Leadership Lingo

“I was just circling back on x and wanted to see if we could close the loop?”

This was the opening sentence to an email I sent recently, harmless enough I thought.

“Robbie you have been poisoned by management, “circling back” what is that?” Was the response back, complete with a little green-faced vomit emoji for emphasis.

Even though the reply was meant tongue-in-cheek it got me thinking.   Every profession has a certain jargon that accompanies this.  Whether it be engineering, banking or education you name the profession those in it have their own special code for communicating with each other.

 I know this is very true in healthcare.  Clinicians have to be extremely careful to translate their medical lingo to a more patient friendly language.

However, as leaders we have all been indoctrinated by similar words and phrases, which make plenty of sense when talking with fellow leaders may not always translate to others. 

I’ve been doing this long enough that I have noticed that some of these phrases almost have a season of popularity and then disappear.  Usually they arrive with a popular book or after a guest speaker and become forever forged in the lexicon of corporate lingo. 

For awhile it was “get on the bus”, then there was a period of “leaning in” and being “intentional”.  Most recently it seems to be time to “level set” and “leverage” things.  Of course, there are the timeless classics like “low hanging fruit”, “in the weeds” and don’t forget the “30,000 feet view”.

While these sound bites make sense to us, they may not make sense to your staff or other people.  Just like a clinician has to go from saying myocardial infarction to heart attack when talking with family, we should translate the same way when talking with people not as familiar with the world of corporate jargon.

So next time pause before you raise your hand to leverage yourself and lean in. Be sure to level set, so that you can be prepared to close the loop before you circle back.  You need to really be intentional about getting on the bus to avoid any big rocks that might be in your way.  Of course, you may need to avoid getting too granular as this could cause you to miss the 30,000-foot view or potentially miss some low-hanging fruit.

Your staff will appreciate it.