Note: We use AI transcription so there may be some inaccuracies
Danielle Cobo: Have you ever sat in a meeting wondering what the presenter was saying? Perhaps they were using corporate lingo. You weren't familiar with corporate jargon and convoluted language can hinder business communication in this episode. We discussed the pitfalls of overly technical language and how it can alienate people who don't share the same expertise.
After this episode, you'll be able to avoid the barriers to workplace communication, convey complex ideas in a way that everyone can understand and communicate to influence others. Today's guest is Janet Living. Founder of Culture is Key, a consulting company devoted to leadership development, executive coaching, and team effectiveness.
Janet helps establish companies and startups build trust within hybrid and international teams through communication.
Danielle Cobo: Janet, thank you so much for joining the podcast today. I am excited to have you on because I have never had a linguist on the podcast, and you have lived all over the world, and you are working with some of the top organizations specifically in the tech industry. So tell us a little bit about your background.
What brought you to being a linguist and how does that serve in the workplace?
Janet Livingstone: Thank you Danielle. It's a pleasure to be here with you. So I grew up with, I was born with an ear for languages. That kind of person who imitates. Everything sounds, accents, you name it. That was me. And I also did some music. So, my mother was a big Francophile and she said, okay, you're seven years old now.
You have to study French, and when you're seven you don't say, you know what, I can use my time better, mom. You just do it. that's when I started as a kid. I studied French, and then in school I added Spanish, and then it went on from there. In total, I've studied seven languages out of those I speak. Six.
and they get stored like in my brain, right? I can't speak them all at the same time. There's no way. So whenever I'm in an environment, after a couple days, I start to speak it again. Like it comes back, the vocabulary and the grammar and stuff starts to come back and I pay attention cuz that's my main sense is my.
Danielle Cobo: That's, sorry. Impressive. seven languages you've learned. And that's not common in the us. I know that when I've traveled, I know to Europe, everyone speaks multiple language. It's, how you were raised and it's in part of the school system, but we don't find that as often in the us.
Janet Livingstone: I know,
I'm just this kind of weirdo. it's just always been really fun for me and. When they would teach it in school, I'd be able to hear it. And then I got to travel fairly early on as a young person. And that really helps, like when you get the chance and not everybody gets a chance.
Right? But I was lucky. So you get the chance to go to another country and suddenly you're like, oh. They really speak this other language here and I don't have any guarantee that someone's gonna talk to me in English and I don't have any guarantee that they're gonna understand me if I speak to them in English.
So I better figure out what's going on. And you have to have that experience to fully appreciate why other languages are necessary. Important. It's, like anything until you do it, you don't fully get why it's good.
Danielle Cobo: I've traveled quite a bit across the world and I remember the times when I, haven't retained it cause I don't practice it anymore.
But when I spoke Spanish and I was able to immerse myself in the culture at a young age and then spoke French, I wish I had kept up with those languages cuz there's value in, understanding different languages and being able to travel and speak the language of the natural culture. But that's, awesome that you have been able to.
speak those languages. Now you've worked with some of the top organizations in the us, fortune 500 organizations, and we've talked a little bit about language in the workplace. In your observation, how does language play a role in the workplace, and what are maybe some of the pitfalls you see in how we speak in the workplace?
Janet Livingstone: That's a great question. So I think that language in the workplace, just like other places in life, is it's essential. It's our main tool. It's our tool for getting things done. It's our tool. initiating and building relationships without language we're completely lost. I mean, if, I work a lot with Boeing, so here's an aviation metaphor.
If the pilot and the air traffic control tower don't understand each other, the consequences can be dire. They can also be humorous, but most of the time they're pretty risky. Right. so in the corporate environment, there are a lot of factors to think about. One of them is jargon, right?
Every workplace has its jargon regardless of what the industry is. And what I find is that a lot of people tend to rely really heavily on jargon, like the longer you're with a company, The more likely you are to rely on a million acronyms to rely on, all kinds of,expressions, like level set.
I had a boss who, everything was level setting. We need to level set. I wanna level set, when are we gonna meet so we can level set in. When I took that job, I had no idea what that meant. I had like no clue and he kept saying it and I kept thinking of, That thing that the construction engineer uses with a bubble of water in it that goes back and forth when you wanna make sure that a piece of furniture is standing straight.
