Fake Your Way to the Top!

First, starting way back in the 1950s, you had to be “positive” to get ahead in business, i.e., ready to see the glass half full even when it was lying shattered on the floor. Then, somewhere in the first few years of the 21st century, the bar was raised to “passionate.” It wasn’t good enough to feel “positive” about spending your day doing cold calls to potential customers in Dayton, you be had to be “passionate” about it. And now, apparently, even that isn’t good enough – you have to develop a YES! Attitude, as in throwing back your head, balling up your fists, and screaming YEESSS!!!

The purveyor of this new over-the-top, fan-like, enthusiasm is Jeffrey Gitomer, in his brand new Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude. What attracted me to the display in the bookstore was the odd packaging: a hardcover, but smaller than the average paperback, with a bright red ribbon for a page-marker (a biblical touch, someone in the publishing industry explained to me.) Most of the pages contain fewer than 200 words, but don’t try filling in the margins with notes: The pages are too slick and shiny for your average pen, so if you want to make notes, get your own damn paper.

How do you achieve a state of transcendent YES!-like excitement about your job? Brainwashing is recommended. Gitomer himself read Napoleon Hill’s 1937 classic of delusional thinking – Think and Grow Rich—over 100 times in one year and watched the same motivational video five days a week plus weekends. While reading the gurus and reciting the prescribed self-affirmations, it helps to cut off contact with the outer world. In particular, Gitomer says, don’t watch the news. It’s all “negative” anyway.

Of course you’ll have to purge your environment of “negative” people too, as all the motivational gurus advise. Gitomer tells us he walks away from their “pity parties” to “focus on me.” “Let nothing or no one get in your way.”

Now, with Darfur, global warming, Iraq and any recently bereaved or otherwise afflicted co-workers out of the way, you can “SMILE ALL THE TIME.” “A simple smile,” Gitomer tells us, “is a powerful atti-tool.” Smiles “show your internal feelings, externally.” And if you don’t actually feel smiley internally, just fake it till you make it.

Nobody said it would be easy. In fact, the YES! Attitude takes constant maintenance, and one of the illustrations shows Gitomer wearing a blue work shirt with the label “Positive Attitude Maintenance Department” on his chest. Read something “positive” every day, say “positive things all day long.” Practice being “selfish on the inside” while exuding helpfulness on the outside.

Don’t be distracted by the crude selfishness. What Gitomer and countless other motivational gurus are recommending is the mentality of a crafty slave: “Oh master, I am SO glad you transferred me to the Dayton accounts (even though they’ve been inactive for 18 months), and, while I’m at it, would you like me to polish your shoes with my neck tie?” Smiles, at least in human society, are gestures of submission, and routinely demanded of women as a token of subordinate status. The happy slave smiles; the well-trained “lady” smiles; now even the male white collar striver has to keep his lips pulled back in an expression of eager compliance. Only the top guys get to snarl and snap their way through the day.

Here’s another idea, one that’s every bit as “positive” as the gurus advise: Call it Constructive Complaining. Don’t avoid “negative” people – seek them out and talk about what needs to be changed. Remember the movie “Nine to Five,” where the much-put-upon characters played by Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin and Dolly Parton finally get together to share their woes and plan the overthrow of an abusive boss? Take your grievances seriously and turn that “pity party” into a revolutionary strategy meeting.

Comments

[Andrea]

Is it just me, or is this also how moms are routinely advised to act around their kids? Are we now supposed to treat our bosses like our children?

[Different]

Hmmm, Barb, I don't mean to break it to you, but back in High School, I wrote a similar article about this process called, "why our parents, the baby boomers, SUCK!"

It was a manifesto against the whole self-esteem movement, how it was destroying us, and making the business world, school, etc, anything but about merit/hard work/intelligence.

Unfortunately, I can't find it, my parents, well, kind of burned it 10 years ago and sent me to a "shrink" because I was "too negative" and "needed anti-depressants to function properly".

The medical/economic repercussions towards me, and other innocent children, who fell victim to this all too common coddling self-esteem psychiatric practice back in the 1990's will be debated for decades to come, especially as we, the "children" age.

