Can we stop calling any decent example a 'Master Class'?
Jon Wolske
Culture Evangelist/Speaker and author-in-the-works. Musician and Production Coordinator @City of Henderson
I'm going to let my inner curmudgeon come out for just a second... I don't know about you, but I am getting tired of seeing any good example of executive communication being called a Masterclass. A good example of how something should be done, yes, but I bet you could read up on all of these examples and still be horrible at communications yourself. If you don't make bigger changes to your approach, these singular examples are not going to help you make the right change for YOU, your organization or your people.
I don't even know why it bothers me so much. Maybe it is because there are training professionals who spend a lot of time putting together classes, real classes that take in account information that includes the psychology of how to best communicate and the reasons behind the approach and equips the 'student' to make real changes based on why it should be communicated that way. Maybe it's because I hate buzzwords and click bait, and 'masterclass' seems to be the most current one that everyone is using. Don't get me started on the 'writing one sentence of a Linkedin post and then making me click the 'read more'...' (which I usually don't)... trend.
We should absolutely look up to these CEO's who are doing and saying the right things as much as we should be using the ones who do things badly as cautionary tales, as it is important for people to see the good that is being done in the leadership world! Personally, I would rather see a great discussion to get people talking about the communication/way things have been communicated or decided than to see someone proclaim it as something much greater than it is and then reading an article about how great that one sentence was. Really?!
Or maybe I should just start writing 'Masterclass' articles and bask in the glory of 'doing what's worked for others'. Maybe I'm more prone to reach disdain for these gimmicks more quickly, but I have a lot of click-bait-y tricks I do my best to ignore in hopes that they will go away.
Curmudgeon-Jon out!
VP, Business Development at Platinum Natural Gas Solutions
6 个月John, it appeared to me that there are more and more so-called "masterclasses" available; I was curious what constituted a masterclass and it seemed that the general consensus is when a true expert runs a class designed for attendees that are at the top of their game in that particular discipline. if that is generally the proper definition, then I can see their value. But this definition also exposes that classes that are simply general knowledge for anyone that is curious.