I was like, what is he talking about? And the reason why I think it can be an issue is that people get settled in their patterns. And they speak to each other in code and okay, if your team's been together for a year, two, three, you get each other. But the minute somebody from say, a really different part of the organization joins the conversation, or from another organization, or anybody, a partner, a customer joins the conversation, they can feel really excluded because those who are speaking the jargon-ese let's call it, They don't have the context, they don't have the background.
They may use some of the same jargon in their workplace, but maybe not the same way. And so for that reason, I really think that giving context and being empathic or empathetic, Is really, really important, right? So say you're a team lead or you're, on a team and somebody comes in, say you've borrowed with the company in India, or you have, expanded into China or Europe somewhere, and suddenly you have all these new team members who are joining and their native language isn't.
So I'm talking from the US perspective now. So you've got these foreign colleagues from other cultures joining and you're sitting around going, yeah, well, Wednesday's A B P R, and we really have to level set about like the task processes and blah blah. And they're going, what is happening? So I would urge everyone, pretend.
You're traveling, pretend you're stepping into a new city or a new country. Those people don't know where you came from. They don't know how you like to talk and how you're used to talking, and they may not be completely informed about the current problem you're solving, the acquisition that's happening, the, Production problems that everyone's grappling with.
They may not know that like, I work with Boeing a lot. They may not remember that there were crashes of the max, right? I mean, those things really affect the way people think and behave and talk inside organizations. So it's good to stop, take a few steps. Remember, okay, this person may not know all this.
I better give them a little bit of an explanation, a little bit of background, a little bit of context, and ask them questions. Hey, how much do you know about this? What have you heard? Who have you talked to already? That kind of stuff, rather than just launching in, cuz a lot of us lose perspective and we just dive in and we may or may not see that blank look on the other person's.
Danielle Cobo: A lot of times people. Don't want to ask the question because they don't un appear that they don't know and I see this often with new hires. I worked for an organization where we used to joke around, you need a book a dictionary almost for all of the acronyms. That we had within our organization, and it, got to the point, I'm just gonna rattle off some of 'em real quick here.
It was a P p Sam, b d m a P C, or c e m, And it was like almost a, joke in this sense of you needed a book to understand the acronyms and where I saw the disadvantage of us sticking to these acronyms. Was two, problems that I saw. One of 'em was when there was new hires within the organization, and I remember the newer people on my team would be like, what is a p p?
what does SAM stand for? What does BDM stand for? And then the other that I saw was with customers. We got so used to in our organization, speaking the internal acronym language that we would then speak it with our customers and our customers would get so confused as to what we were speaking about.
So it became, I remember reading a quote by Richard Branson and he said, or it was an article that he wrote, and he had said that, Corporate jargon is probably the, the worst thing that could happen within an organization. And so it changed my perspective of any time that I would be writing an email, even though I was writing an internal email, I would spell out what the word was, then in parentheses, put the acronym and then the remainder of the email I would put the acronym but always specified it in the beginning.
And I never spoke acronyms with our customers. it was too confusing, especially when you think of. How many companies, some customers will work with. You may have one customer that's working with 10, 15 companies, and the jargon and the acronyms are different for each of those organizations. Why would we expect our customers to know them?
Janet Livingstone: That's an incredibly good point. It that had not occurred to me. It's true. Imagine you have, 10 clients. 10 companies you're working with and each of them has their own set. I mean, you would need to become a linguist. You would need to be crazy like me. it's crazy. But what you're saying, Danielle, is that you understand this and so you're a willing and be able to flex, right?
You can turn the acronyms off. You don't have to use them. You remember, you still remember what they stand for and you can explain, but many, people. Just aren't used to flexing. Right. And so they have to practice and they have to learn, they have to understand that they're assuming, they're making a big assumption that the person they're talking to lives in their world when it's really not true.
So it's challenging, but it can definitely be done. It just takes, you know, stop a little, just a moment and go, okay, who am I talking to? What is their viewpoint? Where do they come from? How much do they know? And just take it from there. So let's compare notes.
