilizing retooled, empowered team members whose experiential histories foster enterprise-wide Big Hairy Audacious entrepreneurial solutions for a new paradigm, from the ground up. With soul.

Pardon? Honestly, have you ever heard a bigger bunch of bunk in your life? Corporate America overflows with language like this, but what the *&#$@! does it mean? Open any journal, scan titles in any bookstore business section, read most employee communications, or visit most commercial web sites, and jargon like this is exactly what you'll see. In abundance. An over-reliance on words that have become meaningless or are down-right rude. Really, do you, a human being, want to be ground up, re-tooled or Best of Breed?

The Problem With Lazy Language (or jargon)

Jargon is lazy, and relying too heavily on it does nothing to foster real understanding or create honest relationships because jargon is designed to be accountability-free. Granted, smart use of jargon can convey a common position. But consider this: a British research firm found that two-thirds of company employees didn't believe company communications, and fewer than half understood the company mission.

Regardless of how perfect a certain word is to describe what you do, regardless of whether you actually follow through and provide service that could be deemed world class, if the word or phrase has been appropriated by advertisers and Business Circuit Gurus and pounded into the skulls of the people you're trying to reach, it's meaningless.

In over-using lazy language, you've missed an opportunity to distinguish your business, deepen a relationship, clarify expectations or create real understanding with your clients or employees.

The Payoff of Avoiding Lazy Language (or jargon)

In avoiding lazy language, you've created an opportunity to distinguish your business, deepen a relationship or create real understanding with your clients or employees. Customers know what to expect from claims of World Class Service, and aren't as disappointed when they don't get their version of World Class Service; also, employees have a better idea of how to provide it and your work environment is more productive because fewer people are confused over fuzzy expectations or colliding over misunderstandings.

The First Step for Going Jargon-free

Take a few extra minutes to burrow beneath the easy catch-phrase and find a way to say what you mean:

Assume that people assign different meanings to the same words or phrases. When you say "excellence," for example, what do others associate with excellence? Is it the same thing you're thinking?

Ask yourself clarifying questions to get to the core of what you want others to know or how you wish others to participate. What does "great service" look and sound like? What, exactly, does "as soon as possible" mean? When a colleague talks about "Them," who does he mean?

Ask others clarifying questions, so you know what they mean by their jargon. When someone says they want you to be reliable, how does that look and sound to them? How will they know when they receive world class service? What does someone mean by re-tooling people?

You'll find a variety of additional resources throughout IVC Online to help you clarify your communication and bring about more fulfilling, less stressful interactions.

For more on removing lazy language from your repertoire, read Vapid Words Undermine Effective Leadership and Communication.

© Jamie S. Walters, Ivy Sea, Inc. San Francisco, CA (www.ivysea.com). Reprinted with permission. No additional reprint, distribution, or reproduction in any form without express permission or VIP membership from Ivy Sea, Inc.

A SURE-FIRE LISTENING EXERCISE THAT KEEPS MEETINGS MEANINGFUL

In organizations worldwide, people meet to share information — for some reason or another. Generally, these interactions must be effective, because we continue to schedule and attend meetings in person, on the phone — and to a certain extent, via e-mail.

But what happens when this "sharing" becomes a passive exercise where we read a laundry list of current activity, with other meeting attendees metaphorically drooling in their sleep? Some meeting attendees disengage, others feel that their time is wasted, morale sinks, and they don't necessarily get the exchange of information and ideas that would help them do their jobs better.

Effective listening can help turn meaningless meetings — and the zombie-like participants — on its head. How? It can spur questions, serve as a catalyst for ideas, redirect a monologue into a dialogue, clarify action items, and result in a more invigorated team.

While listening skills take time and effort to learn and enhance, here's a quick tip that will shake up the normal drone of a meeting and force participants to listen before they speak. A side benefit? It's fun.

Tip:

At the beginning of your meeting (preferably a staff meeting, where people are more comfortable, and thus likely to be open to an exercise such as this), propose and get agreement from everyone to do the following:

Throughout the meeting, each participant has to start his or her comments with a question.

The question must be genuine (as opposed to a joke), and in relation to the discussion—rather than asking, "You don't say?" just to get off the hook and dive into a topic most important to him or her.

The difficulty of this exercise helps shine a light on the rarity with which people inquire to find out more about a person's contribution, intention, assumptions, etc., and how purposeful a meeting can be if participants have a higher common goal such as sincere listening.

Second-generation tip:

In everyday interactions, look for ways to ask a question before responding to a person's comment. Notice what you learn about the other person — and yourself.

© Jamie Walters