7 MORE Characteristics to Always Show, Never Tell | Part 2
7 MORE Characteristics to Always Show, Never Tell | Part 2
Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.
Late last year, we published our first seven self-defeating claims. Here are seven more saboteurs to your credibility!
More Self-Defeating Claims (Continued from #7)
8. Humility
When someone proudly proclaims their humility, the irony thickens until you can cut it with a knife. Overt pride isn’t even necessary – all you need is a superlative:
I’m floored the board gave him the “most humble servant of the Lord” award. They ignored the fact that I’m ten times as humble as he is!
An overt claim to humility isn’t necessary, either. The modern-day social media humblebrag (sort of) fits the bill for “self-defeating claim.” There’s an entire subreddit dedicated to people trying to clumsily disguise their self-aggrandizement with humility.
Let’s cut the pretense and hold a full-blown humility contest! To the winner goes the bragging rights and an ostentatious medal emblazoned with “World’s Most Humble Person.” The humility contest would be just as futile as a peeing contest, with the added distinction of being completely paradoxical.
You’re not peeing humble-ing hard enough! And stop aiming upwind!
9. Being Famous
If someone asks you:
Don't you know who I am?!
The answer is self-evident.
In response to their indignance, we suggest:
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
“Now that you mention it, you do look like someone from the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list. Family resemblance, maybe?”
Stare unblinkingly just long enough to unnerve them, then walk away.
10. Indifference
It’s not self-defeating to say “whatever, I don’t care” in response to “what flavor of Frappucino should we get you on our next Starbucks raid?” Self-defeat comes when someone goes out of their way to express indifference.
To illustrate, here are four levels of self-defeat ascending from “mild” to “wild”:
I don't care what you think.
I couldn’t care less what you think1.
I care so little that I'm developing a burning desire to rant about my not caring.
To prove how little I care, I’m going to climb to the top of social media mountain to shout about my indifference.
Even the first (mildest) level is self-defeating; if you truly didn’t care what someone thinks, you’d treat them with icy silence. When someone exerts effort to proclaim indifference, you know that they care a hell of a lot…often about their own superiority, gained by dismissing someone else.
It’s easy to laugh at people like this, or at emo kids whose proclamations of indifference belie just how much they care. But this humiliation can ensnare you when it’s time to protect your reputation. If you’re an academic, executive, or politician – someone who relies heavily on social currency – this is a real risk, not just something that happens to the other guy.
There’s something undignified about trying too hard to defend one’s reputation, but action bias also makes it difficult to ignore the haters. Many people opt for the middle ground of feigning indifference. This is a mistake. Responding with “I don’t care what you have to say” is not only a self-defeating claim, it also feeds the trolls by providing more visibility to their vitriol.
Resist action bias. Sometimes the best insult is to ignore someone. Think twice before you dignify someone’s jabs with a response about how little they hurt you – if it were truly painless, you wouldn’t even notice.
11. Being Important
Being important is closely related to being powerful, which was #1 on our list. Just as saying “I’m powerful” chases away the awe that confers power, declaring “I’m important” chases away the goodwill that induces deference. These self-defeating claims are foul odors that drive out respect, like how a silent ninja fart can scatter the occupants of a crowded elevator. What’s most telling is that you usually hear claims of “I’m important” or even “I’m irreplaceable” just before the Board of Directors fires a founder from his own company. Or just before a hotshot employee is reassigned to a “special project” in Siberia.
We gave self-proclaimed importance its own entry, separate from self-proclaimed power, so we could highlight this chiasmus:
All important people are powerful, but not all powerful people are important.
Although “I’m important” and “I’m powerful” are self-defeating in identical ways, power and importance are not interchangeable. The distinction matters to anyone with direct reports or “soft authority” over others, but we’ll have to unpack that in a future episode of Adventures in Leadership Land.
12. Being Successful
You probably produce memos and reports, all laden with corporate-speak, for your bosses on Executive Mountain. You know, the kind where you refer to yourself in the third person:
The [Group that you lead] set eleven SMART goals, met or exceeded all KPIs, and put cover sheets on 99.7% of all TPS reports.
These reports claim “I’m successful” in the objective sense of meeting a clear-cut goal. This is a self-evident claim, not a self-defeating one.
