only then sarcasm is allowed

Art Burshy seems a polite guy, but today he explained me that in some cases sarcasm is allowed...

Art today approached me, dropped his coat on a chair next to me, sat down with a sigh and said
"are they all so stupid or am I so clever...?!, I am pretty sure it's not my cleverness unfortunately..."

Today's story begins with Art Burshy asking his team to come up with new business ideas.
He is pretty new in managing this team and he thought it would be a good way to see what sort of people he has in his team; how skilled are they really when put through the test.

Art loves to ask people to make or rather organise a plan.
It helps him see where they struggle:
1. Some can not visualise their target and their success; ending up presenting no view or a spaghetti of charts that is only successful in confusing people.
2. Some are loners; thinking up new ideas in their geek minds behind the computer; and then presenting it like they go to their school prom, all perky and excited without a grain of reflection.
3. The ones with blind spots as large as the moon; they forget the financials, or they forget to analyse risk or the market trends.
4. Which is all worsened if they decided not to follow any methodology; by itself methodology is not the holy grail. It just helps avoiding obvious large mistakes. So it allows an upgrade in quality without going through the learning curve yourself.

All this helps Art as he says: separate the turtles from the rabbits.
When people start understanding and explaining in a very slow way they hardly ever develop speed, and keep asking for guidance - these are the turtles. There are also people that show a quick understanding, bringing feasible solutions and are ready to do more - the so-called rabbits.
Of course there has been the exceptional case where it seems a turtle was more quick that a turtle, or where there has been a magic transformation, but that in real life never really happens, does it?

Although Art's thoughts seem pretty negative, he in practise always remains constructive; helps people to discover their area of development. He always takes time and hardly becomes angry or negative.
He told me however that his thinking shifted away from where it was when he started managing.
As a beginning manager he would understand everyone and dig all behaviour...but then he saw that some of that same behaviour causes teams to derail after some 2 years.
His conclusion after all these years: if a manager does not clearly show which behaviour is good and which is bad, the consequence is:
- people showing bad behaviour do not get triggered to change
- people behaving in a great way start feeling their efforts are not appreciated.
Result: behaviour shifts to the lowest level.

So that is way this morning with one guy that did not listen Art made some sarcastic remark; and as Art says: "It is okay to fail, but not okay to cover it up with blabla". Only in that case sarcasm is allowed...according to Art Burshy...

Confidence versus intelligence

I was sitting outside enjoying my lunch sandwich in the sunny spring weather, listening to the fresh green leaves being tickled by the wind. Art Burshy sat down next to me, he opened something that looked like a lunchbox and indeed took out his sandwich. We sat for some time when Art started his story of the day, and although I felt I needed to get back to work I decided to stay and enjoy his story. And enjoying the sun warming my face.

Art explained what happened that morning.
Art had been in a meeting and a new senior management hire had entered the room to discuss some issues that needed to be solved.
Now, it is not a problem that someone new does not exactly know what he is talking about...he or she is new to the job and content, so that is logical.
Art does observe however some human behaviour that doesn't stop surprising him:
- people throwing out management bullshit; general slogans that have no meaning without understanding the detailed impacts
- them not resisting giving an opinion within 2 minutes for a subject that could not be solved by anyone in the last 2 years
- not respecting the experience, skills and knowledge of the others
- demanding people to follow without even taking a moment to listen and understand the views of other people.

Art has developed over time a few strategies to deal with such situations. He explained a few; and he told me that the solution chosen depends on the amount of shock that needs to be effectuated to eliminate the bullshit-blurt-manager.
1. test intelligence
Basically this is about stepping up and confronting the person with a sentence that is of a somewhat higher complexity. This can be achieved using terminology that people with a modest experience and lack of depth would have difficulty to understand. Examples? Correlation, Cognitive dissonance, dilemma, preventive-detective-repressive measures, conceptual challenge, etc.
Important is that the sentence actually make sense; you would not want to beat a bullshit person by adding to the bullshit...
2. ask until they confess they don' t know (or care) enough
Whenever someone prematurely comes up with an oversimplified solution, you just call their bluff.
Important is to be polite, ask open questions to force them into explaining, and then in the end force them into a closed question where they need to confess they do not know...
3. sarcasm
This one is less subtle but in cases where you see multiple people thinking "why can't the guy shut up and let us discuss the real issue" (unfortunately these blurt-cases seem to be more frequent for managers of the male species). In that situation a good sarcastic remark can eliminate the person from speaking. Be careful though, you must be sure the person is not able to get you fired within 5 minutes...
4. detect their weaknesses (opportunities for future manipulation)
This one is similar to option 1, but this time you stop before making them look stupid you stop; the purpose is to know heir weakness, and to have it ready for:
a. another time when the issue is more pressing, and requires you to make a fool out of the person
b. influencing the person on a more structural basis; which is even more effective when it is your boss.

After hearing these simple suggestions from Art Burshy I thought back of some moments in my career when these tactics would have come in handy; well, too late now for those moments in history. But I will look out for future occasions where they might be needed.

In the situation today that Art described, he ended up using tactic 1: testing intelligence.
And so he mentioned...
"unfortunately there is no linear correlation for confidence displayed and intelligence".