When you say Sam, we also have SAM meetings. So what does your SAM stand for? Sam
Danielle Cobo: in our world was strategic account manager, so it was a sales acronym. Okay. And what is Sam in your organization?
Janet Livingstone: Okay, so yours is a person, ours is a type of meeting, a special attention meeting, right? Which is when our super busy managing director, we make him sit and listen because we have an issue, right?
That we need to talk through with him. So we need. Attention and it's special. Right? There are a million things like that. Yeah. this is bringing up something for me too, and that is how we feel when we're at work. I don't know if there's research on this, but it's occurring to me that when we use a really restricted, breadth of language, Because we're so used to talking about the same things all the time.
it restricts the way we express ourselves too. Especially if we still feel like, we can't show any emotion at work because it will be, seen as weakness or, it's drama. It's a waste of everybody's time. That kind of thinking. It's hard for people to use their full vocabulary and sometimes it can be, dehumanizing.
So actually I wanted to bring this one thing up. I had an absolutely fabulous coachee. I'm an executive coach by the way. I didn't even get into what my background is. I'm a leadership development person and executive coach, and I do a bunch of other things on the side, but, had a coachee who was a team.
Fabulous person. Really aware, really, willing to work on themselves. And they were underset, the team was understaffed. And so, you understand hr, they were always talking about headcount. I need another headcount. I don't have enough headcount. And my reaction, not being an HR person was like, paws on that chessboard, that sounds like objects.
And I asked them about it and the look on the face was sort of like, what's normal? What's wrong with that? And I'm thinking, these are humans we're talking about. Like, I hope the interview process is humanized, but do you use that?
Danielle Cobo: Yeah, I hear that in, corporate world all the time. It's
headcount, and you bring up a great point. It does dehumanize people. Instead of saying, wow, we have an opportunity to bring on new team members. We have an opportunity to bring on people with different skillsets. Instead of saying, we need to add to our headcount. It really does dehumanize people.
Yeah. it almost sounds like these are numbers on a payroll versus. People adding value to the organization? Yeah, I
Janet Livingstone: mean, I'm literally getting visions of cattle in my head. I mean, that's, exaggerated, but I am like, how many head do you have on your farm? Okay, well I have this many head count in my office and it's reductive because, as you say, everybody comes with a.
Skillset and it connotes the idea that the more people we have, the more productive we'll be. Which, we know that's not necessarily true. Right? In fact, the Tennessee is the opposite. Like, oh, well we have so much technology now. We don't need as many people for think work. We may need more people for manufacturing, although robotics is taking away a lot of that.
But yeah, so we adapt and adopt. Language a lot of the times in a direction that's not necessarily good for us without knowing it. And then we get used to using it, right? So, yeah. Here's an example. So English, I spent 16, almost 17 years in Central Europe. That's a really long story, but I lived in Slovakia.
I was married there and I have two bicultural children. And so I lived in two languages for a really long. nonetheless, I missed a lot of the evolution in the corporate world here in the US while I was living over there because I was not working for an American company while I was there.
I was fully there living there, doing my consulting and doing other things. And then I moved back here in 2015 after 13 years. I had spent four there earlier on. I get here and I was like blown away by how much the whole corporate scene, all that language had evolved. I did not know why I was supposed to drive change.
I was like, I drive a car. I don't drive change. I have no idea what you're talking about. and headcount and, the ecosystem and, traction and micro-learning and chunking and iterations and Innova, I was just like, whoa, I can't even begin. And I felt completely alien. And when you live in something and it evolves, you don't necessarily feel.
The evolution cuz you start using all those things when all those new expressions and new words when they come up. But when you come in from outside you can see that it's huge. It's like really huge. I mean, most corporations have adapted, have, taken on a ton of language used in tech that We never used all the software development tech like we used to be flexible. Now we're either agile, sometimes we're nimble, but we're never flexible anymore. We're just agile, right? It's just one little example.
Danielle Cobo: This reminds me of, I just did a workshop on SEO optimization for websites. And this reminds me of exactly some of the SEO search engine optimization.
