I've sat in many classrooms - with many different employers - and I keep seeing the same lies being told to students. HR and training teams seem to incessantly buy into the slick and convincing pre-packaged nonsense of "gurus".

I want to make this abundantly clear - there is a difference between facts and opinions. There is a difference between science and superstition. There is a difference between truth and lies.

There are things we can prove, things we can disprove, things which sound convincing, and things which we just feel must be right.

It's important that leaders are convincing speakers, have well thought through plans, and know what they are talking about. Yet too much of modern leadership science seems to be taken up with myths rather than facts. No one can be expected to lead if the foundation of their knowledge is built on a bed of naked falsehoods.

I'd like to tackle some of the more common tropes which find their way into business leadership lessons around the globe. These are easily debunked factoids which sneak their way into classrooms under the pretence of being good science. As I hope to demonstrate, there are merely a series of poorly understood pieces of trivia which have no place in a modern organisation.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

I'm sure you've been in a meeting where someone in a very expensive suit has thrown up this image: Occasionally, they'll alter it to put their product in there - what laughs!

Maslow's Hierachy of Needs (MHN) looks, superficially, to be good science. It was created by a respected scientist who properly understood the limitations of the scope of his work, and has been used for over 80 years. Sadly, it has severe deficiencies - which leads to it frequently being misapplied.

• Culture Specific. Maslow was looking at "Western" people. Does every culture place such a high value on individualism? No.
• Age specific. How important is sex to you when you're a teenager? How about when you're in old age? How does the need for security change throughout your lifetime?
• Where is spiritual satisfaction on the list?
• Can you not be a poor, hungry person who is happily solving problems?
• What happens in hostile environments, like war? Do your needs change?
• Several studies have shown that Maslow's ordering is simply incorrect for a large number of people.

In short, it's poor form to overstate the importance in a management context.

So, why is this still being taught in businesses around the world as a suitable tool for managing people?

55% of Communication is through Body Language!

Oh dear! How many times has some "motivational speaker" told you to get up off your arse and jump around like a lunatic because "the majority of communication is non-verbal"?

I'll admit it - I'm one of those people. I get people moving around to help warm them up, to motivate them, to get their heart pumping. But that's because I think it makes people more confident - not because their body language has a such a large impact on their presentation.

Before we get in to the origin of this zombie statistic, let's ask a simple question: How do you quantify such an exact percentage which is true for all forms of communication?

Anyway, the 55% rule comes from Albert Mehrabian - a professor at UCLA. His actual findings look at people* discussing feelings and emotions. He discovered that in ambiguous situations, meaning was derived in the following ratios. 7% of message pertaining to feelings and attitudes is in the words that are spoken. 38% of message pertaining to feelings and attitudes is paralinguistic (the way that the words are said). 55% of message pertaining to feelings and attitudes is in facial expression.

He specifically says

"Please note that this and other equations regarding relative importance of verbal and nonverbal messages were derived from experiments dealing with communications of feelings and attitudes (i.e., like-dislike). Unless a communicator is talking about their feelings or attitudes, these equations are not applicable."

http://www.kaaj.com/psych/smorder.html

This isn't to say that facial expressions aren't important - they are - but businesses should not be fooled into thinking that simply improving the body language of their staff will result in better communication.

*The final kicker is that this ratio doesn't apply to all people - just women. Yes, that's right, Mehrabian's experiment was only conducted on women! The women listened to single words recorded on to tape. No men were involved, and no face-to-face communication took place.

Is this really the foundation upon which businesses are basing their beliefs?

We Only Use 10% of Our Brains

I've sat in seminars where some motivational speaker has tried to enthuse the crowd by telling us about our limitless potential. "Did you know," they squeal with glee, "that you only use 10 percent of your brain? You have vast, untapped depth which will allow you to conquer any situation."

The polite response in such situations is to ask the presenter which bits of their brain they would like scooped out.

This 10% "fact" is a complete myth. It's so barely plausible that it's easy enough to demonstrate to small children that it's wrong.

