What is the shelf life of a professional anxiety attack triggered by Arial 11 font? I ask, pushing the monitor back hard enough that the plastic frame creaks in protest. The cheap coffee I forgot about is doing that shimmering thing, reflecting the light and magnifying the single, anonymous line: needs to increase his executive presence.

I’m thinking about James, who had this dropped on him, but also about my own recent review where the key piece of developmental feedback was that I needed to ‘show more ownership.’ I spent the next 48 hours running a mental regression analysis on every email sent in the last three months, looking for the tiny flaw, the moment I failed to grab the shovel firmly enough. Did I use too many passive verbs? Did I forget the phrase, “I will personally guarantee…”?

The Central Lie of Fluff

I went back to my manager, a genuinely kind person who means well but operates exclusively in a jargon fog. “Can you give me three specific examples of where I failed to show ownership?” I asked.

“Well, no, not three specific examples,” he admitted, shifting uncomfortably. “It’s more of an *overall feeling* we have in the leadership group.”

Ah. The *feeling*. This is the central lie of modern professional development: that you can fix behavioral gaps with semantic fluff. We pretend that terms like “proactive,” “strategic,” or “executive presence” are measurable metrics…

Specific data feels like a confrontation. Vague feedback feels like guidance. We prefer guidance, even if it’s useless, because it preserves the fragile peace.

The Algorithm of Ambiguity

The person who deals with this particular brand of corporate ambiguity every day is Dakota E.S. Dakota is, ironically, an AI training data curator. Dakota spends all day teaching algorithms how to map vague human concepts-like “satisfaction” or “authenticity”-to precise, measurable input/output pairs. If anyone understands the chasm between feeling and function, it’s Dakota.

She saw the comment, “increase his executive presence,” and started laughing-a dry, hacking sound that comes from trying to impose logic on human resources bureaucracy. What they really mean is: “James is excellent, but he makes the people in the boardroom feel slightly uncomfortable because he prioritizes substance over performance.” The vagueness is a shield.

Managerial Cowardice and The Blunt Shoe

I remember thinking about this while dealing with a surprisingly aggressive house spider the other morning. I didn’t want to get near it, didn’t want to deal with the specific, eight-legged problem, so I looked around for something distant and blunt-the shoe. Vague feedback is the managerial equivalent of the shoe: a blunt instrument used from a safe distance to solve a problem without engaging with its complexity.

It’s fundamentally a form of managerial cowardice. This perpetual game of interpretation-this anxiety spiral-is the greatest enemy of actual productivity.

The Three-Month Misdirection

Dakota told me she once spent an entire week trying to figure out what her boss meant by “being more visible to stakeholders.” […] Her boss later clarified, *three months later*, that visibility meant inviting herself to the high-stakes 7 a.m. planning meeting in the Boston office, which was impractical for her remote schedule. Three months wasted on optimizing the wrong metric because the initial instruction was designed for ambiguity.

The Infrastructure Principle

The frustration is that in every other professional domain, we demand exact specifications. If you are building a server rack, you need to know the exact voltage requirements, the BTU output, and the precise dimensions-down to the millimeter. When precision is required, vagueness is unacceptable. We need reliable power sources, components that deliver exactly what they promise without requiring 48 hours of decoding.

This is exactly why companies focused on core functionality thrive. They cut through the noise. They don’t sell ‘better energy flow’; they sell specific, dependable components. If you need clarity and reliability in your power solutions, you go to a specialist who provides measurable, verifiable specifications, ensuring you aren’t guessing about compatibility or performance. This principle-specificity-is non-negotiable when dealing with physical infrastructure. Why, then, do we treat human infrastructure development with such infuriating sloppiness?

This is exactly why companies focused on core functionality thrive. They cut through the noise. They don’t sell ‘better energy flow’; they sell specific, dependable components. If you need clarity and reliability in your power solutions, you go to a specialist who provides measurable, verifiable specifications, ensuring you aren’t guessing about compatibility or performance. This principle-specificity-is non-negotiable when dealing with physical infrastructure. Why, then, do we treat human infrastructure development with such infuriating sloppiness?

If you need certainty, look to companies like hardwarexpress when selecting industrial power supplies, where the performance data is unambiguous and the fit is guaranteed.

When Managers Are Human Too

I will admit something here, something uncomfortable that undermines my entire premise about demanding clarity. I have been the vague manager. I have used the phrase “Let’s focus on the big picture” when what I actually meant was, “I am tired, and if you bring up one more technical detail about the database architecture, I might quit and become a shepherd.”

Specificity requires vulnerability; it requires us to stand behind a measurable statement that can be debated or proven wrong. Vague feedback is a coward’s fortress.

The Checklist: Breaking the Curse

Real growth doesn’t happen when you try to embody a nebulous trait. It happens when you execute discrete, measurable tasks. If you want someone to be strategic, stop calling them “strategic” and start requiring them to submit a five-year projection alongside their annual budget proposal.

The Internalized Weapon

The funny thing about these corporate platitudes is how quickly they become internalized weapons. I find myself using them internally when I’m procrastinating. “I just need to be more disciplined.” “I need to find my focus.” It’s a self-flagellation based on the same vague, useless criteria I rail against externally.

But the language that actually moves the needle is the language of action. I failed to achieve X because I did Y. I will achieve Z by changing A, B, and C. It strips the emotion out of it, replacing existential dread with project management.

The 8-Word Rule of Accountability

What if we established a rule: if you cannot articulate a piece of behavioral feedback in under 8 words, supported by 3 specific, verifiable instances from the last 28 days, you are not allowed to give it? This forces the manager to do the difficult work: observing, documenting, and coaching in real-time, rather than summarizing feelings in a panicked rush before the annual review deadline.