Interpersonal Skills

This morning I read an interesting article about the The Smartest CEOs in the United States. What was fascinating was they also measured the least intelligent CEOs. Who wants to be on that list!! And there’s more. . .

Using a program call Preply, researchers analysed hours of dialogue from over 100 American executives, examining common linguistic patterns and one of those measurements was the use of the word ‘I’.

Using the word ‘I’ apparently depicts intelligence but not emotional intelligence. Of course, this all begs the question about whether you can actually measure intelligence at all and how seriously you can take these results (so, those on the ‘least intelligent’ list need not panic), but one thing is for certain, using the word ‘I’ in presentation is a poor choice.

The word ‘I’ has three problems. It is immediately ostracising, sets up a ‘me vs you’ scenario and it does nothing for the stress of the speaker who feels the focus is on them.

After years in this profession, I noticed a failing common pattern in Australia that is rife. It goes like this: