Overuse of Intentionality, Agency and Performative Can’t Mask Weak Thinking or Lousy Writing
6/11/26 – – Corporate communicators tend to overuse words they see or hear other corporate communicators using over and over. Most of these terms, often picked up form academic or scientific jargon, replace clearly understood concepts with fancier language. They’re sprinkled into executive speeches, presentations and internal messages to make a point seem more profound and the speaker more insightful.
Mark Twain is credited with comparing “the right word and the almost right word” to “the lightening and the lightening bug.” I’m with Mr. Clemens when it comes to finding the best word to help express an idea. But that’s not what the buzzwords du jour I’m talking about achieve.
The ones I’m seeing and annoyed by most are intentionality, agency and performative.
INTENTIONALITY (doing something with deliberate purpose)
A very well-regarded CEO recently explained to his employees that in today’s challenging business environment it’s especially important they do their work with intentionality. Wow, I wondered, had they been doing things unintentionally, without purpose or by chance?
I think the impact of the word is overrated.
It’s unlikely, for example, the coach of the New York Knicks used intentionality to inspire his players last night at Madison Square Garden. Down by 29 points to the San Antonio Spurs in a pivotal game in the NBA championship series, his timeout pep talk that led to the team’s historic comeback win was almost certainly not: “Guys, we’re getting our butts kicked. It’s time to execute our game plan with intentionality. Now get out there and make history!”
Good thing corporate communicators don’t write basketball pep talks.
AGENCY (capacity to take independent action)
Everyone’s talking about agentic AI, defined recently by a tech company CEO as, “AI that has agency” (meaning software that gets things done on its own without continual human direction).
The CEO’s circular definition brought back unpleasant memories for me. In grade school, you got no credit for definitions that just repeated the word on the vocabulary test. Ms. O’Banion, my third-grade teacher, awarded me no points for this definition of “difficulty”: Something that is difficult.
Borrowing from the AI lexicon, an executive coach writing on LinkedIn recently encouraged readers to become “high-agency” leaders. The author went on to describe the traditional attributes of leadership (a willingness to take charge, being a self-starter, etc.), breaking no new ground. New label, no new insights.
An accurate title for his article could have been, “Good leaders lead.”
PERFORMATIVE (done for show with false intent)
This word has a distinguished derivation. It was coined by British professor of language J. L. Austin in a 1955 lecture at Harvard, “How to Do Things With Words.” Austin defined performative as a sentence or pronouncement that accompanies an action. “With this ring, I thee wed.” “I raise my glass in recognition of Mary’s and Fred’s 50th wedding anniversary.”
Unfortunately, the term has been repurposed as a slur by politicians, journalists and corporate communicators. Characterizing an individual’s words or actions as performative is now a charge of purposeful insincerity, dishonesty and deception. Watch any Congressional hearing and you’re sure to hear the word. “The concerns expressed by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are purely performative. They could care less about voters’ rights.”
It is a handy way to say, “You’re putting on an act and don’t mean a word you say.” But its overuse makes me long for more direct, less fancy criticism: “You’re full of s_ _t.”
Adding to the overexposure of intentionality, agency and performative is AI’s fondness for the terms. Spot these in an article or speech and it’s likely a machine contributed to the prose. Real people don’t talk like that unless they’re trying to look smarter than they are or want to make a point sound more profound than it is.
Put another way: Speakers’ thoughts can come across as performative if in demonstrating their agency they use hackneyed words with intentionality. Or you could just say, “They’re full of s_ _t.”
Sorry, Ms. O’Banion.
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