Talking like a podcast CEO doesn’t make you a leader. Being dependable does. It’s less aesthetic and more effective.

Borrowed vocabulary is easy to pick up and impresses only people who are not close enough to check. What a group runs on is much duller: turning up, answering, finishing, being straight about where something stands. Those things photograph badly and they are the whole job, which is why so many polished people have nothing behind them.

Drop one piece of impressive language this week and use the plain version instead. Then close something you have been carrying for a fortnight. Being useful is quieter and gets noticed by better people.