There's no doubt the human brain is a remarkable organ. It contains many facets which we still don't completely understand. With hard work, it's possible to expand our knowledge, and alter our neuroplasticity.

Our brain is always in use - all of it. Not everyone uses it to their full potential, not everyone works as hard as they can, and - if people engaged their brain a little more - this pernicious 10% myth would finally die off.

NLP™

Neuro-Linguistic Programming™. All three of those words sound very scientific. I mean wow!

The first thing to say about NLP™, is that it is a product to be packaged and sold. Hence the ™. It is not scientific term - it is a marketing term.

The second thing to say about NLP™, is that it doesn't work. I don't mean that some people find it unhelpful, I mean that every piece of scientific research into it has conclusively shown that it doesn't work.

So why, in the 21st century are HR departments still wasting vast sums of money on this?

Myers Briggs

I've already blogged about how Myers Briggs is little better than astrology. In short, MBTI was specifically designed to get British women from the 1940s into jobs which are suitable to their temperament. Neither Myers nor Briggs had any psychological or statistical training.

Despite repeated testing, there has never been any evidence that MBTI is accurate or useful.

The fact that this nonsense has stayed around so long is a dark stain on modern business.

...And Yet...

Perhaps you have violently disagreed with my categorisation of your favourite management fad. What I'd like you to understand is that what seems sensible to you seems downright bizarre to other people.

Have a read of these next two examples and tell me if you think that they are sensible ways to manage people.

Blood Type

Should you manage people differently depending on their temperament? Probably; different people have different needs.
Should you attempt to determine your employee's attitude via their blood type?

Wait? What?

It sounds weird - yet it's fairly common practice in Japan.

Take a look at the chart. Doesn't it seem familiar? Much the same traits which are "measured" by MBTI and other associated quackery. There's no science in it, of course, yet individuals are encouraged to marry "compatible" blood types and bosses are actively recruiting people based on their blood type.

Essentially, it's a horoscope with scientific pretensions.

It has all the appearance of a real science - yet there is no genuine research to back it up. Take a look at MBTI, NLP, or any other management technique which sounds like it has a scientific basis. How is it any different from the superstition of blood types?

Handwriting Analysis

I'm sure you remember having to submit a handwritten application for a job. It was probably many years ago - before computers were widespread. Unless, of course, you live in France! In some parts of France, Graphology - the "science" of interpreting handwriting - is alive and well.

I'm not sure what an analysis of my handwriting would show, other than I never hand write anything longer than my signature on official forms...

Curiously, some 50% of French companies use handwriting analysis. What would your reaction be if your HR team insisted that every employee had to submit themselves to such nonsense? That team assignments and pay rises would be based on some witch-doctor's reading of your penmanship

Unthinkable - surely?

Well, it works for me!

"Ah, but it works for me..." is usually the response I get when I bring this up.

Personally, that sounds a lot like an elephant stone to me. You see, I have this stone that I keep in my pocket to keep the elephants away. It's working splendidly - I haven't been attacked by an elephant ever since I started carrying it around.

Aspirin is a great example of this. If you take 100 people with headaches and give them aspirin, 60% of them will report a reduction in pain. After 2 hours, 30% of them will be pain free.

If you perform the same experiment with a placebo - that is a pill with no medicinal properties - after 2 hours 6% of people will report being pain free.

So, 6% of people will swear that a tic-tac cured their headache. Is that a sound basis on which to refuse aspirin next time your head hurts?

There is an excellent and easily readable paper from The Journal of Headache and Pain which explains the placebo effect on headaches.

What Next?

It's easy to point out on a blog that someone is talking rubbish. It's a lot harder to do so in real life. The next time someone tries to impress you with one of these grand sounding systems, you should have the courage to stick your hand up and ask for proof.

Speaking truth to power is rarely popular. But I think it's important that the people who lead us understand that they cannot build on a foundation of lies.

Because, at their heart, that's what these systems are - lies. Clever lies we tell people in order to manipulate them. And that's no way to build trust between management and employees.

