If you’ve been in a leadership position for a while, maybe even if you’ve just been in the workforce for a while, you’ve probably heard some version of “avoid jargon”, “eliminate jargon”. 

As a leader, though, should you be discouraging all jargon talk?

What do I mean by “jargon”? For me, it’s words or expressions typically used by a certain profession or organizational environment that may be difficult to understand for those outside of that environment.

Whether to discourage it or not depends on the situation. When I try to make that decision, I consider a few things:

Be Clear on Why You’re Using Jargon

There are some valid reasons as to why we use it. It can bring a team closer by having this shared language. Depending on the circumstances, it might also make them feel almost like they are part of a special club (and sometimes that is actually the case) where they all use this common terminology that few...