Key words that were used five years ago are very different than they are today. So we may have used flexible in the past, but now the new key word is agile leadership and they. Soft skills. They're human skills. So it's interesting this evolution of the keywords, not only in the language that we speak, but to the technical level of SEO optimization.
Right.
Janet Livingstone: I know. And you take somebody who lives in a major city now who's, I don't know, under 40 and for sure they know what SEO is For sure. And like, I would have no clue if I didn't work, with protect people and so on. So, our world is changing super fast. and I think a lot of it is driven, like for independence, for example.
I have a lot of friends who are independent consultants, and I also have my own independent practice. A lot of it is driven by the need to market ourselves and to really compete right online for audiences. And so everybody is really trying to make up new ways to describe what they do. New names new.
Keywords, new everything. And sometimes I get frustrated. so you're a transformational coach. Well, I thought coaching was all about helping people transform anyway, so why is that a niche? Or you're a business coach versus an executive coach? where's the difference there? and everybody's coming, right?
we have scaling leadership, inclusive leadership, adaptive leadership. Authenticity gets way overused a lot. but that's our world, right? People wanna sound modern, so we do, we take on all, the new jargon and the person who can come up with the newest thing quickest has the advantage for like maybe five minutes,
Observing language can tell us so much.
Danielle Cobo: Here's another, we talked about search engine optimization for websites. So if those of you are out there that are a business owner, you know how important that is when it comes to the top rankings within Google and having your website be searchable, it's extremely important.
for a business owner, but here's another area that I see an opportunity. I have a lot of clients that I help in. attracting your dream job because one of the biggest challenges that some job seekers have right now is the average job has about 250 applications. Then these companies, about 90% of companies use an artificial intelligence tracking system.
So unless you have the. SEO keywords on your resume that align with the job description that they have posted, your resume either may be filtered to the top or not even be seen by human eyes because you don't have the right alignment. So when I'm working with clients, we go through their resume.
We look at what are some of the positions that you're applying for. We look at how can we optimize their resume, their cover letter, their LinkedIn profile. So they're having a higher chance of increasing the match score when they're applying to jobs. But where I see, a challenge for some people when I'm meeting with these clients is they will.
These fancy names for titles. I am a prestigious business consultant, or as you said, I'm a transformational coach. if that is your title in your current organization, that may not translate into the role that you are applying to. So actually, those. niche titles you don't want to use on a resume, you don't want to use on your LinkedIn profile.
You want to, for example, I have a background in sales. That's where I spent 20 years of my career, having a very straightforward strategic account manager, business development manager, sales representative, pharmaceutical sales representative. Those are the titles that you wanna use, depending on the role that you're applying to.
Prestige business consultant, no one knows what that is, so I, see that as another area where people will use sometimes the corporate lingo specific and it doesn't apply to other companies.
Janet Livingstone: Yeah. Again, it's about stepping back and translating, right. Translating yourself to a wider audience or to a lesson.
Not less informed, but an audience from a different environment basically. And that, translation process, it can be hard when you start, but then once you get used to it, you can take the feeling of, maybe there's some loss there. Oh, well I'll lose my identity if I don't keep my title right, for example.
That could be a fear or what if somebody. Has a different idea of that title that I'm assuming now just to get an interview. And what if they think I'm something else, rather, something different from what I am. I think it's worth doing. Like we have to adapt to seo.
Unfortunately for me, it's unfortunate that we let algorithms choose humans. because there's lot more that goes into somebody being. Great for a position, somebody that who comes in and enriches a team as a new member. The so-called fit factor, which I'm a little on the fence about, but there's so much more than an algorithm could ever detect.
so I think it's a real shame. And there are startups out there doing HR who are focused on. Right. There's one called Hall Story There are a bunch of them.
Danielle Cobo: We're trying to, I'm, certified in disks, so Yeah, I'm very familiar with that behavioral model. I'm, a certified trainer in it.
Janet Livingstone: Yeah. and they're, folks who are trying to, let's see, double negative too dehumanize the job search thing. So, I have a question for you if that's, So when somebody's looking, do you recommend that they change their, LinkedIn profile every time they apply for a different position?
Because that's a lot of work.