I don't know how we will honestly turn out with our brains, very much, surgically altered this way through very powerful neurotic drugs at a very young age. It feels like I'm never "growing up". By that, I don't mean I'm immature or feel childish, or confused, or uneducated, if anything, I feel MORE mature/older/experienced, it's just that my personality seems to change very rapidly from year to year. Most people go through personality changes as they age, usually about 3 in a lifetime, but with me, it's accelerating, and I've cycled through at least 3 of them already at a 5 year interval.

This is definitely a boomer cult Barb. Sometimes it's referred as "new age fundamentalism".

Go to your Cole's note, the "self-help" section is filled with this boomer trite. It's the religion of boomerism! It seems like everyone has a happy little narcist, "me, me, me", legacy, self-esteem phony drinking tale to tell before they retire. It's pathetic!

I talked to my grandparents before about this, they mostly valued workers who did good work and kept to themselves/kept the gossip/crap low, needless to say, that has changed fundamentally. It's seems BS is "sexy" to the boomers and industry these days.

But you are wrong were it all started, the boomers mentor who started this movement wasn't Hill's "Think and Grow Rich" (although that seems more direct). It wasn't Ronald Reagan either, as some allege. Nope, he wasn't the daddy.

It was Descartes’, "I think, therefore I am" philosophy. The university is modeled after this now as well. Corporations follow this to the extreme too.

The funny thing is, these "educated/experienced" elites would realize that part of being educated is KNOWING THAT 99% OF WHAT YOU THINK UP IS CRAP!

Sheesh, if I became everything I thought up, or the world became every little stupid thing I tend to think up, that would be one hellish world! I think what separates smart people, from not so smart people, is smart people have a much better ability to figure out the 99% of the crap (and quickly discard it) and keep the very useful 1% (both creative-right brain and logical-left) to the good.

[Different]

"Is it just me, or is this also how moms are routinely advised to act around their kids?"

You are NOT supposed to behave that way around your kids either. Read my post above. It's ALL AROUND BAD BEHAVIOUR TO HAVE, PERIOD! Please do your kids a favour and stop doing it, they will go insane, eventually, UNLESS YOU STOP.

Think about what happens to them when they turn 18, 19, 20, 21, 25, 30! after you "teach" them "this, self-esteem"...

[Daven]

Brainwashing is good. I have seen this same attitude in Amway, The Mormons and other such cults. My employer (Direct General Corporation) is insisiting I do the same thing here, and I resist.

I can't be in a bad mood. I can't have an "off" day. I can't complain about the customers. I can't have emotions. I must accept the abuse heaped upon me. I must love the company benefits. I must be grateful that I have a job.

My supervisior has gone to the point of having weekly status meetings where no negative items are allowed. If a problem is identified and a solution is proposed, and the solution is worse than the cause, I'm not allowed to say so.

They hired me for my expertise and my professional skills. They won't reward that, and punish when I do express something that is counter to their expectations, and go out of their way to attempt to get me to quit. This kind of brain washing and mindless slavering brown nosing (apparently up to the waist) is one of the worst ideas they ever have.

Talk about being a wage slave. This is mindless robotics in the workplace, the same stage that the "office of tomorrow" was supposed to get to.

I guess we are there.

[Merja Rostila]

Hello!

I just read your newest book Bait and switch : the (futile) pursuit of the American dream which came out in finnish. I was thrilled by it. No other writer can be so funny and seriously to the point at the same time. It's wonderful that there are in US at least some courageous people who aren't afraid of the right wing hegemony. I wrote also a small presentation to our library home pages (http://www.pirkkala.fi/kirjasto/) about your book and recommended it to our readers. Thank you for enjoyable reading moments. I will follow your blog with great expectations.
Merja Rostila Finland

[Tom]

Just a quick note to Different's post: The boomers didn't invent this "attitude adjustment"/quasi-religious approach to life. It happened to us too. The whole idea is the constant by-product of the toxic culture we live in, sustained by the corporate sector to keep us in line and "productive" at any expense. As long as corporations see continuing profits (at the expense of their workers, their clients and the environment) all is pronounced well with the world by the corporate owned media. If you want some good reading try Adbuster's magazine.

