After reading this article you'll get a grasp of 5 idioms, and hopefully will be able to utilize them in your day-to-day to get your point across the room. This post is not aiming to uncover where these idioms come from nor their origin nor etymology.

These are the idioms you'll take away and will run out to use them in your next meeting:

1. 🏔 Making a mountain out of a molehill
2. 🛁 Throwing the baby out with the bathwater
3. 🌳Beating around the bush
4. 🛒 Putting the cart before the horse
5. 🐴 Beating a dead horse

Let's dive right in.

⛰ "Making a mountain out of a molehill"

This expression is perfectly suited when a situation is being communicated as a bigger issue than what it actually is. For instance, you could hear an individual over-reacting when facing a specific challenge portraying it as a big insurmountable problem, when it actually turns out to be something simple that could be solved with little effort, or maybe there's relevant information this person doesn't have which makes the issue look larger than what it actually is.

^{_{Photo by Joshua Earle on Unsplash}}

🎙 Some examples

• "We might be making a mountain out of a molehill here, let's bring in Pam Beasley who worked on something similar to this a month ago and tackled it in no time"
• "Are you sure you're not making this a mountain out of a molehill? Could we get a bit more into the details? I am sure there's an opportunity here to simplify"
• "I think this is really a molehill, maybe the client is looking at it as a mountain, but we can change that perspective"

🛁 "Throwing the baby out with the bathwater"

The first time I heard this one... I have to tell you, I was so confused. I just kept nodding and hoping I'd be able to get the point by connecting the other words the other person was saying. After the call I immediately went to look it up and was surprised about its meaning. Now, this has become one of my favorite phrases and what it's trying to address is that typical situation there's some progress done on a specific task and the team reaches a roadblock and then a decision gets made to start from scratch discarding everything and turns out that one of the things being discarded has a lot of value, in other words, when something good is thrown away when trying to get rid of something bad.

As you can imagine, this phrase can come up very often when working in tech, new projects, discovering new tech stacks, among others. So keep this one in your tool belt.

^{_{Photo by Vytis Gruzdys on Unsplash}}

🎙 Some examples

• "I know we're deleting this meeting to avoid meeting overload, but the baby has been thrown out with the bathwater. This was the only opportunity we had with all the team in one room"
• "Tickets need to be very strategically split so we don't throw the baby out with the bathwater if a specific pull request doesn't pass the code review"
• Dev A: "This file is a disaster. Let's just delete it and start it from scratch". Dev B: "Wait, you may be throwing the baby out with the bathwater, this file has some goodness, there's a lot of useful functions there. Let's create a new file and porting over the functions that make sense"

🌳 Beating around the bush

I'd say this one is the most commonly heard among the 5 in this article. This idiom could be used when a conversation is being held and it’s mostly touching on side points, avoiding the core of the issue that needs to be discussed and solved, most likely because it's hard to address.

On the other hand, this expression serves as a good way to bring a meeting back to its agenda and make sure that the goal is achieved. Also this could be applied when providing constructive feedback to someone you're working with and maybe the preamble just went for a bit long trying to find the right words, and you're trying to get back to the point.

^{_{Photo by JerryWang on Unsplash}}

🎙 Some examples

• ...after minutes of digressing... "Ok, I am going to stop beating around the bush. I've seen you've been underperforming, I am worried about you and want to hear how you feel, is there anything I could help you with?"
• "For our next meeting let's try to avoid beating around the bush and just ask the questions that need to be answered"
• "I appreciate your feedback and really value that you did not beat around the bush and were candid with it"

🛒 Putting the cart before the horse

At first this seems hard to identify but after reading it and picturing it in your head I am sure you know where this is coming from. So in this case, let's start with an image.

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As you could infer, this means executing a list of sequential tasks in the wrong order or in a counterintuitive way that will not bring successful outcomes. Also, it could infer that some effort is being put on the less important task, or maybe confusing what caused something with the consequence of it.

🎙 Some examples

• "Promoting someone is a very important step in their careers. So let's make sure we don't put the cart before the horse by promoting them without giving them the opportunity to show their value, succeed and demonstrate their ready for their next step"
• "Are you sure this function make sense? Doesn't this (points to a block of code) mean that you're putting the cart before the horse, seems like this block should be at the end"

🐴 Beating a dead horse

I am sure you've been in this situation. There's a topic that the room has been discussing for several minutes and the participants agreed on next steps, but there's still someone that wants to keep adding to it and add information that might not add any value. This idiom can be used to excuse yourself for speaking to something that was decided but you have some more context to add so everyone is aligned.

Another less common option for this idiom is to use it when facing very challenging situations, let's say you're asking something from the team that seems very far-fetched and you know that is 99.99% unrealistic to ask.

^{_{Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash}}

🎙 Some examples

• "I know I am beating a dead horse, but I want to make sure I get this out of my system. In our presentation we did mention that the feature wouldn't ship. I don't see why there's a misunderstanding here"
• "I am happy that we've made a decision to not rotate this resource, now, not to beat a dead horse, but could I ask to reconsider a potential rotation for next quarter?"
• "Ok everyone, let's stop beating a dead horse and move to the next item on the agenda"

🤨 Why learn idioms?

As a non-native English-speaker working from the Bay Area as an Engineer & Manager, I've faced several challenges when trying to communicate ideas and thoughts in a simple and digestible way. From K-12 to college, we think we're learning English, but it's a very formal one. And this doesn't mean it doesn't work. My "formal English" did help me move around, travel, explain myself, and even land a job in Colombia with clients in the US. But as I started a full-time job speaking in English I immediately noticed how my thoughts and ideas got lost in translation. It was taking me too long to explain things and as a consequence I was losing the attention of my teammates or making them confused.

Native speakers use colloquial expressions to communicate regularly (most of them I never heard in my 15 years of English classes), and as the working environment etiquette keeps evolving, this casual conversational contract has become the rule of thumb when chatting with peers, managers and even clients. It's clear that learning this is a must, if you want to improve your communication skills.

A bit about me. Around 6 years ago, I started working 100% in English, and in spite of my perfect English record in school and college 🙃, it was very challenging to get through a day of regular work. For instance, as soon as I joined the company I remember having a call with a teammate where I needed to explain something was not feasible and I did such a poor job expressing myself that I had to re-think what I said, use Google Translate and send a more articulate and well-thought message via Slack after the call.

But there's always a bright side, and it is that my listening was spot-on–most likely because the movies, TV shows, courses, etc. we consume in LATAM are in English. How come I could hear and understand most of wat was being said but then when it came to explaining myself or elaborating an idea to a group of people, I could see how my shiny thoughts started to lose gloss and the smart in them. In addition, something that would take me several sentences–if not paragraphs–to express in English, a native speaker could convey the same with just a handful of words. I needed to improve.

So as the Engineer I am, I took action and started identifying these different idioms and ways of expressing themselves used flawlessly by my different native-speaker peers. I listed them all in a spreadsheet–currently with over 100 idioms with its meaning and a few ways of utilizing them. Then, I would start my days going through the list, picking 1 or 2, and finding opportunities throughout the day to use them whenever I was communicating something. This method has been very effective and after a few months, I was able to reach the point where they just pop up as I speak. This has improved the way I express my ideas and the impact I make across the teams I work with. So I hope you see as much value in this as I've experienced throughout these 6 years. Go ahead and use any of these in your next Zoom call, Google Meet or in-person meeting ✌️.