Danielle Cobo: Change their LinkedIn profile. Elaborate a little bit on that one. Yeah. Yeah,
Janet Livingstone: if they will. So they have a job that they really are very interested in and the job description. Doesn't mesh very well or their LinkedIn profile, like the top part. Right. For example, the intro part doesn't mesh very well with the job description.
Do you recommend rewriting that on LinkedIn if you do
Danielle Cobo: so? That's a excellent question. normally when I'm working with my clients, we first identify. What are they passionate about? So we'll walk through an exercise in determining what did they love about each of the roles that they have had, maybe what are some of the roles and responsibilities or part of a job description that they didn't enjoy?
What were some of the great managers that they worked for? What were some of the managers they didn't enjoy working for? So we go through the discovery process. What type of role will they fill most fulfilled and align with their core values and purpose? So we look at the role specifically, then we look at the different companies that they wanna work for, and once we understand the role, then we may explore.
Five to 10 positions, either within different companies or within the same companies. And we look at some of the job descriptions and what are possibly some of the similarities of key words that they use in each of. The job description. So I take a very strategic approach. I would not recommend that somebody adjust their LinkedIn profile for each job.
And the reason being is that could depend. You could apply to one job today and a different job tomorrow and to change your LinkedIn profile. No, you wanna truly understand. The types of role that you're applying for, because if you're applying to specific roles, we could take maybe some of the experience that you had in one role and apply it towards, I'll, elaborate a little bit.
Lemme take a step back. I have one client right now who's kind of deciding does she wanna be in a sales consultant role or does she wanna be in training development? So depending on the different roles that she has, we may highlight some specific key words depending on. a role in her previous background where she was more of a training role.
We might make that particular role more focused on her training and development. And then maybe one of the other roles that she's in, we might highlight more of her sales particular role. Where I see people, adjusting and customizing, and this is extremely important, is the cover letter. That's where it's important, but I've also seen with resumes, it can be as simple as.
Not having, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel on your resume, which in,today's time, pretty much most people in the corporate world have got to have those skill sets. But if it is not on your resume, you will not. Match high with that artificial tracking system, I'm glad that you brought up disk, which is for those of you listening, it's a behavioral model and it's understanding how different people will behave based off of their personalities.
And when I'm working with organizations, I will incorporate that as part of the interview. Because depending on their role, if I have somebody who's an engineering role, I may want a specific person that has a strong behavioral model on attention to detail. Somebody who's going to really analyze information and think of, okay.
This might work, this may not work. And think 10 steps ahead. Now, very different. I may not want that personality, that behavioral model personality in a sales role. I might want somebody, if I'm gonna be looking at capital equipment sales rep versus somebody who's gonna be in a consumable sales rep. I may want some different behaviors.
And in fact, the person that taught me, he is a psychologist with over 30 years of, expertise in the DISC behavioral model. When he was working with a professional sports team. When they were doing their pick of how they were gonna build the team, they wanted one specific behavioral, model type personality because they knew that those particular skill sets of determination, of resilience, of almost stubbornness that they were gonna push through.
Ended up taking that team to the World Series because they were really honing in on having the right behaviors in that role. So I am extremely grateful that I'm certified in being able to, offer that particular training and incorporation into the organizations that I'm working with. Yeah,
Janet Livingstone: I think it can be extremely valuable, right?
For the sales roles, you want somebody who's more of an influencer, right? The yellow, or if you're looking for somebody really high level lead position with some kind of a leadership, then you, it might be better to have somebody who's on the dominant side, maybe if they've taken B T I, maybe they are a little bit extroverted.
It depends. Right, but it can be super useful. It's also useful for the people who take those assessments to understand who they are. Better because a lot of folks walk through life without really, wondering what they're good at or how they're naturally perceived. they just do their thing and
Danielle Cobo: and that's something when I'm doing, whether I'm working with an organization and we're talking about communication and conflict resolution within an organization, or whether I'm doing my one-on-one consulting and coaching with some of my clients, I have them take the behavioral model assessment cuz it really helps 'em understand.