I filled in a few forms, answered some questions, and the very professional looking lady marked up my paper and said, "I see that you're a Scorpio. That means you're focused externally, and you deal with things rationally and logically. You do have a tendency to act via your intuition - sometimes to your detriment."

O...k..., I thought, that's a bit of a weird thing to bring up in a business context. Working for a high tech company, I thought we were supposed to use... I dunno... science rather than make-believe. I expressed these concerns to the woman running the course.

"Ah," she said, looking through my results, "I see that you're also Chinese Year of the Goat. That means you tend to value personal considerations above objective criteria. So you often give more weight to social implications than to logic."

I was left rattled and confused. How can my personality be so restricted and codified by something as random as the time of my birth? Was there any research behind this, I ask?

"Oh yes!" She confidently replied, "Astrology has been practised for a long time. And thousands of top companies use it to make important decisions about who to hire and promote. By looking at the stars, your business can gain a competitive edge!"

...

Let that sink in for a moment. Companies are assessing their workforce and promoting their rising stars based on the planetary alignment at the time of their birth.

Does that even sound plausible? What rational company would do that? Surely no responsible person uses astrology to understand themselves or others.

Gentle reader, I am teasing you! The above conversation did happen but it didn't involve the Zodiac; it involved Myers-Briggs.

For those who don't know, Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter, the mystery writer Isabel Briggs Myers, invented the Myers-Briggs system during World War Two. There was a growing need to place women in the workforce and, therefore, women needed to be assessed to see what sort of work they were suited to.

The pair undertook no scientific study, looked at no test results, and didn't consult with any qualified psychiatrists, psychologists, or social scientists. Which, considering that they held no qualifications in these fields, didn't bode well for the accuracy of their project.

Despite claims that they based their system on the work of Carl Jung, he rejected the idea of simple stratification out of hand.

"There is such a factor as introversion, there is such a factor as extraversion. The classification of individuals means nothing, nothing at all." Carl Jung - McGuire, William and R. F. C. Hull, eds., C. G. Jung Speaking (Princeton University Press, 1977).

Today, Myers-Briggs tests are taken by millions of people every year. This nets the private company which owns Myers-Briggs around $20 million per year.

Oh, yes, this isn't a scientific test in any sense. It is a programme specifically designed to make money. If you want to take the test, you need to pay. If you want to administer the test, you need to pay.

Whenever scientists have attempted to study it, the results have been overwhelmingly negative. The most common complaint is that "personality traits" are meant to be fixed - yet when people take the test repeatedly, they often find that their types change radically.

Myers-Briggs is, to put it mildly, bullshit.

Magical Thinking

People want a pill which will make them thin. A herb to make their hair glossy and their skin clear. One simple trick to make $$$ working from home. A mantra to chant which will just make everything better.

We have magical-thinking-syndrome. That if we just invoke certain incantations, and do a certain course, all our troubles will just vanish into thin air.

Creating a team is hard work. Self improvement is hard work. Communicating with others is hard work. Becoming part of a Cargo Cult is no substitute for deeply examining yourself and your working environment - and then making changes to both.

You can't simply shortcut it by find your secret, magic code.

But that's what we want, apparently. That's what sells. Perhaps businesses love magical thinking like Myers-Briggs and NLP because they want to show that they care but they don't want to do the hard work that will actually make positive changes to their working environments.

People want to have a simple, foolproof method which will allow them to overcome their difficulties. Myers-Briggs, NLP, Astrology, and sacrificing chickens will give us the illusion that we are doing something.

But then, I would say that; I'm a Scorpio.

Moderation Policy

I welcome all comments and criticisms. I am, however, the evil overlord of this blog. The commenting rules are as follows...

• "MB / NLP works for me therefore" style comments will not be accepted. The plural of anecdote is not data.
• "Studies have shown" comments will be accepted when linked to an actual scientific study.
• "You are so closed minded" is a fair argument - but it is up to you to show me the proof.
• "These major companies / important people use X therefore it is good" is argumentum ad verecundiam. It can also be easily refuted by pointing out that Lehman Brothers was heavily into Myers Briggs.