On detecting bullshit…

These words from a Farnum Street interview with Robert Greene resonated with me.

FS: One of the things you said was, talking to people who think that they know something, I mean, one of the problems that I see that traverses personal, professional lives is separating the people who know what they’re talking about from the ones who pretend they know what they’re doing or what they’re talking about. Do you have any … How do you do that?

RG: Well, I guess you’d call that bullshit radar, and and it’s kind of a hard thing to verbalize, because you know when you smell it. Like, this person doesn’t really—it’s just like bullshitting. I mean, obviously actions are what you’re paying attention to, because people can talk a lot. What has this person actually accomplished? What have they actually achieved? What businesses did they start that succeeded or what, or whatever, or are they just talkers?

So a lot of that is cutting out the verbiage and actually figuring out what people have done, because you can’t bullshit your achievements in life. That’s the old thing that Machiavelli called the effectual truth, which he applied to the pope
of his time. I don’t listen to what the pope says about religion and Christianity and goodness and stuff; I look at his actions, and his actions are he’s a rapacious warlord, referring to Rodrigo Borgia, who was one of the popes at the time, or Pope Julius that came after, later.

So you don’t listen to people’s words, you focus on their actions, and then non-verbal stuff obviously is very important. I have a whole chapter in my new book about non-verbal communication, because it’s an untapped zone of knowledge that I try to go into. I mean, really, several books could be written about it. You know, people reveal things through their body language. They reveal the fact that they’re not sincere, they reveal the fact that their confidence is mostly a façade, that they’re not really confident. They’re talking so much, but that’s always a sign of insecurity.

A kind of a quietness, a seriousness, people who admit that they’re not always right, generally are signs of the non-bullshitter. But, you know, we all bullshit, it’s part of social life, so you accept that. It’s just, how do you detect. If you’re hiring someone, and this is a critical skill, and then you really need to focus on their résumé and what they’ve accomplished, but you also need to focus on how they interact with other people, and whether they’re going to be toxic or not, and that gets into the whole nonverbal zone. You ask a kind of question that I could go on for hours on, it’s very complicated, but those are some of the things I would say.

It takes effort to “cut out the verbiage and actually figure out what people have done.” How often do we do that as educators when we bump up against a new idea from a “thought leader?” How often do we focus on the actions of the thought leader rather than solely their words? Anyone can have an idea, but which thought leaders have actually done – accomplished/achieved – any work around their ideas?

I’m not saying we should be fully discounting the bullshitters. But we need to be more critical of what is behind those ideas…what are the actions and work that have led to new (and often not-so-new) ideas. It’s time for educators to dig beneath the flashy keynote, the click bait blog post titles and the silver-bullet book titles and discover whether the storytellers actually have done what backs up their ideas.

Here are some questions you might ask after those keynotes, blog posts and book reads…..

If you’re pitching a classroom innovation, what are your experiences with that innovation, in the classroom, with real learners, and do they match and back up the pitch?

If you’re pitching ideas about leading change, what are your experiences leading change in learning environments, and do they match and back up the pitch?

If you’re pitching…you get the idea….

Then what? Your answer will shed more light on how you critically consume ideas and apply them to your practice. Whether you decide to give the idea a go or not, you will have done your due diligence unearthing the credibility of the thought-leader and their claims. Most importantly, you’ll have a deeper understanding of the context of the idea from the thought-leader’s perspective. In the era of abundant information, we educators need to become better at detecting the bullshit. After all, it’s what we expect of our learners, isn’t it?

What questions do you ask when critically consuming an idea or thought from someone else?

Connect with Randy on Twitter, the TLTalkRadio podcast, and the Shift Your Paradigm podcast!

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