Dear Washington: Please stop talking like a fool

Here’s a novel idea for improving professional lives (and maybe even outcomes) in Washington, D.C.: everyone start using clear language and speaking like normal people.

Across the nation’s capital, people use highly questionable language — predominately jargon — out of unfounded insecurity; to appear smart, buttoned up and part of the in crowd. It has taken root so strongly that it now equates to groupthink: talk like a corporate robot or lose your standing as a top mind in the room.

In reality, over-reliance on jargon undercuts one’s credibility.

{mosads}Everyone can instead abide by a simple premise: write like you speak and speak like you think. It is not dissimilar to the advice of famed CEO Richard Branson, who says, if you can’t fit your pitch or message on the back of an envelope, it is probably a bad idea. Brevity and clarity belie both theories.

It is hard to believe that Washington’s leaders — consultants, advocacy professionals, legislative wonks on the Hill or at think tanks, lobbyists and the like  leave work and tell their significant other they are going to read about the football “space” and see how the relationship between a quarterback “ladders up” to a receiver, what type of “paradigm shift” may have occurred, and that they’ll “ping” them, to “circle back” when they are done “ideating” on the topic.

It sounds absurd in such a context, but it is equally dumbfounding in conference rooms. Indeed, “the words we speak should not be hurdles to the substance of what we are saying,” says former journalist and current communications consultant Eric Rosenberg. “They should covey the ideas we are trying to impart, most definitely so in business where time is money and lack of precision has real cost.”

Yet how can Washington professionals combat a full-fledged epidemic when it is so firmly ingrained in the culture?

First, take a look at past iterations of Forbes Magazine’s jargon madness. Ask yourself, have you accused colleagues of “drinking the Kool-Aid” in the past few days, or suggested to a colleague you take a conversation in a meeting “offline?” Have you referred to something tangible and already defined through normal words – such as an industry or sector – and instead deemed it a “space?” Do you awake in the morning wondering how you will achieve “synergies,” be a “disruptor” or position your boss as a “thought leader?”

Do you insist on remaking parts of speech on a whim, telling colleagues how you will “bucket” particular activities depending on how well you “workshop” the project? 

If so, you have a problem, and admitting it is the first step.

Next, read the news and digest the basic yet powerful language that is used across the board. Better yet, read opinions from the nation’s top thinkers — consider George Will, Fred Hiatt and Rich Lowry — and see if you can find any reliance on meaningless words. Here’s betting you won’t.

Last, call a relative or a close friend. Have a conversation about anything of your choosing. This is practice, a safe place to deal with the problem at hand. It is an easy test that should be passed with flying colors.

And then return to work in D.C., the most educated place in the U.S. Whether you are speaking in a meeting or on a panel, to a board of a for-profit industry or researchers at an obscure think tank, talk to these people like you did your relative or friend. And as a bonus, write a memo, a speech or presentation (preferably not PowerPoint, which like jargon, is a silent killer), and send to a trusted peer, asking, “does this sound like I talk?”

If it does, you have taken a big step in fixing a serious problem. Because jargon does not have to win out. Let’s combat it, starting today.

Ted Greener (@TedGreener) is the director of public affairs at a Washington trade association, and previously worked at Ogilvy Pubic Relations and DCI Group.