American View: What Does Your “Office Dialect” Reveal About Your Organisational Culture?

Management

Every profession and organisation develops its own private internal language; a combination of skewed vocabulary and organisation-specific usage rules that’s often impenetrable to outsiders. From firefighters to lawyers to dancers, listening to professionals chat about their work can feel like being dropped into an exotic foreign land. Sure, they’re speaking English … mostly … but often there are key words, phrases, uses, and hidden meanings that are utterly indecipherable to anyone who isn’t fluent in insiders’ argot.

Often, professionals will unconsciously “code switch” around outsiders and accidentally become incomprehensible to their audience. My civilian roommate at uni frequently used to gripe “can you translate that from MILSPEAK to ENG for me?” when I’d get lost telling a story and forget to translate my Army acronyms and insider slang into normal human terms.

Becoming fluent in the in-group language is one of the surest signs that a person is “one of us.” They get the in-jokes and understand the hidden meaning of buzzwords. Speaking the same insider dialect can even speed up and enhance professional communication among people that share the dialect. The one glaring exception to this seems to be “generic big business” … the insiders’ cant in most mega-corps seems to be utterly meaningless to the masses.

This all came to mind back in early August when a Nadeya from Search Laboratory sent me a link to a blog post titled “Study reveals top 10 most passive aggressive phrases used in workplace emails.” Susan Room, the writer listed on the infographic that accompanied Nadeya’s article, had highlighted several classic white collar weasel phrases like “kind regards” and “per our conversation” and suggested alternate phrases that might not rile up a reader ... as much. Susan’s pitch was well intentioned, to be sure, just not for me.

That’s why I was on the fence about whether to write this. True, language is hugely important to understanding culture and office culture is kinda my thing. On the other hand, the alternative phrases recommended in the infographic seemed a bit alien to me. When I attempt to write like a B-school graduate, I find that I can’t type “gentle nudge” or “a friendly reminder” in place of my traditional “listen, smeg head” it just doesn’t look, sound, or feel authentic.

The provided suggestions were, however, legitimate language options for other organisations. While Nadeya’s blog writer framed them as “passive aggressive” for not being clear, direct, or unambiguous, that doesn’t necessarily make them “wrong” where they’re used. Most likely, these phrases became acceptable substitutes for more direct phrases that were deemed to be too “aggressive” or “confrontational” by the key influencers.

In that it sounds like the sort of phrase that would be uttered by someone who uses the word “yacht” as a verb.

I’ve run into this phenomenon many times because some people are more sensitive to phrasing than others thanks in large part to their socialization. Where one worker might not blink an eye at their boss saying, “get this done no later than 3 p.m. today,” another worker in the same shop might feel shocked, insulted, intimidated, or slighted by the exact same phrase. No, really.

Let me offer an example: very early in my tenure as an Air Force unit commander, I was ordered to complete a minor administrative task that involved having all my personnel do … a thing. Something so trivial I don’t recall what it was. Anyway, my Training NCO had failed to complete this task due to missing several drills for pregnancy complicaitons – which was fine – making her the last “straggler” in my unit.

Right after morning formation on her first drill back, I sent her a reminder email in accordance with unit protocol: “SSgt Name, I require you to complete this task no later than close of business tomorrow.” That was how things were done at our Wing. It was strictly a CYA message with which I could “prove” to my Group Commander that I was taking the necessary action to ensure compliance^TM. Pro forma, since the sergeant worked directly outside my office, and I could simply raise my voice to remind her at any time during drill weekend.

Imagine my surprise, then, when my Training NCO burst into sobs and ran out of the bay, followed immediately by my Unit Clerk barrelling into my office in a rage, demanding to know why I’d “insulted” her buddy. As a former soldier, the notion of an officer ordering an NCO under their authority to perform a delinquent task couldn’t possibly be “insulting.” In anything, it would be shaming, especially if said where anyone else could hear it. Was the “Air Farce” truly as wimpy and un-military as soldiers liked to joke?

