If you liked the band Phish and I told you that I liked the jam on YEM, but DWD was not my favorite, you might reply that you didn’t much care for the new stuff and that the Gamehendge on June 6th of 1994 was the best the band ever did. An eavesdropper who had never heard of Phish might think we were totally nuts. They might be right.
By making those statements we were using language to distinguish ourselves from the madding crowd, and we were also using it to bond between ourselves. Managers often overlook or fail to recognize how language can raise their status among those above and below.
What might happen if I sidled up to a young lady in a Phish T-shirt and offered up, “Did you dig that version of You Enjoy Myself? I thought it cooked.”? It’s likely she would believe me to be a total poser who was trying to pick up on her. I tried to speak the lingo but I failed. A true speaker recognized it and knew I had pretentions but maybe not much else.
So you’re a middle manager. You want your supervisors and your line employees to respect you. They need to know that you have a handle on things. Those above you will always be screening you to see if you are ready to join their elite ranks. Once you open your mouth they will know. If you don’t know the lingo you’re just a cow swimming in a river of piranhas.
Most of us have had these lessons in elementary school, and many learned the hard way. My parents immigrated to this country from another where the Queen’s English is spoken. I learned to pronounce tomato like tomahto. I can still recall the sting when I read aloud to my third grade classmates and they laughed when I said that word. You can bet that I didn’t ever repeat that mistake. How can an eight-year-old figure that out quickly but a manager does not? A classic quizzer.
For one thing, most adults will instantly notice a departure from the standard lexicon. They will rarely laugh and mock like third graders. The trespasser might not know that they have made a colossal screw-up, and they might continue to make it. Then again, some managers are just plain stupid. Life is a bell curve.
Many of you will remember a terrific idea used to deride managers who used a lexicon of clichés – buzzword bingo. For those of you who lived in a hole in the late 1990s and early 2000s, buzzwords were placed on a bingo card instead of the B-12s and O-68s. If the speaker used one you could fill in that blank. A manager I know fell victim to this much like a lemming walking to a cliff. Even though we warned him to “speak English” he filled a presentation with so many “synergies” and “strategies” and “benchmarks” that it was embarrassing to be in the crowd. It got worse when someone said during the Q and A, “I didn’t understand it very well but I’m sure I won bingo.” I laughed in my hand and nearly threw up. But even though he was given a clue, albeit somewhat roughly, that he was not being accepted, he did not change. A pity – he had many tools. What to do?
The solution is easy. Listen. Listen and pay attention. How do the line workers talk? What words do they use to describe their surroundings? What in their environment is exclusive to them? Much like we use “Xerox” for “copy”, workers commonly substitute their word for a common word to set themselves apart.
Upper management does the same thing, only they are aped for different reasons. A middle manager who wants to move up will strive to speak like those of higher rank. People there like to hear thing like “synergies” and “benchmarks”. Guess what happened to that former manager of mine… Yup, he got promoted. The potential that he showed was never realized. He coulda been a contender…
Communication such as this has an element of oxygen to it. When you read it you might think to yourself, “Well that’s pretty freaking obvious. I should write a stupid blog.” The trouble is that few people stop to realize what is happening. If you work with someone who is not a native American-English speaker, ask them their views. It’s likely they have trouble fitting in and being accepted by the Americans for specifically this reason.
Look for words exclusive to your work group and write them down. Send me an email and I’ll try to include some in a future post.
By making those statements we were using language to distinguish ourselves from the madding crowd, and we were also using it to bond between ourselves. Managers often overlook or fail to recognize how language can raise their status among those above and below.
What might happen if I sidled up to a young lady in a Phish T-shirt and offered up, “Did you dig that version of You Enjoy Myself? I thought it cooked.”? It’s likely she would believe me to be a total poser who was trying to pick up on her. I tried to speak the lingo but I failed. A true speaker recognized it and knew I had pretentions but maybe not much else.
So you’re a middle manager. You want your supervisors and your line employees to respect you. They need to know that you have a handle on things. Those above you will always be screening you to see if you are ready to join their elite ranks. Once you open your mouth they will know. If you don’t know the lingo you’re just a cow swimming in a river of piranhas.
Most of us have had these lessons in elementary school, and many learned the hard way. My parents immigrated to this country from another where the Queen’s English is spoken. I learned to pronounce tomato like tomahto. I can still recall the sting when I read aloud to my third grade classmates and they laughed when I said that word. You can bet that I didn’t ever repeat that mistake. How can an eight-year-old figure that out quickly but a manager does not? A classic quizzer.
For one thing, most adults will instantly notice a departure from the standard lexicon. They will rarely laugh and mock like third graders. The trespasser might not know that they have made a colossal screw-up, and they might continue to make it. Then again, some managers are just plain stupid. Life is a bell curve.
Many of you will remember a terrific idea used to deride managers who used a lexicon of clichés – buzzword bingo. For those of you who lived in a hole in the late 1990s and early 2000s, buzzwords were placed on a bingo card instead of the B-12s and O-68s. If the speaker used one you could fill in that blank. A manager I know fell victim to this much like a lemming walking to a cliff. Even though we warned him to “speak English” he filled a presentation with so many “synergies” and “strategies” and “benchmarks” that it was embarrassing to be in the crowd. It got worse when someone said during the Q and A, “I didn’t understand it very well but I’m sure I won bingo.” I laughed in my hand and nearly threw up. But even though he was given a clue, albeit somewhat roughly, that he was not being accepted, he did not change. A pity – he had many tools. What to do?
The solution is easy. Listen. Listen and pay attention. How do the line workers talk? What words do they use to describe their surroundings? What in their environment is exclusive to them? Much like we use “Xerox” for “copy”, workers commonly substitute their word for a common word to set themselves apart.
Upper management does the same thing, only they are aped for different reasons. A middle manager who wants to move up will strive to speak like those of higher rank. People there like to hear thing like “synergies” and “benchmarks”. Guess what happened to that former manager of mine… Yup, he got promoted. The potential that he showed was never realized. He coulda been a contender…
Communication such as this has an element of oxygen to it. When you read it you might think to yourself, “Well that’s pretty freaking obvious. I should write a stupid blog.” The trouble is that few people stop to realize what is happening. If you work with someone who is not a native American-English speaker, ask them their views. It’s likely they have trouble fitting in and being accepted by the Americans for specifically this reason.
Look for words exclusive to your work group and write them down. Send me an email and I’ll try to include some in a future post.
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