[Anarcissie]

Corporations, governments, and other similar institutions arise out of daily life. In particular, happy-face brainwashing arises out of the desire for sales, which is what you create profits from in a capitalist system. Happy faces raise sales because buyers (that's most of you) tend to buy more from happy faces than from sad or angry faces. The more sales, the more profits -- the source of the goodies you and everyone else want.

Needless to say, the strain on the human psyche from constantly creating a false happy face is terrific. But if you don't get those sales you won't live in a nice house and your children won't go to MIT.

If you don't like this arrangement you have to change your life, not buy a different magazine.

[That Girl]

I think Michael Moore also made this point using the vomit-inducting book Who Moved the Cheese as an example of the "new" way we were supposed to think about things - the "smart" mice dont complain about the move, or wait for the move to reverse itself - the smart mice adapt to the change and get to live.
Of course with all the attention focused on what to do when the cheese moves, mysteriously the move itself is not even questioned - either the need for it, who is doing the "moving", or why the move is necessary.
The whole book is really a cry for unions - people should be able to vote in their own interest without worrying they will starve for voting.

[Anarcissie]

Unions would be a step in the right direction. But they to are a strategy for obtaining profit, and so that happy face is likely to show up in the union hall as well.

[Millard Fullbore]

Anarcissie said:

...mysteriously the move itself is not even questioned....

So there's a book title for Barb or anyone: Who Cut That Cheese?

[Ron Davison]

Why do you think that they call it a corporate cult(ure)?

I like the point Jim Collins popularizes in his Good to Great book, what he calls the Stockdale Paradox. Be brutally honest about the facts and keep faith that things will work out well. Do just the latter and you become a delusional caricature; just the first and you become hopelessly depressed.

[realpc]

Human beings have always been miserable, and have always looked for ways to be happy, at least some of the time.

We are the naturally miserable species, maybe because of our greater conscious awareness.

So of course we have all kinds of religions and therapies. This is not some vast right-wing conspiracy, as Barbara E. implies.

A lot of these things are helpful, at least some of the time. It's better than sticking your head in the oven, or taking Prozac.

Different said:

"smart people have a much better ability to figure out the 99% of the crap (and quickly discard it) and keep the very useful 1% (both creative-right brain and logical-left) to the good."

No, Diff, it's the opposite. Smart people are so confident in their smartness, they accept the 99% along with the 1%. You have to be stupid, or believe in your own stupidity (and ALL of us are stupid), in order to have any wisdom.

And Different, you have become an expert at blaming your misery on others. That's why you like this blog. It's all someone else's fault.

There never was a Garden of Eden where humans were good and nice and happy. There never will be one, not even after your revolution.

[realpc]

That Girl,

Yeah, Michael Moore really has it figured out. Keep the same stupid job for your whole life, even if it no longer has any purpose.

[realpc]

I think someone might misunderstand what I said about humans being miserable creatures. I don't mean we are miserable all the time. We all find a lot of things that make us happy, when we aren't thinking about what a wreck the world is, or how everyone we love can die at any moment.

I think people like Barbara E. find their happiness in criticizing our capitalist culture. She is greatly admired for this, and we all like to be admired. And there's the intellectual challenge of finding everything that's bad and ignoring everything that's good.

Many of us find some happiness from our work, and of course from our hobbies and our social lives. And from being entertained -- there is no shortage of that in our miserable capitalist society.

But I just meant that underlying all our surface happiness is profound uncertainty and anxiety. Other animals don't worry too much about the future, since they probably focus mainly on the present.

Humans have always performed complicated rituals and sacrifices and asked their gods for help. We are the species that worries. If you know anyone who says they never worry, they are pretending.

So that's why I said we are the miserable species. That's why all that positive thinking stuff can be so helpful. Barbara E. makes it all sound ridiculous, and I'm sure a lot of it is. But there is also a lot of truth in it. We can choose to be generally positive or generally negative. Being positive takes effort. It's easy to drift into despair, and there is nothing worse than despair.

It's also easy to drift into semi-despair. Semi-despair isn't so terrible, but it undermines your life in subtle ways. It creates addiction, lack of success, divorce, isolation, general unhappiness.

