Is Office Jargon Hurting Your Performance

Is Office Jargon Hurting Your Performance Sometimes, office jargon can feel like its another language. Words like value-add, paradigm shift, and datafication have so much and so little meaning at the same time its no wonder that Arianna Huffington and Sheryl Sandberghave talked openly about banning certain phrases from the workplace altogether.Nobody is a fan of office speak, but for many individuals its an important way to connect with your coworkers. Using office jargon is a good way to show that youre on the same page as your team, but if youre not careful using colloquialisms that stem out of sports and military terms can hurt your professional identity instead of help it.So should you actually be using office jargon? Here are a few of the ways your language of choice might be negatively affecting you1.It can make you seem unprofessional.Killing your goals, targeting clients, trying to be bleeding edge do any of those terms sound like they come from somebody youd enjoy working w ith? Its important to have goals and plans on how to reach them, but jargon frequently masks real meaning. Overusing it makes it seem like you havent thought clearly about your direction and is a sign of poor leadership.2.It can be exclusionary.Using phrases that arent related to work to describe work can leave teammates out of the conversation. Nobody means to cause confusion, but using football terms to describe your companys annual plan implies that its important to have knowledge of football to do ones job well. And unless you work at the National Football League, chances are it doesnt.It would be great to get rid of all those military and sports references, columnist Jena McGregor wrote for The Washington Post. Not even because they create a machismo workplace, but because people simply stop listening to managers who use such awful clichs. Good leaders communicate their needs and expectations clearly in a way that all employees understand, and good team members should do so as well.3.It puts you between a rock and a hard place.Research has shown time and time again that society has different expectations for how men and women should communicate and that they are rewarded differently as a result. Typically, women are not praised for asserting their dominance or for utilizing aggressive tactics to achieve their goals. An office that relies on work speak puts women in a tough situation use the jargon and risk being seen as aggressive, or ignore it and risk being left out of the office culture. These kinds of situations can be avoided, but for women at work its a commonplace and incredibly unfair struggle.4.Youre confusing your message.Imagine you get two emails from two senior executives. The first email asks you for a position update on a spreadsheet thats due Friday. The second asks you when youll be able to touch base offline about your deliverable due by close of play. If you think that the first email is a lot clearer than the second, youre not alone. The latter is a perfect example about how jargon can hurt more than help.Many office terms dont have specific definitions. By using office jargon, youre creating the appearance that youre either unable to express your message clearly or youre indifferent to whether your message gets muddled in its delivery. Taking the extra time to re-read an email or walkthrough what you want to say on a phone call is a great way to make sure your message is specific and concise.5.Its distractingThe energy youre spending worrying about what phrases do and dont mean could be spent in a variety of other, much more productive ways. Encouraging the use of simpler language in lieu of office jargon will go a long way in furthering productivity and a more inclusive workplace for all.