The Corporate Gate Crasher.
Reading much of what’s written in most workplaces evokes many emotions. Or worse - none.
One feeling is sadness.
We write our job application. Accept the invitation to contact our potential future boss (or HR if we’re unlucky) and ask more information about it. We research the position and company. We go to the interview. We are introduced to our potential boss. We hit it off. We like them. They like us. We leave feeling hopeful and quietly excited about the potential for us and our boss.
Perhaps another interview as part of the ‘short list’. And then the letter to say we’re offered the job.
Induction. Staff meetings. Some external consultant comes in and we do tests to identify our ‘type’ and the ‘type’ of our boss and what we both need to do to get along and be productive and avoid conflict. We share Birthday cakes and charity runs and dress up for good causes and toss a gold coin in with the boss’s and then maybe Friday drinks after we’ve dressed casually.
All this effort to get to know each other. Perhaps there’s one or two FTE positions whose job descriptions include Wellness and other responsibilities designed to make us more human and authentic and therefore a little vulnerable in our workplace.
Only for a stranger to gate crash and destroy all the carefully crafted relationship building.
The corporate letter.
The written correspondence bearing no resemblance to the banter and small talk as we waited for the kettle to boil or the microwave to ping. Written in a style, tone, and level that we would never recognise and identify in a line up of our bosses. Like the annoying stranger with no emotional intelligence who interrupts your deep and meaningful conversation at a party. The corporate letter, email, policy, memo, Powerpoint deck, meeting script, media release, marketing propaganda, performance review.
Nope. Sorry, officer. None of those verbose, cold, officious, empty, meaningless string of words fits the description of the warm and humorous and chatty human beings I’ve got to know since I applied for the job. Can’t help you.
The way many people in organisations write is why artificial intelligence is quietly thinking: ‘Hold my beer’.