One simple evaluative technique useful when interviewing potential managerial candidates is assessing the efficiency and effectiveness of their responses. Simplistically; comments that are thoughtful, to-the-point, and crisp are a good sign (signifying substance--a solid herd of cattle), while comments that are shallow, miss-the-point, rambling and verbose are a troubling sign (a big hat but little else). Most of us with experience in interviewing and assessing indivdiuals' capabilities intuitively know this: an orderly, thoughtful mind typically produces orderly vocal output, and an orderly, thoughtful mind is clearly a managerial asset. But most of us without that heavy interviewing and selection experience can be easily fooled.
A new study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology adds data to our experience based intuition. This study organized teams of students into imaginary nonprofit groups, had them work on business problems, had each assess the other team members' performance and capabilities, and then compared those assessments to the individuals' actual capability data (like GMAT and SAT results). The full results were a bit more complicated than I'll report here, but in general the evaluations in the assessments were highly correlated to essentially the verbosity of individuals rather than to their underlying talents. Those who spoke early and often, regardless of the merit, or orderliness, or thoughtfullness of their comments, were given high marks.
We should expect the same from high-office elected officials and corporate executives. Alarm bells should go off when we don't get it. The bottom line lesson is: when we experience CEO's or Cabinet officials or Senators or whomever of high stature creating rambling, missing-the-point, shallow responses, one of two conclusions is highly likely:
- they are incompetent, suffering from a disorderly mind
- they are practicing obfuscation, or in simple terms lying
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