Corporate Babble: Phrases Leaders Tend to Overuse

You hear it on earnings calls. You hear it at company town halls. You hear it repeated in Zoom calls and team meetings. You’ve heard it so much that it has lost all its meaning. 

Much as someone might eat comfort food in a crisis, business leaders tend to lean on a few key phrases to help their firms get through tough times. This is particularly the case in what is shaping up to be a very tough and erratic year. You may have heard, for instance, that the business environment right now is “unprecedented.” Then again, it’s been that way for at least five years. While a leader’s message can be a salve for employees, some commentary is so well-worn that its message can be diluted, says Richard Marshall, global managing director of the Corporate Affairs Center of Expertise at Korn Ferry. “There’s a risk that what they are saying can come off as corporate babble,” he says. 

To be sure, when people from five different generations work together, some phrases are bound to get lost in translation. But numerous studies and surveys show that employees trust leaders less when they overuse clichés and buzzwords, and that this can result in lower engagement and productivity. This kind of language can also take on different meanings—often ironic or mocking—for different generations of workers. “Definitely the typical Gen-Z reaction might be, ‘Why use these work buzzwords when we can just use plain English?’” says Emily Gianunzio, a Korn Ferry research analyst. 

“We’re navigating uncharted waters.” 

Leaders often use this phrase to describe how they are dealing with unpredictable situations, from the financial collapse to the pandemic to wildfires and other natural disasters. Recently, it has come back into vogue because of the geopolitical environment and the uncertainty around tariffs. But with unpredictable situations occurring regularly, the metaphor has lost its meaning, say experts, and, if anything, suggests a lack of direction to employees. “I can see how this phrase could make people feel nervous or uneasy about where things are headed,” says Brian Bloom, vice president of global benefits and mobility operations at Korn Ferry. 

“We have to pull together as a family.” 

Allusions to the company as a family are as old as business itself. The metaphor is meant to signal a close-knit relationship between firm and employee built on trust, loyalty, and support. However, younger generations tend to view the company-as-family comparison as disingenuous. “Hearing a company describe themselves as ‘your family’ scares talent away rather than attracts them,” Bloom says.

“We have to disrupt ourselves before we get disrupted.” 

Leaders use this phrase, which has been around for about 15 years, as a way to signal that they plan to make big changes to adapt to business transformation. The phrase has come back in recent years as firms try to pivot to AI. But Marshall says that for many workers, especially those of younger generations, it elicits eye rolls, mainly because actual changes in operations or ways of working are slow or nonexistent. He says younger workers use the phrase ironically now, knowing that past processes and procedures often get in the way of change. 

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” 

During the last 25 years, every CEO has uttered this phrase at some point. The return-to-office debate has brought it back to the forefront, as leaders emphasize that people and purpose are key competitive differentiators in the digital age. The problem is that most younger employees have never heard the phrase before and don’t know what it means. And for those that do, it has become a red flag, signaling that a firm has neither a culture nor a strategy. “I feel like companies that tout their culture usually don’t have good ones,” says one Gen-Z employee of Korn Ferry.  

“Do you have any bandwidth...?” 

It’s one of the most ubiquitous questions in corporate America—and it’s being asked more and more lately, as roles go unfilled and people take on additional responsibilities. Bandwidth, of course, represents the capacity of a network to transfer information. In corporate settings, however, leaders began using the phrase in conversations about protecting employees’ mental health and keeping their workload manageable. But that’s not how workers hear the phrase anymore. “Younger workers in firms that have gone through rounds and rounds of layoffs have grown suspicious of this phrase,” says Bloom. For them, the context now is that they have the capacity to do more, if they want to stay employed. 

Learn more about Korn Ferry’s Leadership and Professional Development capabilities. 

Read more This Week in Leadership articles