Fascinating! Today I learnt that Americans don’t like the word ‘subordinate’.
I’ve tried using ‘direct report’ or ‘report’ in the past, but it’s not as intuitive, so I got complaints from two readers (an Aussie and a Kiwi). Zero complaints so far from Asians who grew up in Asia.
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Subordinate feels wrong to this Brit too. It carries connotations of being given orders, which is a model of leadership that doesn’t work well with knowledge workers.
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Maybe ... staff? Report seems good but it's evidently weird to some readers.
Man, cross-cultural English is hard.