Have you ever received a message on LinkedIn from a member like this one? Infuriating right. Who really speaks this way?
It appears that more and more people are learning this new language, and it would appear to be coming from LinkedIn. As you can see from this image the only people qualified to ‘reach out’ are the Four Tops.
It appears that amongst all the new ways of communicating that have appeared over the last few years, emojis, text language to name a couple, this LinkedIn language has now appeared. Some people call it management BS, others Bolloticks and I have even heard it called Testiculation!
When did it become common to use the words ‘reach out’ instead of ‘get in touch’ or ‘synergies’ instead of working together? It really leaves me cold, and after talking to a lot of networking colleagues and clients they feel the same way.
Some of my contacts have said that people do this as it makes them sound clever, or that it disguises a lack of intellect or even that it simply makes up for a lack of confidence and that if they do not use these buzzwords that they won’t be taken seriously. All good points.
Here are some other Management BS Bingo gems
Halo effect
Brain Dump
Drill down
Blue-sky thinking
Punching above their weight
Run it up a flagpole
Dance on a pinhead
Piss down my collar and convince me it is raining
Making inroads and understanding the verticals
All your ducks in a row
Low hanging fruit
The word ‘journey’ (I learned that one the hard way!)
Nice to e-meet you.
Helicopter view
Going forward (we can only go forward, we do not go backwards!)
Take this offline
A scary future
If we are not careful we could end up talking like the characters from W1A. “The fact is, this is about us identifying what we do best and finding more ways of doing less of it better.” Director of Better Anna Rampton
Being yourself is really important in business, all this management BS speak is really boring. Use language that conveys who you are in an authentic way and do your best to avoid the business speak that really has cluttered up our way of talking to each other. To finish then, and this is meant with love; if you speak LinkedIn, then terrific, just don’t do it too often or with me. Thanks.