Military life is often ridiculous, but never so consistently ridiculous as pop culture entertainment would have you believe.

Well … yes and no. After some discussion, I worked out that this bizarre and (from my perspective) unprofessional reaction on my two sergeants’ parts was a conditioned reaction to the word “require” … based not on Air Force culture per se but based specifically on their experience in the USAF Personnel career field (what we’d call “Human Resources” in the corporate world). Somehow, over time, the personnelists had developed their own divergent subculture that was markedly different from the rest of the service. These two sergeants had been enculturated to expect that officers and chiefs would ask them to do please do things rather than give them direct orders. This made their workplaces feel more like a club where everyone was relatively equal than a military unit where obedience was mandatory.

This clash of cultures between me and the Orderly Room sergeant I’d inherited from the previous commander meant that we’d either both need to change how we interacted, or one of us would have to go … and that’s exactly what happened a few months later. I did soften how I addressed my training sergeant to help her adjust, but it wasn’t enough. The more I ratcheted up basic military professionalism across the unit to quash the endemic racial and sexual discrimination I uncovered, the more my training sergeant found she didn’t care for our unit culture. I approved her transfer request to personnel with our best wishes.

From what I’ve seen – and this clearly isn’t a scientifically reliable finding – round about half of office culture clashes like the example I described end with the discordant outsider being the one to leave rather than assimilate to their new culture. In the other half, the insiders back down and change how they communicate to accommodate the newcomer. In both cases, someone must adopt tried-and-true examples of “appropriate” local corporate speech and phrasing to achieve their desired results without triggering any strong reactions. This is how enculturation works. Either I could have changed my communication style and made our communications squadron more like a personnel squadron, or my training sergeant could have changed her expectations and behaviour to align with our norms and expectations.

That, I suspect, is how Susan Room’s “passive aggressive phrases” from the infographic Nadeya sent me become normalized in business language. They’re often not the best language for communicating an objective, but they are the most acceptable one within a specific office culture as its evolved over time thanks to the constant churn of insiders departing and outsiders joining. At first, the dominant people in the organisation will set expectations for the rest. Over time, people who wish to avoid confrontation and “fit in” will conform to the local dialect, thereby further normalizing the insiders’ nonstandard language and influencing even more people to fall in line.

I’m fascinated how corporate spokespeople can claim with a straight face that “you can be your authentic self here” while demanding that everyone dress the same, talk the same, write the same, suppress all their beliefs and values, and avoid “sticking out” from the mass for fear of being made redundant.

My personal suspicion is that corporate cultures slowly mellow over time to something resembling nothing so much as a homeopathic lager. HR people are notoriously conflict averse; consider the USAF Personnel environment that my Orderly Room team grew up in where their officers couldn’t bring themselves to give a simple direct order. This happens in the civilian world, too: HR groups stive not for harmony or effectiveness, but for gentle equilibrium. Once there is no conflict, there can be no complaints to resolve. So-called “passive aggressive language” standards are the natural outcome of such cultural dilution: “acceptable” alternative phrases that convey a meaning – like “get this done now” – when direct language in considered anathema.

So, would I recommend that people implement the alternative phrasing that Nadeya’s client suggested? No, and for two reasons: first, if your organisation has reached the point where direct English is no longer acceptable, any attempt to push back is going to be considered conflict. I would only recommend you attempt that deliberately, understanding the risks you’re accepting in attempting to change your organisational culture. I do that all the time; it’s up to you if you want to take such a risk.

Second, I don’t think Ms. Room’s proposed alternate phrases go nearly far enough to correct awful phrasing conventions since they’re just substituting one vanilla euphemism for another. I was a soldier, not a diplomat; while I appreciate that both communication styles have their respective strengths, I am painfully aware that delicate double-speak isn’t my forte. I prefer plain, direct speech at work because I believe that delicate circumlocution is appropriate for historical drama, not for work.

This is probably why I never get invited to High Tea at the office and that’s fine. I’ve got stuff to do.

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