When you’re trying to get anywhere in business or learn more about a specific field or skill, it can feel as though your efforts are blocked by a wall of jargon.

A lot of the time, this can create a very exclusive feeling to the business world – something that isn’t at all helpful in getting people more interested in permeating it. If you can break this jargon down into something more actionable – and ultimately, understandable – it doesn’t mean anything negative for your professional image, it just clears the way for improvement.

Foot in the Door

Say, for example, you open up a document on cybersecurity. If you’re hoping to gain a baseline level of understanding that can help you navigate this topic and apply what you learn to your own business, a sea of technical terms can feel like something that’s standing in the way of your goal. In fact, you might even find that this is so off-putting that you close the document immediately, but such a course of action might prevent you from ever feeling as though you can get anywhere.

Instead, take it one term at a time. As soon as you come across something that you don’t understand, such as MDR meaning, search what it means, and do what you can to develop a good understanding of it, then come back and go on to the next term. It can take time, but understanding that there’s no rush can remove a lot of the pressure and urgency, making this a much more manageable task.

Talk Them Through

This might also be a great time to get members of your team with technical knowledge involved in these kinds of discussions. If the area that you’re having trouble in aligns with one of your departments or even just with the skillset of one employee, bringing them into the discussion can have multiple benefits.

Firstly, it can be an effective way to boost your own understanding – creating an environment where you can ask questions and have your own understanding improved in a more dynamic way. Secondly, it can make your employees feel trusted and valued and might increase how positively they feel about working with your business, so long as this is part of a wider pattern of valuing your staff.

Is Jargon Necessary?

There is another issue that comes along with jargon, and that’s with your own usage of it. As you read all of these various documents and develop an understanding of these subjects in relation to the jargon, you might begin to get a sense that jargon is inherently professional. If you communicate without using jargon, you might feel as though you’re somehow letting the image of your brand slip. This might be a mistake, as it could put others in that same position you were in where you felt as though the jargon created an impenetrable wall – meaning that it could be a good idea to cut back on using it.