I think growing up for most of us it was cool to say ‘purchase an automobile’ which was actually simply ‘buy a car’. This has since faded like Sly Stallone’s six pack and is firmly in the rearview mirror. Yes, language keeps evolving but it is becoming more and more annoying and some of us are tired of the trickery. Managers seem to have bags of theses phrases. In fact, according to Newton’s Fourth Law of managers you are not a manager until you can spit out these clichés to your team. When they say something like ‘think outside the box’ all they mean is ‘we are tired of your blandness and lack of inventiveness’.
This is usually a prelude to being shown the exit door. Because let’s face it – no employee ever does that. Ever heard something like ‘today we are going to give John special recognition for thinking outside the box’. Instead you will hear managers accusing bewildered employees of not thinking outside the box. ‘Let’s take this offline’ is usually the genesis of a fight that you don’t want people to see. Do not take the bait. It is the online equivalent of ‘let’s take this outside’ which sometimes peters into altered dental formulae. So you better be prepared for a bare-knuckle encounter if you accede to that. ‘Thanks in advance’ is a phrase filled with more menace than Donald Trump at the sight of an African. It is a low key threat to cajole you into action. What it actually means is ‘you must do this as I expect you to do it and I am not about to waste my thanks on you’. As a young professional I once attended a meeting where one of the managers talked about ‘leverage our core competencies'. I was sitting next to an equally puzzled manager who promised to translate it to me after the meeting but evaded me until Mr Google was born.
