The Whisperer

The latest in a long line of silly Linked In titles.

One reason I don’t use Linked In very often other than to post my Medium articles is that it’s become a bit embarrassing.

I am embarrassed for how others show up. The humble bragging, which is an epidemic. Then the wholesale hijacking of terms like thought leader, which is so common any more than if I have a thought, that makes me a thought leader.

Everyone has thoughts, therefore everyone is a thought leader.

Precisely. You will forgive the humor.

Particularly when too many thought leaders are simply lifting, if not outright plagiarizing other folks’ material and calling it their own, which is an unfortunate (and highly illegal) habit. Kindly see Timothy Key’s pieces on stealing other’s stuff. You’re not a thought leader if all you do is either rip original work off from smarter folks, or you simply regurgitate what has been around for eons, and call it original.

Maybe they should be called thought lifters. But I digress.

This has led to some hilarious and well-put mockery of how to look and present like a thought leader:

It’s dated. But it’s even more accurate today.

P.G. Barnett has pointed out this kind of thing out when he has written about Medium’s three-month wonders (he has since kindly apologized for the way he said it, to his credit, but he did have a number of salient points).

My buddy Rosennab has commented on the thousands of newly-minted professional coaches, which appeared like (another) seriously awful virus, when lots of three-month wonders decided to go online permanently and take their massive experience to the next level and invite folks to sign up for the special one-year coaching course on how to be successful. Because of course they are now thought leaders.

Again, you will forgive the humor. I most likely did much the same thing in my twenties but since I was in the Army, my stupid ass got slapped down fast.

Since I have the pleasure of speaking regularly with Dr. Bakari, have worked with a slew of coaches over the years and have done some coaching myself, it would be fair to say that I might know a good coach when I see one. ( I am not, however) Dr. B is a transformational coach, which sadly I fear is yet one more title that may well hijacked by those desperate to differentiate themselves.

She is also guilty of a great deal of original thought, which is why I Hoover her articles. A genuinely original voice is a gift. Those folks don’t need to steal from anyone else. They have, however, spent a lot of time researching great minds. That kind of work tends to inspire one’s own originality. Dr. B is no rookie. She’s approaching 58, and because of that, has a lifetime and a body of work, including a number of books, to bank on and draw upon. Which, kindly, is what mastery looks like.

One of my long-time coaches wrote a number of books for the Guerrilla Marketing series, has won multiple prizes for his books, developed a seven- figure international sales training business, and turns others speakers and authors into prize-winning, six-figure professionals. He also invested in the long process of gaining his international credentials. Time, money, testing.

Oh. And he’s been at this for nearly fifty years.

Kindly, that’s a coach.

Coaches have successful track records. Dr. B has her PhD, she is a fourth degree black belt in Taekwando, she is a marathoner despite having asthma, she has a long career working with sexual assault survivors, she has a long- standing successful marriage to another Black PhD and two healthy happy kids. I call that a track record of success. That’s just part of it, if you will.

If you and I have not done the hard, Deep Work to transform ourselves, and if we are not willing to continue to transform ourselves alongside (not top down) our clients, we hardly have the right to claim to be either transformed or a transformational coach. Transformation never stops. Which is a lesson that the much-embarrassed and now very publicly-outed Rachel Hollis and her husband have learned the hard way. Please see this:

Hilariously, as the now utterly-debunked David Hollis wrote in his book, he wouldn’t listen to a coach who didn’t have a solid track record of success. Um. Okay, David. For years, he and his wife have put on pricey marriage seminars even as their own marriage crumbled and they lied about it. Okay, Skeezix. Personally, and this is just me, I think you owe all those folks a refund.

Then there was ninja, which became just as popular among breathtakingly average people desperate for a moniker to feel special.

A ninja:

… is a warrior or assassin trained in the martial art ninjutsu, including the stealth methods of disguise, warfare and weapon skills.

Thousands of exceedingly average people of VERY average skills call themselves ninjas.

You will, again, I hope, forgive me. When everyone is a ninja, nobody is a ninja. When I have looked at these profiles I have seen little that establishes them as different, unique, special. That does not in any way imply that they are incompetent. Not at all. Just not particularly remarkable.

Plenty pitch nonsense to me, claiming to teach me how to write (clearly I can’t, although my profile notes multiple prize-winning books and my journalism background). They promised to offer me a ghost writer because clearly, I cannot write anything myself. My 5500 articles on Medium notwithstanding, mind you. And plenty of them curated.

Kindly, you ought to see the copy on some of the thought leader and ninja profiles who want to teach me how to write.

I wouldn’t hire those folks to write a want ad for a broken toilet. But that’s just me.

Then there are all those folks promising to teach me how to sell.

Um. Okay. Not only have I been teaching sales for the Fortune 500 for decades, I’ve won awards for my work, and I can still (and just did) score multi-billion dollar clients. Sales is relational. You cannot automate sales.

In fact, as I have seen happen time and again, what does happen is that these thought leaders and ninjas fill my inbox with mindless spam because they do not know how to write or sell. OR run a business, apparently.

Linked In ninjas run bots which pick “ solar energy” out of my background, an area of expertise that I left back in 1980, and pitch energy products and services to me. The end product of that is annoyance. And sadly, a very obvious demonstration that the person in question is not someone I’d do business with, ever.

