There's a Buzz for that

Buzzwords are annoying - and they degrade meaning and impact

Many moons ago, back when I was a small girl, my mother decided to dig up a bush near our front door.

There was a yellowjacket nest in the roots – oops.

She assured me that since I wasn’t bothering them, I wouldn’t get stung. Oops, again.

Because they were being bothered – by her – but let’s face it: yellowjackets aren’t smart enough to figure out who the culprit is. Oops the third.

Oddly enough, she didn’t get stung. Hmm.

In any event, this is a story of how common concepts – in this case, if you don’t bother the stinging insect, it won’t sting you – can be very wrong.

There are a lot of buzzwords becoming popular right now, and I worry about two things.

Thing One: have we actually defined what we mean by those buzzwords? Shared meaning – a common understanding of a word or term – is essential, but often not enacted. I’ve written elsewhere about how a word as apparently simple and well-understood as “success” can pull a leadership team apart.

Thing Two: once a term has become a buzzword, it gets tossed around casually, and instead of being meaningful and impactful, it becomes eye-rollingly cliché. And for important concepts, that’s a real shame.

So, what’s the solution?

If we take the time to define exactly what we mean by a word or phrase, we create a common understanding (shared meaning) and that, in turn, alleviates its cliché-ness.

Let’s look at some examples to illustrate how this works.

Buzzword: empathy

I’ve been talking about empathy since before it became popular in professional settings. On the one hand, I’m sad that it’s become a buzzword (see: Thing Two!), and on the other, I’m glad because it’s an important skill for good leadership.

When I talk about it, I always define it, and I make the distinction between what I call personal empathy – the kind of care and understanding you’d extend to a family member or friend going through difficult times – and professional empathy.

Professional empathy is the skill of understanding where someone is coming from. It’s the ability to understand and appreciate the feelings and perspectives of another person within the work environment, and it’s essential for effective constructive feedback and for motivating and engaging employees.

For my clients and students, this clarifies exactly what I’m talking about and what they can do to be better leaders and managers, especially since we then dive into tools and practices for developing professional empathy.

And there we have shared meaning around an important concept.

Buzzword: vulnerability

Have you seen some of the recent articles about how leaders are weeping in the office and unsettling their employees to no end?

This is a prime example of how a concept can be misunderstood and misused.

Leaders received the message that vulnerability is good, it’s a sign of strength, it will help your employees view you as a relatable human. All true.

But they failed to really dig in and understand what that actually meant. They took it at face value and ran right off the edge with it.

Buzzword: quiet quitting

Oh, my, but this has become a controversial topic, hasn’t it?

Mostly because there are multiple wildly diverging definitions.

On the one hand, we have those who say, “If you don’t like your job, just quit outright!”

On another, we have those who say, “This is a sign of employee disengagement!”

And on the third (no, I don’t actually have three hands, but you know what I mean), we have, “This is a form of protest, similar to the ‘work to rule’ approach of unions in the past.”

And yes, there’s a fourth: “This is appropriate boundary-setting around work time and effort!”

This is 100% a problem of definition.

And all four are potentially correct, depending on the situation, the company in question, and the individual performing the “quiet quit.”

Here’s a situation where the buzzword is functionally useless. The potential meanings are too far apart, and there are too many options.

With the others I’ve listed here, or any of the many I haven’t dealt with, they may cause eye-rolling and they may have become tarnished and diminished by overuse, but at their core, they’re coherent to a foundational meaning. Even though, as I’ve described, that meaning needs some help to become truly shared meaning, the foundation is there.

There’s no foundation for “quiet quitting.” It’s too all-over-the-place.

And the only consistent thing about it is that it finger-points at the individual employee who’s supposedly doing the “quiet quitting.”

Is that where it belongs? I’d say, no. I’d say, it belongs with the organization that has created a culture where people are unhappy, disengaged, protesting overwork, and feeling a need to set boundaries around their effort and time.

Hmm. So maybe there is a foundational meaning after all; just not what anyone expected.

It means you have problems in your company culture.

Problems that could probably be solved with a little professional empathy and appropriate vulnerability.