However, when you start saying “I’m successful” in the subjective sense of being a “successful person,” you start running into trouble. What does “being successful” even mean, anyway? Does a successful lawyer win at lawyering by remaining employed and avoiding disbarment? Is an unsuccessful actress what you call the Starbucks barista who makes Frappucinos for the indifferent?
Claiming to be a successful (insert job title here)2 is self-defeating because the adjective is too vague. At best, claiming to be successful adds nothing. At worst, the claim implies that you don’t have a specific list of accomplishments worth mentioning. It’s better to let someone else, like a biographer, talk about how you’re a successful (insert job title).
If you must toot your own horn, it’s best to let the objective facts speak for themselves. For example, compare:
I’m a successful rocket sciendoctor arsonist.
with:
I made $50 million (in pre-hyperinflation 2023 dollars) by burning down aerospace research and repair facilities, collecting fraudulent insurance payouts, and breaking out of a supermax prison twice.
13. ___________, but…
Whenever someone says “with all due respect,” what they really mean is “kiss my assets.”
In a similar vein, any statement followed by a “but” invalidates the preceding statement. Our favorites:
I’m not a racist, but [insert racist comment]
I’m not a gossip, but [insert juicy rumor]
No pun intended, but [something punny from the dad-joke hall of fame]
No offense, but [something more offensive than a congealed elevator fart]
These are the most obvious examples of self-defeating claims. They should be the most easily avoidable, but3 they’re still the most common. Most people armed with common sense and a dab of introspection can avoid self-defeating claims #1 through #12, but4 everyone seems prone to making self-defeating statements from entry #13 – us included.
If we’re stuck with these self-defeating claims, we might as well make use of them. If you need to provide constructive feedback but want to keep your insultee listener from becoming overly defensive, follow this template:
[Praise]. [Constructive criticism], but [praise].
We call this a “turd sandwich” because you’re feeding the listener constructive criticism nestled between two slabs of praise. The self-defeating “but” after the constructive criticism helps to mitigate the sting. Sometimes, this strategy works so well that the listener will completely ignore our constructive criticism.
Oops.
14. Being a Liar (Liar’s Paradox)
We don’t often hear people claiming to be liars. In recent memory, we’ve only heard one such claim, which we made ourselves.
Claiming to be a liar is self-defeating because of the liar’s paradox. If you claim to be a liar, and are indeed a liar, then you just told the truth…which undermines your claim that you’re a liar5.
Honorable Mention
When we brainstormed ideas for self-defeating claims #8 through #14, we came up with two ideas that didn’t quite make the cut:
“I’m ethical/honest.”
It’s not just a red flag to hear someone say this; it’s a full-blown communist parade. A series of questions immediately come to mind:
Is this person delusional?
Is this person trying to trick me?
What are they trying to sell?
Are they testing my gullibility?
We have never met anyone who made this claim and lived up to it. However, the claim is not inherently self-defeating. Saint Sincereus the True is somewhere out there – we just haven’t met her yet.
But would Saint Sincereus the True claim to be ethical/honest? Or would she demonstrate it through a pure life devoid of lies, and eventually earn that title from other people? Being ethical/honest is something that should be shown, never told.
“I’m straightforward/blunt.”
Like the previous honorable mention, this one is better demonstrated, not explicated. However, this claim raises a different red flag. Claimants often use it as an excuse to be a jerkhole.
Back when we wrote the original seven self-defeating claims, we couldn’t figure out how to categorize them. Now that we’ve introduced Liar’s Lair, we think all 14 claims are self-deceptions.
We’ll start collecting ideas for #15 through #21, but we don’t know if we’ll be able to come up with them ourselves. If you have any ideas for more self-defeating claims, please drop them in the comments. If we can collect another seven, we’ll write up part 3!
Sometimes expressed as “I could care less,” which is a wonderful way to mix a malapropism into a self-defeating diatribe.
We usually see this on résumés and LinkedIn profiles; we rarely hear it spoken out loud.
See what we did there?
♫ Oops, we did it again ♬
Of course, you don’t need to lie 100% of the time to be considered a liar, any more than a felon needs to rob banks every day to maintain the label.