Need to explain something? There’s a Word for That (It’s Just Not In English)

Language is the lens through which we see the world.

The words we share to describe our world shape how we think (as Lera Boroditsky explains in her illuminating Ted Talk) and how we think defines our reality. 

Because language is so transformative, other languages provide a rich opportunity to expand how we experience the world.

As a taste, here are six words from around the world to succinctly describe common archetypal personalities and attitudes in the workplace (and life).

Epibreren

The Dutch word epibreren refers to performing activities that give the appearance of being busy and important but amount to very little. 

You may already have an image of someone in your mind who is a master of epibreren. Perhaps they have even mastered the epitome of epibreren - appearing busy to those that give promotions and providing little value to their team.

As social creatures who constantly monitor our social status and the contributions of those around us, epibreren often leads to resentment. When a master of epibreren fails to help with a project, we might have to pick up the slack without credit for our work or risk not delivering the project. 

Consistent epibreren without consequence will send the message that no one is particularly invested in getting the work done. Worse still, if rewarded, it will create particular resentment from those who perceive themselves as trying harder than the master of epibreren. 

Organizations can easily (and inadvertently) create a culture of epibreren by instituting inflexible mandates. For example, consider fixed office hours. A team that must be in the office at exactly 9 to exactly 5 can easily engage in epibreren on those days when they only had 6 hours of work. Additionally, having been asked to lose hours in their day to appear busy, there is an implicit incentive to clock out at precisely 5 o’clock even if they are on a roll. 

Respect is a two-way street, and epibreren can be disrespectful in itself or a response to feeling disrespected. 

Extrawunsch

From German, the word extrawunsch refers to someone so picky and fussy that they slow everything down. 

Like epibreren, extrawunsch might evoke images of a particular person in your mind immediately. It could be the person who responds to their own email before anyone else to add an extra five questions on top of the ten they originally sent. Or maybe the person who extends a meeting 30 minutes into the lunch hour because they “aren’t sure they agree with the approach” that has been hashed out for the last 90 minutes.

The catch with an extrawunsch is that the line between “good attention to detail” and “unnecessarily picky” is subjective. For example, a team filled with personalities that want to move fast and figure out details later might consider any slow down to be the work of an extrawunsch. The perceived extrawunsch, however, may be accurately identifying future obstacles the team needs to acknowledge.

If someone on your team begins to feel like an extrawunsch, it is helpful to restate what they are saying in your own words and explain why you think the concern may be valid or something that does not need to be addressed currently. The would-be extrawunsch may simply feel unheard or undervalued, and taking the time to reach out with empathy and listening can smooth the process for everyone while keeping the door open to different points of view. 

Blunda

Blunda is a Swedish word meaning to cover/close your eyes to avoid seeing a hard truth.

Life is difficult, no matter who you are, but very few life challenges can be resolved through avoidance and denial. 

This trait is particularly dangerous in a leader. If team members can see the clouds forming, whether through a drop in sales, consistently missed target numbers, or blatant rounds of layoffs, they will expect answers from their leaders. If the leader insists everything is fine and dandy, the team will feel lied to and lose respect for the leader.

Leaders must walk a fine line of vulnerability between acknowledging tough realities without succumbing to them or creating unnecessary panic. As scary as it feels, a trusted team will respond well to transparency, especially if asked to help find solutions.

Fisselig

Another German word, fisselig, is the state of sloppiness a person experiences when flustered, usually by someone else’s consistent nagging. A more literal translation is “flustered to the point of incompetence.”

In popular culture, this evokes images of Jerry from Parks and Rec or Kevin from The Office, but it’s an experience shared by all of us and is universally painful.

When a project starts to go south, it takes considerable skills in emotional regulation to avoid lashing out in stress and exhaustion. This is when we usually create fisselig in others despite being directly contradictory to our desired outcome: completing work quickly and successfully. 

When we fall into a fisselig tunnel, we need to apply careful mindfulness to understand the feeling that is rising up without attaching to it. This is no easy task when the mind begins to fill with that flustered buzz, but we can often give ourselves just enough break if we pause for an extra breath before responding. 

Attacabottoni

From Italian, attacabotoni (literally translated as “attach buttons”) refers to a person who often tells long, meaningless stories in endless detail about their life. 

This is the coworker you reluctantly remove your headphones for when they swing by your desk for the third time. These people go beyond just sharing camaraderie and connecting on a more personal level; they are expert one-way conversationalists, ready to push your listening skills to the ragged edge.

To compound the effect, if managers see this behavior and declare people are “socializing too much,” genuine connection and teamwork become even more elusive.

Fika

Almost similar to attacabottoni but with the opposite implication, fika is a Swedish word referring to the state of mind of slowing down to make time for friends and colleagues, usually over coffee or food. 

This is a state of connection with others, taking the time to enjoy each other’s company more equitably than a one-way attacabottoni. This attitude can foster genuine connections and amplify culture in an organization by allowing for team building in an authentic sense, beyond trust falls and name-games. 
Fika is what most company happy hours hope to be, and it reminds us what the goal is.

Finding these succinct foreign words for phenomena we encounter daily is very cathartic, and they give us new structures to frame how we want to be (or, just as importantly, not to be).