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There’s something about industry acronyms that can make someone listening to them feel like they’re eavesdropping on a foreign language. We in the media, for example, often throw out ideas for lamps, decks and posters without a second thought. (Eekek)
Some phrases are more widespread and cross over into corporate jargon. Think: a seat at a table, building an airplane in flight, and even a game changer are all so ubiquitous that they seem inauthentic when used.
When he’s okay I swear
Some words and phrases can also be overused. Dropping the F-bomb has become, if not completely acceptable, certainly more acceptable at work. But as Fast company Contributor Yonason Goldson noted: “If a well-directed expletive is used clearly, it can convey the depth of our passion and the intensity of our disdain with the power of a Louisville football player. But the power of profanity fades when cursing becomes commonplace.”
Fortunately, it offers a series of more politically correct alternatives. Although he cautions that we need to make sure we don’t fall prey to binary thinking at the expense of nuance. He asks if it is wrong to describe a blatant falsehood as an outright lie. “We must be able and willing to discern the intended meaning of a speaker or writer rather than looking for the most damning interpretation of their words,” Goldson wrote.
When language becomes unintentionally offensive
However, nuance becomes more problematic when common phrases morph into exclusionary, racist, or sexist language. For example, most people don’t think of using “you guys” as a general, gender-neutral group reference. However, Amy Diehl, Ph.D., a gender equality researcher, discusses the origins of “man” and how its masculine root is not entirely neutral. Speaking to psychologist Clare Mulligan Foster revealed that the problem is that not everyone hears it that way. “Think of it this way: Would you greet a mixed-gender group or an all-male group with ‘How are you girls?'” Probably not, unless you’re trying to make a point.
Moreover, the common use of phrases like “cut a piece” and “can’t do” has persisted for so long that we hardly think about them again. The first is derived from the Cantonese word “kap” which means to rush but came to denote a person of authority urging someone at a lower level to hurry. The Oxford Dictionary says the phrase “can’t do” also dates from the mid-19th to early 20th centuries, “an era in which Western attitudes toward the Chinese were markedly racist.”
Occasional problematic stages
Fast forward to the past few years with the emergence of several hashtag business trends like Great Resignation. Here too, we have demonstrated problematic language. The catchy viral phrase “lazy girl jobs” may have originated as a reaction to hustle culture and the lack of boundaries between work and life during the pandemic, but Brennan Nevada-Johnson noted that as a Black female, she views this trope as illustrating white privilege.
Unfortunately for leaders, anthropologist Christina Elson writes, ignoring cultural undercurrents will not make them go away. “This will create a void that employees may fill with false assumptions and worse behaviors. The opposite of a civilian workplace.
Raise awareness to combat unintentional bias
To combat this, awareness of where this is creeping in can help. One place where seemingly innocuous words and phrases hide and reveal biases (and in some cases downright harmful) in plain sight is performance reviews. One word in particular, notes Kieran Snyder, co-founder of Textio, is that it has widened the gender and racial divide when managers evaluate their reports. “When managers describe black, female, and over-40 workers as ambitious, this is generally not a positive thing,” she wrote. “Research conducted by Stanford University confirms that women who get promoted more quickly are actually more ambitious, but they know how to downplay this quality with their managers and co-workers.”
However, Snyder pushed performance reviews through AI, and while the technology should have provided unbiased reviews, it was actually worse than a human. So it may be better to stick to AI tools to improve non-problematic factors like making sure key points are highlighted in your emails.
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