You’re not smarter for using jargon. You’re inaccessible.

Believe it or not, you can say that exact sentence in plain, simple English and still be smart.

My whole professional career has felt like one big journey of decoding what people who are leaders or “accomplished professionals” are actually trying to say so that I too can be taken seriously and seem of importance and let’s be honest, validated.

Nodding along to words that make my brain go “wait, what?” but then hearing the gentle sniggers of those around me who seem to know what this nonsense means so laughing along too. Or sometimes reading descriptions, articles, reports and adverts of my peers in the social sector and pretending to be like “ahh, yes, brilliant. Makes total sense.” All whilst keeping a tab open to Google most of the words in that document.

For the first few years, I wouldn’t dare ask what those words meant. I was already usually either the youngest, the only woman and/or only person of colour in pretty much every space, event, fundraising gig or networking meeting I would attend. I didn’t want to stand out further by being the only person who couldn’t keep up with the jargon so I pretty much pieced parts of sentences together until I could make up the whole point being made to the best of my ability and limited knowledge. It was challenging but I got the hang of it after a while and assumed that’s just the way things go round here and if I were to be a 20-something-year-old (now 30) CEO that was going to cement my place in the sector and be a leader, then I too need to act this way and ‘talk the talk’.

Fast forward to about 2019 and my brain was feeling particularly exhausted from a long run of work where I had to work twice as hard at just to keep up on a basic level. One day, I just did not have the mental capacity to keep up anymore and so I asked someone in the networking group I was in what the question being asked actually meant in which she replied “oh, I have no idea”. I then sat back and was like “wait a damn minute, you don’t get it either?!” I proceeded to ask another guy in my group and he was like “oh I think it means this, but honestly, I’m just seeing what others in the group are doing and going along with that”. It was at this moment that I felt two things:

1. I felt cheated. I was unnecessarily feeling like the dumbest person in spaces when really, this could be the reality for others too?!
2. I felt relieved. It wasn’t just me. It wasn’t just because I didn’t grow up here or go to school there or watch those kinds of programmes. I now understood that there are others who nod along and laugh at random things they don’t understand too!

Not jargon, but you get the point. Thanks Friends, you have an episode for everything.

After this, I made it a mission to always ask if others got something in spaces or if I didn’t understand, I would simply just ask. I would stop a meeting and simply say “oh sorry, what do you mean by that? Could you please rephrase?” And you know what I realised, older people in the meeting would smile, nod and even thank me because they too weren’t fully getting things but didn’t want to ask because they felt even more pressure as someone older to automatically understand.

Once I realised this was a wider issue and not just a case of younger or more marginalised groups not understanding the unnecessary jargon of the older, whiter, usually male generation but actually, just a case of most every day folk not getting it, I then questioned why we all go along and accept it? I took it a step further and began to think ‘if this is the way leaders and these orgs are talking to people, including those they are trying to reach in order to support as part of their charitable mission, then no wonder there’s a disconnect!’

Jargon is one of the biggest barriers to accessibility.

Some digging around, questions and a couple of social experiments later, I concluded that in fact jargon is one of the biggest barriers to accessibility. The very definition proves the point:

Jargon — special words or expressions used by a profession or group that are difficult for others to understand.

Knowing this, why would you opt to keep using it? Turns out, a lot of leaders speak in jargon to achieve two things:

1. Appear more intelligent. Apparently jargon makes you sound smart. Despite making no sense to everyone else around you, as long as you sound smart, that’s all that matters!
2. Create barriers. Yes, the inaccessibility if often purposeful. You can remain in a position of power if you make it harder for people to access and progress and language is an extremely effective way to do that. Go figure.

Now that I feel like I’ve uncovered some great truth in my life, I feel compelled to wage a war on jargon whenever I see it and especially when I know for a fact, it could have been said ten times simpler. To people or organisations who are trying to support young people, people from different socio-economic backgrounds, degree-level professionals, colleagues, heck even friends, and leaders who are trying to create inclusion and equity within their workspaces and teams, do us all a big favour and get off the jargon high horse.

No-one respects you more for it and no-one will judge you more if you spoke and articulated in a more accessible way. Use big words when it makes sense to and because your vocabulary is extensive, sure, but don’t add layers of jargon to every possible sentence because you are the very reason people like me have to and will continue to go around creating jargon busters.

My professional career has been so much harder than it needed to be in certain areas where we could have all been having conversations and creating ideas where everyone had the right and deserved to have access and be involved. Instead leadership has been selective and exclusionary. Accessibility and inclusion is a choice and every time you get it oh so wrong, people know what choice you’re making.

If one cannot hide behind jargon, maybe there is a fear of what one truly has to offer? Hmm …