I know you will say that it's important to stay unhappy so we can focus on what's wrong with the society, so we can make it better. I don't agree. Negativity will make things worse, not better. It's dangerous to change things out of anger, without any reason to think your changes will be constructive. That was the mistake of Marxism.

Following those stupid postive-thinking strategies is better than working yourself into a rage and inventing evil villains to blame for all the world's problems.

[Charlie Green]

Henry Ford and Dale Carnegie also had similar programs to keep their workers happy. Besides telling them to work harder or be fired. Ford invented charcoal briquets so his workers could cook out on their days off (if only it had been so easy . . .); Carnegie built libraries, not noticing that educated workers were restive workers.

Didn't any of these sniping commenters read/see "Roots"? Or "Finian's Rainbow"? Or remember Roy Orbison's "Working For The Man"? Or hear about fuedalism and surfs? Indentured servitude? Peonage? Sharecropping? "Different" seems to find knelling to the boss a grand gesture. I'll bet he's against unions or anything else which would help workers.

I see this "happy face" effort as the last ditch of employers to brainwash employees since slavery and all that stuff is illegal. In the USA, anyway. Unfortunately, all that "public education" has made them too uppity.

But they're working on that problem.

[Anarcissie]

Charlie Green: 'I see this "happy face" effort as the last ditch of employers to brainwash employees since slavery and all that stuff is illegal. In the USA, anyway. Unfortunately, all that "public education" has made them too uppity.'

The happy face is just business. The bosses didn't drop from Mars; they're like the rest of us, they want profits. Where there is human interaction yet a lack of guns, happy faces tend to bring about more profits than sad or angry faces.

As for education, its general function has been not to make people more uppity but quite the opposite, it disciplines them to the acceptance of authority and the seemingly purposeless humdrum of industrial work. It may even give them some of the skills they need to be good workers, although big corporations are often ready to do that themselves. If you read the WSJ for awhile you will see considerable concern for education.

[bellenoelle]

i'm an american living in london, england, and i do wish Constructive Complaining would become the norm over here. english people in general sure know how to moan, but they don't complain - whether it's more dysfunction on the trains, puppet-stringed management or just the neighbour's loud labrador, they tend to suck it up and look away. still, they'll be damned it they're going to smile about it! and that's a major relief. i always found the happy-face culture of work in the states v. depressing...

[Chuck Bartok]

Very Interesting Post and comments.
We have an Open Mike Discussion Broadcast relating to Hill's Classic. YThink & Grow Ruich.
You all meay enjoy listening on-line, download past 31 episodes, or Better Yet, Join us Live,
Tuesday & Thursday, 12 noon EST.

Chuck Bartok
530-798-0245
www.focussociety.com

[Linda, Minneapolis]

Generally, I do think it's important to be pleasant at work. Let's face it, nobody likes being around chronically grumpy people.

However, the manic business gurus are driving us over the edge. A few years ago in a low-wage retail job, my coworkers were introduced to the "Raving Fans" concept--book & audiotape--which we were supposed to grab with gusto. (Luckily, I ducked out of the training as I was leaving for another job.)

"Raving Fans" in a nutshell, from the book's front flap ...

> Your customers are only satisfied because their expectations are so low and because no one else is doing better. Just having satisfied customers isn't good enough anymore. If you really want a booming business, you have to create raving fans.

Customers as "Raving Fans"? Are we taking consumerism to ridiculous new heights? (Or lows?)

All I could think was, "We're hawking rental movies for chrissakes." Since then, I've seen Raving Fans signs displayed in a few small retail establishments I frequent. I feel sorry for the poor saps who have to be put through this exercise in eternal enthusiasm.

This kind of stuff only makes me more cynical, not more enthusiastic.

[JP Merzetti]

Well folks, welcome to the age of raving, raging corporatism.
I am sore amazed that Dixie Chicks can still win Grammies - proves that fundamentalists don't own every single thing yet.

What Babs described here used to be reserved for desperate youngsters trying to win Disneyland jobs - later as the entire cosmophere of the McFranchised cheez doodled happy dead souled face of a Wal-Eyed and Star****ed America.
Which used to be what intelligent parents would threaten kids with - to finish a decent education and just not go that route.

