The word ‘leverage’ is now a staple of every day business vocabulary, and all too often in its incorrect sense.
Leverage is a noun, and means “the power to influence people and get the results you want” (source: Cambridge Online Dictionary). The key point here is the idea of influence. For example: “the right wing had lost much of its political leverage in the Assembly” or, if you have to use it as a verb, “I was able to leverage my friendship with the CEO to win the contract.”
But I can find no dictionary definition for ‘leverage’ as a verb, except in its pure financial sense: “to use borrowed money to buy a company” (Cambridge again).
And it is as a verb that many business people now use the word. All too often, ‘leverage’ is deployed when what is really meant is ‘use’.
One of the most egregious examples I’ve seen was on the CV of a client I was preparing for an important interview: “I leveraged my abilities to speak French when working in Paris.” This is a great example of dressing up a fairly average point with a long word to make it look better than it really is. Don’t do it – nobody is fooled!
But even top level executives can be guilty of leveraging…sorry, using….the more complicated word when the simple one will do. “We can leverage our knowledge to improve your reporting” is the kind of phrase I mean. You don’t leverage knowledge – you use it. Keep it simple. Say what you mean. And for goodness sake let’s leverage words correctly!
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