It was Thursday at 11 AM. My empty smoothie glass sat next to a pile of scribbled post-its on my desk. On my screen, five colleagues were intently focused on a sixth Zoom square, where a contractor we’d brought in was giving us advice.

He started walking us through his recommendations, then paused and said, “I know you all have been working hard on this. I don’t want to just come in and do a Swoop and Poop.”

"SWOOP AND POOP!!!" I wrote in the chat, and it was greeted with a flurry of emojis—Face with Tears of Joy and Rolling on the Floor Laughing flooded the chat.

The Power of Team Shorthand

Developing a shared team shorthand—common terminology for recurring patterns and behaviors—transforms potentially intimidating feedback into simple, constructive signals. This makes it easier to flag behaviors that might derail progress or create unhelpful team habits.

In our workshop, Building Bridges Toward a Feedback Culture, we help teams create these shorthand terms on purpose—so they don’t have to wait for a happy accident. Naming the challenge is the first step to climbing out of it. For our team, 'Swoop and Poop' entered our vocabulary by accident, but as a leader, you can purposely build your team’s shorthand for challenging dynamics.

Here’s how:

• Notice the Pattern | Identify the challenge that keeps happening. Are people feeling their ideas are dismissed without reason? Are they tiptoeing around someone with a temper? Are they wondering what a silent team member is thinking? Are they talking about others behind their back?

• Name It | Make it memorable and easy to reference. Bonus points if it makes you smile.

• Define the Alternative | What should happen instead?

• Empower the Team | Encourage everyone to use the shorthand in real-time. Try this: “This feels like a [name of challenge]. Can we pause and do [alternate behavior] instead?

• Reinforce & Celebrate | Acknowledge when it works.

These days, there’s a whole lot less swooping and pooping on our team. Once we named the challenge, we noticed it. And once we noticed it, we replaced it with something better—timely, trust-building feedback. It may not have the same ring as 'swoop and poop,' but it’s made a world of difference.

What recurring dynamics would you like to interrupt on your team? What might happen if you put some words to them?