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posted by martyb on Monday July 21 2014, @01:34AM   Printer-friendly
from the Fake-Your-Way-To-The-Top dept.

Businessweek brings us news of How to Get Ahead by Speaking Vaguely. Projecting power is incredibly simple: just communicate in abstractions. Details convey weakness.

In one of the seven experiments, participants read quotes from a politician who described an earthquake as killing 120 and injuring 400; later, when he simply said it was a national tragedy, subjects thought he was a better leader.

An author of the study, Cheryl J. Wakslak (University of Southern California), cautions however against meaningless business jargon — words such as "ideaate" and "deliverables" that some workers resort to when trying to seem impressive. "Being completely vague will just make you sound stupid," she explains. "Bulls———is best when it has a kernel of truth in it."

The report was published this month in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and the full report is available at Using Abstract Language Signals Power (pdf)

 
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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Monday July 21 2014, @02:13AM

    by frojack (1554) on Monday July 21 2014, @02:13AM (#71669) Journal

    Thinking back over my past bosses, I've always come away with a better opinion of, and worked harder for those bosses who told me what needed to be done, not how to do it. (Even when they did indeed know how to do it).

    The guy who shows up with a 20 bullit power point display often thinks he/she knows more than they actually do, or more than the actual do-ers know.

    Micromanagement works best only where the cogs mesh, the rest of the machine will take care of itself.

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  • (Score: 1) by anubi on Monday July 21 2014, @04:17AM

    by anubi (2828) on Monday July 21 2014, @04:17AM (#71708) Journal

    I think they must teach them this kind of stuff in those closed-door business seminars. It seems like every time I have been working in a company and the "management team" goes into these seminars, they come out talking all sorts of gibberish and its really hard to tell exactly what it is we are supposed to do. Some phrase like "We will direct manpower efforts toward synergistic accomplishment of the goal of maximizing deliverable content" doesn't say anything to me. I am likely far more concerned with a little part on a PCB running too hot and know this will lead to a failure. This article documents many of the exact words and "business phrases" they start using... phrases that are extremely illusory in nature. They sound powerful but convey no information. Think of that phrase all the lawyer-trolls on TV use... "call me, and get the benefits you deserve". Now just what did the guy say? Used a lot of words.. and said nothing!

    When they start talking that way, I lose respect for them, as they start sounding like a guy you met outside a bar that's had a bit too much to drink. I am sure you know the type... you may want to be helpful, but you could talk to one of them for two hours and still not be able to find out how to get the guy home.

    Disclaimer.. I am INTP.

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    • (Score: 3, Informative) by Magic Oddball on Monday July 21 2014, @10:47AM

      by Magic Oddball (3847) on Monday July 21 2014, @10:47AM (#71775) Journal

      Disclaimer.. I am INTP.

      In case you were unaware, the Meyers-Briggs has absolutely no empirical or scientific basis [vox.com] -- it was made up by a couple of women with no science background with the help of a bank HR manager. Essentially, they reduced Carl Jung's complex theories (which are now disregarded as unscientific & inaccurate) to crude binaries, contradicting both his statement that people's minds don't work that way and pretty much all of the data obtained on personality traits since then. (It's not even a good way to categorize people's personalities, according to the data.)

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 21 2014, @12:57PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 21 2014, @12:57PM (#71794)

        Hmm. You sound rather INTJ to me.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 21 2014, @01:36PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 21 2014, @01:36PM (#71804)

          Honey, we're all INTJ here.

      • (Score: 1) by Arik on Monday July 21 2014, @01:48PM

        by Arik (4543) on Monday July 21 2014, @01:48PM (#71808) Journal
        Several of the criticisms in the article you cite appear to be perfectly valid, and rather conclusive.

        It's a shame the author (and you as well) for some reason need to put weight instead on irrelevancies about Carl Jung and the *shock* unaccredited *horror* women who invented the test.

        The link between Jungs theories and the tests are tenuous at best. If the test worked empirically, no one should care which historical figures theories happened to be in vogue when it was initially developed. And if it worked, we would be praising these women for managing so well in a hostile environment rather than sniping about their lack of the correct diploma and genitalia.

        But it does not work, at least, not for the purpose it is marketed towards.
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