Groupspeak.
Almost everyone has heard it.
“Let’s circle back”
“There’s a lot of moving parts”
“We need to leverage the green shoots of change”
It’s easy – and hilarious – to poke fun at the nonsense sentences (nonsentences?) spouted by many individuals in organisations.
But it’s much harder to understand why these phrases occur: low safety.
Marion Anderson and I discussed this in chapter 6 of Constellation:
When safety is low, language itself changes: slogans replace sincerity, and jargon covers for a lack of honest debate.
Anderson has seen this in her own studies: “In teams where safety is low, you hear more group-speak and less originality. Corporate clichés and cult-like phrases crop up as armour.”
Culture leaves evidence.
And language is often a smoking gun to what’s really happening in an organisation…
