According to a recent survey conducted for the BBC, almost half of all job applications contain basic grammatical and spelling mistakes. The words most commonly misspelled include curriculum vitae, liaison and personal. The results caused the BBC's labour affairs correspondent to fret that poor spelling was causing many people to miss out on job opportunities, while the good old Plain English Campaign opined that "sending an employer an application filled with mistakes will make them wonder whether you are sloppy and careless in your job."
But if young job seekers need to bone up on their ABC, their older employers should look to their literary laurels too. Research by Investors in People suggests that employees see business jargon as the refuge of the weak and untrustworthy manager. If a few harmless spelling mistakes denote laziness, the liberal employment of phrases such as "on the runway", "blue-sky thinking", "singing from the same hymn sheet", "brain dump" and "heads up" suggests that the speaker doesn't have an original thought in their head.
People who use jargon or arcane language deliberately to try and confuse or impress others are deluded. Staff surveyed for a report by workplace communications consultancy CHA judged clear and simple communication as the primary attribute of a good leader above qualities such as vision, business acumen and reputation. Yet over half the respondents said their bosses' communication skills were not good, with a quarter describing them as "poor" or even "dreadful".
CHA identifies four distinct styles of leadership communication-considerate, controlling, understated and charismatic-and, unsurprisingly, it is the considerate group who are the most successful. The considerate communicator, exemplified by former BBC director-general Greg Dyke, is warm and respectful, invites and values feedback, uses interesting, relevant and jargon-free language and is seen as sincere, trustworthy and honest.
By contrast, the controlling communicator, exemplified by Rupert Murdoch, is viewed as arrogant, patronising, cold, insincere, dull and boring. Richard Branson typifies the charismatic communication style, but, though pretty successful, practitioners of this approach can become inflexible, convinced of their own infallibility and unable to change.
And the Sven-Goran Eriksson style of understated communication-reserved, restrained, impersonal and lacklustre-just leaves people wanting more.
But people often forget that communication involves listening as much as speaking. It also has to be authentic. "There is no point trying to be suave and sophisticated if it doesn't come naturally," said Sir Alan Sugar recently.
Judging by some of the noisy, self-important and unguarded phone conversations I have been forced to endure on train journeys, there are also times when bosses would be well advised to communicate less.
Just before Christmas I had the misfortune to sit in front of two senior sales people returning to York from what had clearly been a disastrous meeting with an important customer. They spent two hours bandying names and figures across the mobile networks, and I resisted the temptation to ask them to pipe down on the grounds that I might pick up a useful nugget I could use for an article.
Communicators must also strike the correct balance between patronising their audience and not assuming too much knowledge. In December 2006, Germaine Greer was outraged to receive the Plain English Campaign's Golden Bull award for the following sentence written in an article for The Guardian: "The first attribute of the art object is that it creates a discontinuity between itself and the unsynthesised manifold." In a refreshingly unambiguous retort Greer instructed the Plain English Campaign to "take their Golden Bull award and stuff it".
The advice seen recently on a deodorant stick label to "take off lid and push up bottom" was presumably intended to mean something rather different.
Jane Simms is the former editor of Financial Director and Marketing Business.
