Who Gets Away With Bloviating BS and Why?

Perhaps you've noticed that some people can get away with saying things that aren't backed up by facts or are outright false while others must always show their work and prove their worth.

People who are from systemically advantaged groups or dominant in some way are much likelier to get away with or even be rewarded for bloviating BS , in part because they tend to deliver their BS with a level of confidence and authority that doesn't invite others to challenge them.

In a fascinating study published in Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice , researchers asked young men and women whether they were experts in 16 distinct math topics, three of which were made-up.

Men were much likelier to claim expertise in these made-up topics than women, as were the rich over the middle class. Also, people were likelier to challenge BS from those they perceived as their equals than from people with more power. So if you’re a leader, you need to make sure you’re creating the conditions for people to call BS on you.

Not getting called out on one’s BS breeds a problematic overconfidence that harms collaboration. This can work in the BSer’s favor in situations such as job interviews and grant applications. But that means that if you let it influence your decisions as a leader, you’re hiring the BSer, not the expert , giving the grant to the BSer, not the expert.?

Allowing the BSer to hog airtime in a meeting means your decisions will be unduly influenced by a person who knows less than the others in the room. That’s why it’s your job as a leader to address it.

Not only does allowing bloviating BS to be rewarded harm decision-making, it’s also unfair because people who are systemically disadvantaged can rarely get away with bloviating BS and so don’t reap its rewards. The answer, though, is not to ensure that everyone gets rewarded for bloviation.?

The answer is to make sure no one does. There are some privileges that people from systemically advantaged groups have that should be extended to all and others that should be extended to none.

As a leader, it’s your job to make sure that no one person dominates, especially not a BSer, and that everyone feels comfortable participating in meetings online or off-and also in the everyday back-and-forth of conversations at work.

Here are some things you can do to prevent bullying bloviation from ruining your team’s ability to collaborate effectively.

Give The Quiet Ones a Voice

Jony Ive, the former chief design officer at Apple, said a leader’s job is to “give the quiet ones a voice .”

How can you do this? Annie Jean-Baptiste, who is the head of product inclusion at Google and an introvert, offers a simple suggestion. Ask them. She had a manager, Seth van der Swaagh, who noticed she was quiet during meetings.

He asked her, “How many times have you had an idea and someone else said it, but you were afraid to speak up?” He then asked her, “Is it okay if sometimes I directly ask you in meetings if there are any thoughts you’d like to share?”

By inviting Annie to speak up, he created a virtuous cycle. The more he asked her opinion, the more she spoke; the more she spoke, the more comfortable she became speaking. It was just like building a muscle: her voice got stronger over time.

It is also helpful to send out the agenda beforehand so that introverts and others who often need to process information before they are on the spot have time to prepare what they want to say.

Block Bloviation

If one person is doing all the talking, gently interrupt that person and say that you’d like to hear from everyone. When you ask a question, go around the room (or around the Zoom). Give everyone a set amount of time to answer if the same person is always giving long-winded answers.

I once bought an hourglass (except it was a one-minute glass) for a conference room when I had one such person on my team.

When I taught at Apple University, an experienced professor taught me to block bloviation if you experience it during an in-person meeting. He showed me how to body-block people who wouldn’t shut up—literally, to walk over to them and stand in front of them.

If they still didn’t get the hint, the professor suggested, put your hand in the air in a “pause”gesture and say you’d like to hear from others in the room. When someone is speaking too loudly, walk toward them, even though it’s usually instinctive to step away from someone who is yelling. Usually, they’ll lower their voice.

Encourage People to Track Their Airtime

Share the research that shows why it’s important that everyone on a team gets opportunities to contribute to conversation. Then measure what percentage of time everyone is talking.

There are a number of airtime trackers folks can use to figure out what percentage of the time they spend talking. This is especially important for virtual meetings, which are even likelier than in-person meetings to be dominated by one person.

If Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams and other videoconferencing services offered a private airtime report to folks who spoke more than three times their “airtime” in a meeting, it would be a great service to both team effectiveness and inclusivity.

Of course, you don’t want to get too obsessed with measurement here. There may be a good reason why one person is talking a lot and another not at all in a particular meeting. But it would be useful to ask folks on your team to self-monitor.

Radical Respect is a weekly newsletter I am publishing on LinkedIn to highlight?some of the things that get in the way of creating a collaborative, respectful working environment. A healthy organization is not merely an absence of unpleasant symptoms. Creating a just working environment is about eliminating bad behavior and reinforcing collaborative, respectful behavior. Each week I'll offer tips on how to do that so you can create a workplace where everyone feels supported and respected. Learn more in my new book Radical Respect , available wherever books are sold! You can also follow Radical Candor? and the Radical Candor Podcast more tips about building better relationships at work.