When I taught survey design I'd tell my students they needed to write all their consent materials for 6th grade reading level at the max, regardless of their target population, because you can't assume people will understand what you're talking about if you use jargon or overly large words. It's odd to run into the same issues again with leaders... this weird tendency to attempt to hide what you're trying to say (or maybe you don't even know what you're trying to say) with overly complicated nothing phrases. Maybe people think it will make them sound smarter or protect them from delivering hard messages but it always does the opposite.
When I taught survey design I'd tell my students they needed to write all their consent materials for 6th grade reading level at the max, regardless of their target population, because you can't assume people will understand what you're talking about if you use jargon or overly large words. It's odd to run into the same issues again with leaders... this weird tendency to attempt to hide what you're trying to say (or maybe you don't even know what you're trying to say) with overly complicated nothing phrases. Maybe people think it will make them sound smarter or protect them from delivering hard messages but it always does the opposite.
It’s the when you don’t know what you’re trying to say that is the biggest flag.