Why they do the things they do? What are some of their triggers as well? What are some of the blind spots? I've even taken it to the level, my husband and I did it in marriage counseling and in premarital counseling, but I've even taken it to the step of, I did the assessment on my five year old twins.
And there's a, assessment that you can do for kids. And there's, a booklet that talks about different parenting styles based off of, their behaviors. And that's extremely helpful as I'm parenting them. They're different kids. They may have been born at the same time, but my kids are very different.
Mm-hmm. And they will respond differently depending on my parenting style for them. I keep, a basis as to what the expectations are, being a good listener and leading with kindness, but I will, help motivate them in different ways. Mm-hmm.
thank you for this.
Janet Livingstone: I'm making a connection that wanna, verbalize here that for me, what you're also talking about. Emotional intelligence, right? If you're able to understand what other people's strengths are and their styles, you can then flex yourself and you can come to them in a way that's appropriate for them that you know they'll understand.
And this is basically what I started off talking about. Right, that we need to be in the workplace. We need to be emotionally intelligent and use language, right? We can flex, we can use different sorts of language for different folks, right? So when I'm talking to my. Guys who are project managers and engineers, I can stick to the very kind of task oriented language.
Like, okay, what's the status? Is it green, is it red? What's the timeline? et cetera. Whereas if I'm talking to, HR folks for the sales folks I work on leadership development programming at Boeing. For them, I wanna say, look, this is gonna be an outstanding experience for the customer.
It's gonna be an experience and not just a training. And here's why. A, A, B, C D, E. Yeah. So that's the marriage of EQ and language, which makes language so powerful. I wanted to leave. With, I have a couple of other things. I don't know, how much longer we have, but I wanted to point out a couple things which I find really interesting that isin leadership development right now and for a few years, and we keep going in that direction, I've noticed this trend toward.
Empathy, kindness, more compassion, better communication skills, learning how to, make people feel, heard, all this kind of stuff that good leadership is now considered to be going in that direction toward more human skills. As you mentioned before, human skills, not soft skills, but at the same time, the media.
I don't care where you look anywhere on YouTube, any headline, they're using more and more violent verbs, right? Just pay attention next time you look at YouTube or any kind of newsfeed. So drive, slay, crush, kill, smash, humiliate, ignite, explode. I feel like I'm in this. Constant looping reel of some Viking Battle series.
and like, I don't know what that's about. I guess the folks who write the headlines are competing for our eyeballs, right? But there's like this weird dual contrasting thing happening out there in the world. I hope that we don't start to, adopt all those more violent, words at work. So, other observation.
Danielle Cobo: and that's a great observation that you have. So before we wrap up our episode, I've written a book. It's, will be coming out this summer available on Amazon, but in one of the chapters I talk about how the media influences. Where we are within our wellbeing. And those, words are very prominent in what
you're hearing and we're observing in media now, and they're called clickbait. Mm-hmm. So in the book, I talk about the science of how different phrases in the media is used and how it will click bait us to. open up that particular email, open up that particular newsfeed that we see on social media or within Google.
And a lot of times it is those negative words that kind of aggravate us the most, but that's also what we. Click on to more. And in this particular chapter, I talk about how that affects our mental and emotional wellbeing. And I had a very heightened self-awareness about this when the pandemic was happening.
Mm-hmm. So for those of you listening, it is in the book. There's some research behind it, but I also talk about how to change the playlist and how to look at. What you're seeing in the media, having the self-awareness how it's influencing you, whether good or bad, but how to ensure that you're, protecting your wellbeing because that is so important.
so definitely, and for those of you listening as well, You have some questions possibly on the disk behavioral model assessment. There was an episode with Dr. Robert Rom, on the podcast previously, and we talk about the behavioral model and he's actually the person that had certified me. He's got five degrees.
He's a certified psychologist and I'm very fortunate to have learned from him. But we do go into that discussion more. Thank you, Janet, for joining our podcast today and sharing with our listeners the power of language in the workplace.
Janet Livingstone: Yeah, it's been a pleasure, Daniel. Thank you so much. And, anybody who's interested in coaching with me can go and look at my website,
It's called Culture is key.coach. And can get in touch. culture on every level is important, so thanks. It's been a pleasure.