Why Business People Speak Like Idiots: A Bullfighter's Guide | 
 enlarge | Authors: Brian Fugere, Chelsea Hardaway, Jon Warshawsky
Publisher: Free Press
Category: Book
List Price: $22.00
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Rating:  43 reviews
Sales Rank: 80541
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 192
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.8 x 0.9
ISBN: 0743269098
Dewey Decimal Number: 650.014
EAN: 9780743269094
ASIN: 0743269098
Publication Date: February 22, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Ole!If you think you smell something at work, there's probably good reason--"bull" has become the official language of business. Every day, we get bombarded by an endless stream of filtered, antiseptic, jargon-filled corporate speak, all of which makes it harder to get heard, harder to be authentic, and definitely harder to have fun. But it doesn't have to be that way. The team that brought you the Clio Award-winning Bullfighter software is back with an entertaining, bare-knuckled guide to talking straight--for those who want to climb the corporate ladder, but refuse to check their personality at the door. Why Business People Speak Like Idiots exposes four traps that transform us from funny, honest and engaging weekend people into boring business stiffs: • The Obscurity Trap: "After extensive analysis of the economic factors facing our industry, we have concluded that a restructuring is essential to maintaining competitive position. A task force has been assembled..." These are the empty calories of business communication. And, unfortunately, they're the rule. The Obscurity Trap catches idiots desperate to sound smart or prove their purpose, and lures them with message-killers like jargon, long-windedness, acronyms, and evasiveness. • The Anonymity Trap: Businesses love clones--easy to hire, easy to manage, easy to train, easy to replace--and almost everyone is all too happy to oblige. We outsource our voice through templates, speechwriters and email, and cave in to conventions that aren't really even rules. • The Hard-Sell Trap: Legions of business people fall prey to the Hard-Sell Trap. We overpromise. We accentuate the positive and pretend the negative doesn't exist. This may work for those pushing Ginsu knives and miracle Abdominizers, but it's dead wrong for persuading business people to listen. • The Tedium Trap: Everyone you work with thinks about sex, tells stories, gets caught up in life's amazing details, and judges everyone else by the way they look and act. We live to be entertained. We all learned that in Psychology 101, except for the business idiots who must have skipped that semester. They tattoo their long executive-sounding titles on their foreheads, dump pre-packaged numbers on their audience, and virtually guarantee that we want nothing to do with them. This is your wake-up call. Personality, humanity and candor are being sucked out of the workplace. Let the wonks send their empty messages. Yours are going to connect. Fast Company magazine named Why Business People Speak Like Idiots one of the ideas and trends that will change how we work and live in 2005. So grab your cape and sharpen your sword. It's time to fight the bull!
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| Customer Reviews: Read 38 more reviews...
 Discover and use your own voice so people will listen... April 27, 2008
Thomas Duff (Portland, OR United States)
You know you've got too many books lying around (or your office area is too messy) when you stumble across a book in an unexpected area and think "where did *this* come from?" I have to admit that's what happened with Why Business People Speak Like Idiots: A Bullfighter's Guide by Brian Fugere, Chelsea Hardaway, and Jon Warshawsky. I'm guessing it got put down somewhere, was covered up by something else, and it took awhile for me to move that stack again. But, having "re-"discovered the book, I've found a real gem. Excellent for everyone who is fed up with people using big words with no content.
Contents:
Part 1 - The Obscurity Trap: The Fog of Business; The Smartest People Use the Dumbest Words; Size Matters, But Not How You Think; It Depends on What the Meaning of "Is" Is
Part 2 - The Anonymity Trap: You've Been Templatized; The Power of Imperfection; Being Funny Is Serious Business; Pick Up the Damn Phone
Part 3 - The Hard-Sell Trap: The Non-Sell Sell; Kick the Happy-Messenger Habit; Flop Penance
Part 4 - The Tedium Trap: Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n' Roll for Business People; Make Your Point by Making Theirs; An Actuary's Guide to Storytelling; The Substance of Style
Monday; Resources - A Bull Spotter's Guide
You've all heard (or done) it... Someone is making a presentation or is talking to others in their organization. In order to be thought intelligent, they resort to using big words and business catch-phrases that make them sound like an expert. But in reality, there's little substance behind the talk, and their audience is bored stiff. Bullfighter's Guide goes to the heart of communication and calls "BS!" to those who are wasting our time by inflating their own ego. Rather than put away the "real you" when you step into your office, try instead to use your own voice and style to get your message out. It's surprising how much more effective you can be.
