August 12, 2005
Leaders, Smart Talk, and the LIberal Cultural Elite
People who talk frequently are more likely to be judged by others as influential and important--they're considered leaders.That is Photon Courier quoting Why Great Leaders Don't Take "Yes" for an Answer, by Michael Roberto of Harvard Business School. He continues to quote:
At first glance, that finding may not alarm you. Leaders do need the ability to articulate their ideas in a concise and persuasive way in public settings. However, Pferrer and Sutton have also discovered that "smart-talk" tends to be overly negative and complex. When people strive to impress others in meetings, they tend to explain how and why a proposal will not work rather than describing why it might succeed. (Based on their research) Pfeffer and Sutton argue that an individual is more likely to bolster others' perceptions of his intelligence by offering critiques rather than positive pronouncements about proposals and ideas under consideration. They find that many organizations encourage "the tendency to tear an idea down without offering anything to put in its place." Smart talk becomes an impediment to open, constructive dialogue and an obstacle that prevents firms from moving from analysis to action.
To me this sounds a lot like academic and cultural elites positioning themselves to be critical of the US and its leadership. It makes them sound impressive without getting anything done. I was thinking about this concept while reading Ginny's review of Class: A Guide Through the American Class System over at Chicago Boyz. She quotes Fussel's description of Xers as follows:
What kind of people are Xs? The old-fashioned term bohemian gives some idea; so does the term talented. Some Xs are intellectuals, but a lot are not: they are actors, musicians, artists, sports stars, “celebrities,” well-to-do former hippies, confirmed residents abroad, and the more gifted journalists, those whose by-lines intelligent readers recognize with pleasant anticipation. X people can be described (to use C. Wright Mills’s term) “self-cultivated.”
[....]
They adore the work they do, and they do it until they are finally carried out, retirement being a concept meaningful only to hired personnel or wage slaves who despise their work. Being an X person is like having much of the freedom and some of the power of a top-out-of-sight or upper-class person, but without the money. X category is a sort of unmonied aristocracy.
[...]
They occupy the one social place in the U.S.A. where the ethic of buying and selling is not all-powerful. Impelled by insolence, intelligence, irony, and spirit, X people have escaped out the back doors of those theaters of class which enclose others. (186)
In other words, they have positioned themselves to engage in smart talk critical of the establishment without having to do anything of consequence to change things. Here is Ginny saying much the same thing without the benefit of the smarttalk research:
“Occupational class depends very largely on doing work for which the consequences of error or failure are distant or remote, or better, invisible, rather than immediately apparent to a superior and thus instantly humiliating to the performer” (48). A reputation for intelligence and irony are best achieved by those with the ability to critique others without being critiqued. That is, of course, practically a role description for the media; it can be the role of State Department bureaucrats, and this has become more and more (with the theories of post-modernism and post-colonialism) the role in which academics see themselves.
But here are some other flashes of brilliance from Ginny:
To become a critic often means other commitments, various other ways of belonging, are sloughed off.Politics are chosen. But what is sloughed off? Well, family. Fussell notes that Xers flee family and forbears. The deep ties of ethnicity he sees as prole – and of course, such socializing within the family is often blue-collar and more often true of communities in which the tribal still has some power.
[...]
Religion, in Fussell’s discussion, is “embarrassing.” In a revealing approach, he begins a paragraph discussing the Xer’s creativity: “they adopt toward cultural objects the attitude of makers, and of course critics.” As the paragraph continues, we find such people “[a]lthough they know a great deal about European ecclesiastical architecture and even about the niceties of fifteen centuries of liturgical usage, X people never go to church, except for the odd wedding or funeral. Furthermore, they don’t know anyone who does go, and the whole idea would strike them as embarrassing” (185).
Nope. Can't have a stake in anything real. Only in made up shibboleths.
Fussell mocks those who think themselves sophisticated, but he believes a worldly and ironic sophistication characterizes the Xers. But they are (perhaps always were) deeply conventional--their conventions are merely different. To be an Xer requires disburdening oneself of all the passions that drive us and give our lives meaning, all duty-bound commitments. This empties a man no less than does wearing a gray flannel suit to an office on Madison Avenue.
And that folks, is the postmodern condition that they always talk about. The repetition of traditional forms without belief in their referents. It positions one as being smart without having to invest anything or actually to be smart. To be ironic is, in effect, to be lazy and/or weak. Ginny concludes:
To the Xer this is marked not by the depth of understanding - of evolution, of foreign policy, of the tax system – but rather by the ability to wield irony against others’ arguments. The cynic’s task is to diss – and he relishes it.[...]
for to worry abut status, as to worry abut money, is to confuse the means with the end. We need respect for who we are and what we do – not for a cynicism accompanied by disencumbrances that threaten our integrity. A society that encourages cynicism is not likely to get productivity, a society that discourages passion will not be able to revive itself.
And that so perfectly captures the fecklessness of both much of Europe and the American blue state elite (and explains their failure to have children) that there is little I can add here except to say Read the Whole Thing.
Posted by Alex at 11:04 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
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Comments
Thank you Alex, very very much.
The thought of boardrooms people with critics and no "doers" is really a bit, well, frightening if we expect to have any kind of economy in the future.
Posted by: Ginny at August 17, 2005 01:45 AM
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