Now - we just must ponder, how many mix-mastered grads are transfixed and nailed to their respective attitudinal crosses?

The corporate beast rages, happily devouring each and every thing - including the planet's climate, whatever oil is actually left, and any other resource worth fighting over, I suppose.
Why the hell would this beastie not be content until it buys our souls?

And to the poor misguided generational (some letter in the alphabet....) why would you ever consider that boomers invented any of this crap? They were babes and sucklings when Las Vegan suburbanites were camping out on their front lawns with sunglasses and very dry martinis - there to witness the lovely evening colors of blasted radiation,(80 miles north) of the sort that took out John Wayne - he who could put down any villain - just not that one.

I think you should take three steps to the right, paint your teeth, sleep well and upon waking have a listen to anything that has survived of Country Joe and the Fish. After which the collected entire life's work of Frank Zappa might clue you into the idea that there was indeed a concerted and highly-decibeled effort expended
forty years or so ago...to wrestle with the beast.
This is what was done.
What has anyone done recently, at least since the famous Seattle riots?

The Orwellian nightmare never will need to happen - it just isn't necessary.
A rather Huxley-ish infotained complacency has done quite nicely, serves the purpose, and sells no end of toys and trinkets to fill the corporate coffers.
Coffers for them - coffins for us.

[chris]

Charlie Green, you wrote:

"Henry Ford and Dale Carnegie also had similar programs to keep their workers happy."

Henry Ford may have introduced many advances to manufacturing, but Dale Carnegie never manufactured anything except some helpful psychological information. He did not run steel mills. He wrote books and ran seminars and his best known work was probably "How to Win Friends and Influence People."

You wrote:

"Carnegie built libraries, not noticing that educated workers were restive workers."

Yeah. You're arguing that America went downhill and suffered economic and social turmoil because Andrew Carnegie vastly expanded the library system in the US.

There's only one problem with your argument. The spread of knowledge and the fact that higher and higher levels of education became available to everyone in this country no matter what social stratum they were from has led to an increasing level of national prosperity that has only suffered one major setback since the time US Steel was created.

I'd say Carnegie did more than his fair share to ensure that people in the US saw improvements in their lives.

The "Robber Barons" did more to improve this country and open the doors to a prosperous future than almost any other group of individuals.

[realpc]

Of course it's annoying when sales people descend on you with phony enthusiasm. But it's equally annoying when they're surly and aloof, or busy chatting with friends on a cell phone. They are not doing me a big favor by allowing me to enter their store, and I can always go somewhere else.

If you want your business to succeed, you have to respect and value your customers. And that might mean teaching your staff politeness. I agree with Barbara E. thhis can be taken too far. But isn't it human nature to take everything good to ridiculous extremes?

That's how we find a reasonable balance. Somewhere between utterly phony niceness and vicious rudeness we find the ideal attitude for daily life.

Yes, we often have to fake it. Hungover, mad at your wife? Your co-workers and/or customers should not be punished for it.

It's not because of capitalism. The only people who get to act out their nasty moods in public are those who are financially independent. (Oh, wouldn't that be great!!) And, to some extent, bosses. But bosses have bosses, so they can't be rude all the time.

There never was a society where people didn't have to fake it, to some degree, most of the time.

[Hattie]

I'm failing to feel perky right now because a colleagues friend was murdered yesterday.
As we wade through the garbage that is life in America these days, we must smile and make nice.
People are dying. Dying!

[realpc]

Hattie,

Was your colleague's friend murdered by right-wing fanatics? Or by someone driven mad by the lousy economy?

How exactly is the Bush administration responsible for this murder?

[Anarcissie]

realpc: '....It's not because of capitalism. ....'

Some of it is. Back in the days of feudalism and slavery, the upper classes could not only act nasty if they liked, but were expected to. The field for overtly nasty behavior was much reduced by capitalism, although certainly it hasn't been eliminated. The torture of being nice has been imposed instead, and of course (according to reports in this blog) its heaviest weight is falling upon the lowest ranks, as usual. Especially in Retail -- Retail is hell. But at least they don't have to beat the outlanders to death with clubs for a day's work.