Communicating at Work: Strategies for Success in Business and the Professions 11th Edition by Ronald Adler,Jeanne Marquardt Elmhorst,Kristen Lucas

Exercise 2

Strategic Ambiguity
A. Develop strategically ambiguous ways to rephrase each of the following statements:
I. You've done a sloppy job here.
II. I can't understand what you're trying to say in this letter.
III. Nobody likes your idea.
IV. Would you hurry up and get to the point?
B. On the basis of your responses here, decide how honest strategically ambiguous statements are. If they are not completely honest, can they be considered ethical?
Problems arise when insiders use their specialized vocabulary without explaining it to the uninitiated. According to one survey, people in computer support industries are the worst offenders when it comes to jargon. A customer shopping for a computer might be mystified by a dealer's talk about bus speed, onboard circuitry, and data transfer rates. When the same information is translated into language the buyer can understand-the length of time it takes to download a file, for example-a sale is more likely.
Certain words are used so often that they become clichés. As one communication expert says, they "are brief and snappy, roll off the tongue easily, and can fool us into thinking that we know what we're talking about." If you overuse buzzwords like "mission focused," "paradigm shift," and "out of the box," you run the risk of not clarifying your ideas in your own mind and not being clear to others.