Now to my title. The latest word that I see bandied around on Linked In and elsewhere is “Whisperer.” The Brand Whisperer, for example.

This term was hijacked from the book (and movie) The Horse Whisperer.

Here are the definitions:

1. a person who whispers.

“he’s a whisperer — you can hardly hear a word he says”

2. a person who spreads gossip or rumors.

“the whisperers say the committee that appointed him was divided

3. a person skilled in taming or training a specified kind of animal, typically using body language and gentle vocal encouragement rather than physical contact.

“he’s reportedly set to quit show business to become a horse whisperer”

I have had people tell me I am an animal whisperer. Maybe. There aren’t too many people I know who have massaged elephants, tigers, camels, horses, and extremely large cows, like this, on the dusty streets of a small Ethiopian town.

But not only do I not believe I deserve that moniker, for I need a lot more training, it would embarrass the holy shit out of me to be caught out claiming to be a Whisperer of ANY kind without extensive solid proof. I am loathe to lay claim to any kind of title I don’t believe I’ve earned.

Yet, Linked In folks are using the term -again, and this is my point- in too many cases in order to try to elevate average skills in a vast sea of average performers.

On one hand I absolutely understand not only the ease of starting an online business as well as the need for one during the Corona virus. On the other, as someone who has hired talent, at some point you and I have to do an honest appraisal of what we have to offer. Lots of folks need basic competence. There is a huge role in the world for reasonably-priced, basic competence.

The problem comes when the average American cannot possibly countenance themselves as average or basically competent. Which, most of us are. Like it or not. You and I do not have to be thought leaders or ninjas to get work. What gets in the way is when, out of either a sense of terrible insecurity or inflated self-importance ( or taking too many Tony Robbins courses), we believe we should get paid $1000 an hour for what is, quite frankly, $40 an hour quality work.

If all I need is a plumber to clear the roots out of my line to the city connection, I don’t need a ninja or thought leader. I need someone who does the job without costing me a kid’s college tuition to Harvard. Basic competence.

There is a great deal to be said for basic competence. Most of us want just that. We do not all want or need superstars, whose prices are usually just as inflated as the claims, but without the goods.

The terror of being average and ordinary, which most of us are (again, my hand is up), leads so many to claim the opposite without any proof. The problem is, as PG Barnett addressed in his apology to those he castigated in his original article ( I will leave it to you to find them both) is that yes of course we are all newbies at one point. We all start out emulating or copying to a degree, and then develop our own voices. But that takes years, it takes failures, false starts and monumental ignominy.

And that’s how you build skills. That’s how you find your voice. That’s how you discover if you are indeed meant for greatness, which is not true for most of us (again my hand is way up). It also teaches you to stop needing so desperately to be special.

It is a fine life lesson to learn to be deeply concerned about being special only to those people to whom we matter most rather than want the entire Cosmos pay homage to us.

But that’s not what I see on Linked In. These are seasoned adults doing this.

Social media and the Internet have allowed a great many of us to get away with claiming skills we don’t possess (85% of people lie on their resumes, 81% lie on their online dating profiles). Which underscores my point. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the vast majority of folks on Linked In lie on their profiles a well, and then conjure up movie-star quality terms to disguise average or less-than average skills.

Truly talented people often don’t have that kind of ego need.

Truly gifted folks don’t squander their time trying to appear as what they are not. If anything they are likely to downplay what they can do.

An exception to this, which causes me both hilarity and chagrin, is my distant cousin Edwin Hubble, for whom the telescope was named. In the superb book A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson reduced me to helpless laughter describing my handsome, brilliant, talented cousin as a lying asshole, a man who despite his extraordinary talents made a career of compulsively lying about just about everything.

And this was a guy who really did have all the chops: looks, brains, education, you name it.

He was still a lying asshole.

A coach of mine taught me years ago to under-promise and over-deliver. That’s how we delight our clients, earn trust and build the kind of platinum rep that makes us money. Millions of folks with basic competence do just that, end up with a very good business, a terrific life and do very well without ever having to convince themselves or anyone else that There’s a Giant Within.

With my cousin there was a Giant Asshole Within.

Of course we have a president (and it seems just about everyone else) who lies about everything. He then not only under-performs but publicly implodes by shitting his diapers when delivered a well-justified body blow by justices that he personally placed on SCOTUS. Now his SCROTUM shrivels when SCOTUS speaks. But I digress.

There is a West African ( attributed to the Anari) proverb that was hijacked by Teddy Roosevelt:

“Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.”

The louder we shout, the more people will look at us.

Yes. But also, the faster folks will find out we’re fakes, as with Rachel Hollis, if we promise more than we can deliver.

As with Trump. As with many folks on Linked In and elsewhere, who have developed the unfortunate habit of speaking loudly and carrying a toothpick.

You won’t get far.

Claiming to be a thought leader, or a ninja, or a a Grout Whisperer or whatever on earth the latest thing is does not an expert make. Performance does. Competence does. Competence just delivers. That’s what gets us paid.

For my money, and we all need it, it strikes me that committing to competence is a lot better strategy than claiming to be king.

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