BuzzWhack Jargon
Huh? What's "buzzwhack" mean? Speaking of jargon…
The industries and businesses we're in have their own jargon and buzzwords. We use slang every day. We toss around idioms and sayings in our regular speech without thought to whether someone else relates to the terms or not. Many times, they do not.
Our differences in age, generations, gender, culture, socio-economic standing, and any other demographic you can identify give us different perpectives and sets of experiences that cause us to mis-interpret or not interpret at all the terminology we use. While we strive to eliminate jargon in our speeches and presentations (especially formal ones), we still slip now and again.
A resource for identifying – and purging – buzzwords and other pompus and overused terminology in the workplace, with humor added, is Buzzwhack.com.
While the list changes daily as words are added through contributions from anyone who wants to send them in, the entries that struck me as applicable to success language (communication, leadership, presentation skills) today include:
- nanomanagers: Bosses who have taken micromanaging to a whole new level of nitpicking.
- PowerPoint singalong: A presentation read verbatim from the slides without observations, notes, comments or asides of any kind. Monotone optional, but not required.
- airball: The corporate version of a cat hairball. Someone who makes lots of noise, disrupts everything, has the potential to make a big mess – but ultimately does nothing.
- friendquest: Requesting someone to be a friend and or buddy on an online social network.
There is a lot more at this site, organized alphabetically like a "real" dictionary. Humorous, yet sad because I hear and see this stuff in the workplace every day!
(Sylvia's "No Advertising/Marketing" Blog Policy: As always, the resources I recommend I so do because I've found them, used them, or someone I know and trust has done so. I accept no marketing or advertising on this blog so don't even try!)