What Do You Mean?

Don’t let your conversation sound like a mystery to be solved.  This is especially important when you are working with people whose mother tongue is not the same as yours.

Most of know the basic rules to make it easy to communicate:  Keep sentences short.  Don’t use abbreviations.  Skip your corporate jargon.  Today I’d add one more recommendation:  Eliminate the Buzzwords.   Think words like Pivot, Ideation, Gamificatin and Growth Hacker. 

These are some of the words included in Mike Perler’s article  “9 Buzzwords That Can Make You Sound Dumb:  He shares a list of popular words and their translation.  Check it out:  https://www.openforum.com/articles/9-buzzwords-that-can-make-you-sound-dumb/?extlink=of-syndication-sb-p. 

Mr. Perler, Director of the Council for Economic Education suggests that we may sound dumb using these words frequently or incorrectly.  That’s probably true if everyone involved speaks fluent English.  If not, it could be worse.The conversation could be incomprehensible.  

 It’s hard to do business together when the parties don’t understand each other.  Try to avoid creating mysteries with your choice of words.