Name of weekly column: Sprog

This week's contributor: Gareth Chick, director, Spring Partnerships

I commented in Sprog last week that management metaphors and jargon thankfully diminish in tough times, as leaders and managers feel more legitimised (see how easy I slip into it myself!) in talking straight. It's always struck me as ironic that so many businesses have 'honesty' as a core value, and yet their managers use management speak rather than saying it how it is (or even in English).

One of my very favourite clients has their own internal lexicon which includes phrases such as 'onboarding', 'deep dives' and 'pushback', but these have become cultural process 'brands' and as such have a place of status and almost affection within the business. No, it's the generic ones that really get up my goat. Ones like these: (I have helpfully provided the straight talking translation):

"Let's touch base / hook up later" - "I don't want to talk to you now"

"Let's take that offline" - "I don't want to talk about this now"

"That's not on my radar" - "I don't care about it"

"Let's go for the low hanging fruit" - "It's too hard to do what we really should be doing, so let's do the easy bit first"

"From soup to nuts" (my personal favourite candidate for MOST irritating phrase) - "everything"

"I need more granularity on this issue" - "I am too scared / stupid to make a decision"

"I don't have the bandwidth" - "I can't be arsed" (Sorry, I'm getting tired.......)  

"Let's drill down" - no, let's NOT. Sorry I have just lost the will to live"........................................

I am sure you have your own personal favourites - please feel free to share them here (as a consultant I need a constant source of new ones to use so that I sound both up-to-date and cool).

In my experience working with hundreds of middle and senior managers, we universally struggle to really say it how it is - to just talk straight to each other. We fear causing offence; maybe we fear not getting it right - either way, we need to get outside our comfort zones and learn to say it how it is - and when someone DOES talk straight, we need to reward them by listening, accepting and engaging. Then maybe they would do it more often.

When coaching people I often find myself asking the question: "what do you really mean by that?" Try it. It's amazing what people tell you if you get past the metaphor. It's called the truth and it's a very handy commodity in solving problems and growing businesses.