7 Characteristics To Always Show, Never Tell

If I have to tell you that I'm a self-assured gentleman, I'm clearly neither.

This technically an 8th, but we’ll roll it into #1. Photo adapted from Patrick Fore on Unsplash

Leadership Land is littered with pitfalls, dangerous creatures, and environmental hazards. Treat this article as a warning sign posted around a danger zone. Whether you’re traveling to the top of Executive Mountain or simply trying to avoid the Career Swamp, heed these “stay away” signs – they are just as impactful as good advice pointing the way.

In our previous post, we wrote about how adjectives detract from résumés and other marketing materials. By making flimsy claims about a person, product, or service, adjectives violate the principles of “show, don’t tell” and “actions speak louder than words.” Let’s take the idea to the extreme with seven self-defeating claims: pretentious statements that demonstrate the exact opposite of what they claim.

The Seven Self-Defeating Claims

1. Being Powerful

Powerful people exude influence, but not with the radioactive glow that emanates from action-movie superheroes. They express their influence non-verbally, like a sharp-dressed leader taking the direct path through a scurrying mass of uniformed subordinates, parting them like Moses parting the Red Sea. You can see it when everyone’s gaze settles on the boss for guidance when an uncomfortable silence descends upon the group.

Telling people “I’m powerful” will immediately shatter the mystique. It’s a gust of wind that disperses the smoky aura of power, revealing your naked, vulnerable form underneath.

2. Self-Assurance

Saying you’re self-assured, self-confident, courageous, or the possessor of supreme self-esteem is proof of:

1. the exact opposite, or

2. delusion.

Only the gullible will believe you. Everyone else will roll their eyes (at best) or take it as a challenge to knock you down a few pegs (at worst)¹.

3. Social Grace

Have you ever heard a man or woman claiming to be a gentleman or lady? It’s as uncool as a teenager claiming to be cool.

4. Being Dangerous

This one is dedicated to all the belligerent drunks who took the fight outside, only to become intimately acquainted with the pavement. Or macho men who make empty threats on the internet. There’s even a subreddit dedicated to mocking people who claim to be dangerous.

This does not mean that you should never make threats – they make excellent deterrents. The key is to avoid making empty threats. If you talk the talk, you have to walk the walk. Never make a threat unless you’re prepared to carry it out, lest you gain a reputation for “all bark and no bite”.

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The real reason this is a self-defeating claim: someone who says “I’m dangerous” is much less dangerous than someone who projects an illusion of harmlessness. Maximum damage comes by making no threats at all. 2,500 years ago, Sun Tzu wrote:

Make your plans as dark and impenetrable as the night. When you move, fall upon your enemies like a thunderbolt.

Someone who claims to be dangerous puts enemies on high alert. The most harmful attacks are the ones you least expect, so someone claiming to be dangerous essentially gives you a head start to protect yourself or sabotage the threat-maker.

5. Beauty

There’s something ugly in claiming to be beautiful. Maybe it’s the arrogance. Maybe it reveals an unsightly hunger for external validation. Maybe it feels uncouth to invite comparisons and remind people of their inadequacies.

True beauty speaks for itself.

6. Intelligence

If you’re smart, you wouldn’t need to be told not to tell people that you’re smart.

The “I am very smart” subreddit mocks people for their grandiose displays of high IQ, grades in school, and fancy degrees. Many posts ridicule the bombastic utilization of ostentatious verbiage to fabricate a precarious veneer of erudition².

7. Being Funny

Nothing turns a belly laugh into the sound of crickets like telling people that your joke is funny. The claim reeks of desperation.

“I Know it When I See It”

Margaret Thatcher was known as the “Iron Lady” for her indomitable will and leadership style. Many opposed her policies, but none doubted her power. One of her quotes inspired this post.

Some readers will recognize this gem by Margaret Thatcher:

Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.

Her proverb succinctly covered two of the seven claims. Buried in the wisdom of her words is the fact that all seven pretentious claims have a lot in common:

1. They all claim superlative personal characteristics. Being smart implies being more intelligent than average. Being powerful implies having a greater degree of influence most others.

2. Each characteristic is ethereal. You know it when you see it, but it’s hard to define them with words.

#2 makes it difficult to grasp why these claims are self-defeating³. It’s better to apply the philosophy of via negativa (“negative way”) here by defining things by what they are not, rather than what they are. This creates an asymmetry between confirmation and discomfirmation:

• You won’t know at first glance if a silent person is powerful, dangerous, smart, etc. because you lack confirmatory evidence.

• You can be pretty sure that someone who obnoxiously claims to be powerful, dangerous, smart, etc. is not those things; they are providing disconfirmatory evidence.

This asymmetry is key to “show, not tell” and “demonstrate, do not explicate.” Exemplify your personal characteristics through deeds to provide confirmatory evidence of their existence. Don’t talk about them to avoid providing disconfirmatory evidence. Actions speak louder than words.

The Only Exception to the Rule

You should show, not tell. Your colleagues can say whatever they want about you. After all, other people singing your praises is how you build a strong reputation. If you can get people to rapturously describe you with all kinds of positive-sounding adjectives, it will have the exact opposite effect as you doing it yourself.

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Dear readers:

Even though we frequently mock listicles for being superficial, this post is a dalliance with that format (we need to grow this publication somehow). Please comment below if we begin falling into the trap of trading quality for quantity of content.

The topic of superlative personal characteristics touches on one of the foundational ideas of Adventures in Leadership Land. It’s a mental framework that we’ve been refining for the past ten years, and it’s probably the single most impactful idea for driving our personal and professional success so far. We’re not ready to go there yet – there’s a lot more material to flesh out first.

1. Loudly proclaiming your self-assurance is a viable strategy for:

• baiting enemies to conquer publicly and ostentatiously

• building a following of impressionable cultists

While it won’t convince most people that you’re actually self-assured, it’s still a useful tool for executing a hidden agenda.

2. Stupid use of big smart words.

3. We have several hypotheses for the “why”:

• Dunning-Kruger Effect

• Overtly calling attention to a superlative personal trait invites resentment and envy. Even if the claim is true, it elicits a feeling in the listener that taints the positive association between you and the trait.

• Our minds have built-in defenses against megalomaniacs.

All three hypotheses are weak and untested, so we didn’t include them in the main text.