The four Traps covered here pretty much cover the perils and pitfalls of business communication. The Obscurity Trap happens when the speaker exchanges their voice for jargon, wordiness, and evasiveness. They try to sound important by using words and phrases that aren't generally understood or have been stripped of any real meaning by overuse. Take that paradigm and bury it, please! The Anonymity Trap is where you try and fit in to the mold that's expected in the business world, thereby covering up any personality you might inject into your messages. These are the people who live and die by the template so that all communication is "standard". The Hard-Sell Trap means death to your efforts to get someone to buy your product. People like to buy things, but they don't want to be sold by someone who is only interested in their money. Instead, tell them the facts and listen to them explain what their needs are. And finally, there's the Tedium Trap.... boring, boring, boring. Don't make your audience sit through an hour of slides and slogans. Instead, tell them stories that make your point. Be different. Do the unexpected, and the audience will stay awake, wondering what you'll do next.
Bullfighter's Guide is not a large book, and it practices what they preach... get to the core of the message, and make it happen with your "own" voice. If you've ever tried to get a message across to someone (that should be about 99.999% of you), make sure you don't fall into any of these traps. Well worth reading, and I'm glad I found it... although I *still* don't know where I got it from...
 Borrow it from the library December 9, 2007
Kathy (Michigan)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is one of those books that make me wish authors could publish 20-page books and sell them for $1. Twenty pages is probably all that was needed to convey the thoughts in this book, especially if you've read any communication books previously. Also, the authors seem kind of arrogant and general. (P.S. I don't think they are quite as funny as they apparently do.) So I would suggest that you go to the library and leaf through it, rather than buying it and reading the whole thing. (I got the CD from my library.) My favorite communications author is Deborah Tannen.
 Mean-spirited Business-bashing November 16, 2007
David M. Freedman (Chicago area)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Consultants Fugere, Hardaway, and Warshawsky expose four common "traps" that otherwise intelligent professionals fall into when they communicate:
1. The obscurity trap. "Business idiots" (a phrase they employ often) who want to sound smart use jargon, acronyms, wordiness, and evasiveness. To avoid this trap, employ plain English and candor, and make your messages short and sweet. Don't try to sound brilliant; just get to the point.
2. The anonymity trap. Idiots depend on templates, cliches, and conventions. Instead, dare to express your personality - use your authentic voice - and make phone calls instead of hiding behind e-mail.
3. The hard-sell trap. Idiots over-promise, relentlessly accentuate the positive, and deny the existence of glaring flaws and screw-ups. To escape this trap, own up to bad news and flops. Use colorful, entertaining details to support your claims.
4. The tedium trap. Idiots dump pre-packaged data on their audiences and drone on in pointless generalizations. Instead, be spontaneous. Make the details specific and relevant to listeners. Tell a story.
The authors present numerous examples (real and hypothetical) of pompous, arrogant, tedious, boring, and obfuscatory business communications.
The authors also present a few examples -- not nearly enough, though -- of very effective communication, including an excerpt from Winston Churchill's speech to the House of Commons on June 4, 1940:
"We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender."
Those 81 words, which arguably changed the course of history, comprise 105 syllables - an average of 1.3 syllables per word.
The authors spend a little too much ink bashing business people and not enough explaining how to overcome the traps and fix poor communication habits. Their style is often mean-spirited. Their publicist calls the book "wickedly funny," but I think their relentless, cliche-ridden humor gets tedious.
A Breath of Fresh Air (No Bull!) October 16, 2007
Frederic Woodbridge (ID, USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Within a few weeks of reading this very funny yet worthy book, it has already paid dividends in my work. I am now taking pains to create emails and other types of communication that is clear and crap-free. Not that I was ever terribly guilty of being unclear, but once you're surrounded by corporate drones speaking in that jargon-heavy language they're so fond of, the tendency is to conform and embrace. They just sound so clever and knowledgeable and so, peer pressure factor, you want to emulate them as well.
Along with "Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die," this book has helped me not only streamline the way I present and use information, it has increased the meaning of life for me. If language is a window into the soul, then it follows that muddled, jargon-y language shows a cluttered, unfocused mind. Use this book (and their free Bull Fighter software, which works with Office 2007, by the way) to help you clear your mind and perhaps better your life. Corny yes, but true nevertheless.
So what? Tell your readers the HOW September 25, 2007
Susan G. Trivers (McLean, VA)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Does it really matter why business speakers give poor presentations? Get to the action quickly and the why is irrelevant. Persuasion is most effective when the speaker focuses on the new way of doing things and avoids any comparison to the old way. Readers searching for better presentation skills will remember new and better presentation techniques by learning them, not by having the bad old ways rehashed again and again.
Please read books with actual action steps, not theory, and you'll be a business speaker who doesn't speak like an idiot.
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