I grew up hearing more than one language at home and around me. English was mine on paper. But so much of what actually got said, the humor, the frustration, the love, arrived through words borrowed from somewhere else entirely.
I didn’t choose most of those words. They just showed up in conversation, in the way someone described a moment English alone couldn’t hold. And once they were there, I couldn’t imagine speaking without them.
I think about that a lot when I sit with leadership teams now.
Every organization I work with has its own words too, if it has any real culture at all. A phrase for the way they handle a crisis. A nickname for a client nobody will forget. A shorthand that means something specific inside those walls and nothing at all outside them.
Most leaders never notice this happening. Or worse, they try to clean it up. Standardize the language, formalize the tone, make sure everyone sounds the same in every email.
I’d argue the opposite. Homegrown language is one of the clearest signs a culture is actually alive. Nobody invents a private word for something they don’t care about.
If you want people to feel like they belong, don’t just hand them your values on a slide. Listen for the words they’ve already made. Use them back. Let them spread.
The uniqueness isn’t the risk. It’s the point.
What does your team already call something that you’ve never stopped to notice?
