On Filler Words in Business

These days, the way a person speaks has become almost the main indicator of how their mind is built — and often, of where they stand in life.

Through the unconscious tics of our speech — the so-called meta-programs of language — you can learn a great deal about how someone thinks, how they see the world, what motivates them, what they reference against, and how they organize information.

Everyday speech has its own “household” filler words. But the business world has its own separate set of phrases — the ones I’d file under “business parasites”:

— I’ll try
— I’ll do my best
— I’ll give it everything I’ve got
— most likely
— I hope
— possibly
— probably
— sure, but you have to understand that… (followed by a list of reasons it might not work out)

How often do you catch these turns of phrase in your own speech, or in the people around you, when the talk turns to plans, goals, actions and results?

When we say things like this, we’re often, without noticing, insuring ourselves against self-reproach in case of failure. If the task doesn’t get done, we can always say: “Well, I never promised.” And first of all, we never promised ourselves. That quietly excuses us from real commitment, from weighing the risks, from building a concrete, step-by-step strategy.

For me personally, phrases like these are a warning bell: the person is either not into the task, or full of doubt, or unmotivated, or simply not ready to take responsibility. Under those conditions, what kind of result can you really count on?

Context matters, of course. At times these phrases are perfectly appropriate, or they can even point to a management failure — the goal was set vaguely, there isn’t enough data, the scenarios were never talked through, and so on. But once they harden into a habitual way of speaking, we’re no longer talking about phrasing — we’re talking about a pattern of dodging responsibility.

And responsibility starts with how we phrase things — not “try and hope,” but “do it and answer for the result.”

Here’s to clarity in our words and our deeds! 😎