Why Business People Speak Like Idiots: A Bullfighter's Guide Kindle Edition

Fugere et. al. do a great job identifying the "traps" of template-assisted communication. The authors advise readers of the importance of standing out in communication and relationships in an age of inexpensive and thoughtless drivel. The important message of inventing your communication style as polite, simple, and direct is explained in clear language and assisted with excellent examples in business and interpersonal communication.

The book is a quick read in plain english that I have gifted to two important people--my brother (a journalist) and my best friend (who is currently writing a book on leadership).

To be quite honest, I usually dislike leadership books and I believe they are an excuse to make money without doing a lot of work, but Fugere et. al. has done their work and written an excellent piece of non fiction. (includes glossary of bull) And you CAN get the Bullfigher software described in the book, it can be downloaded free at [...] which is also the book's official website.

Some books become less relevant with time. This isn't one of them. In fact, it's more relevant now than when it was written. The "Bullspotter's Guide" (a.k.a., glossary) alone makes this book worth ten times its price. It should be required reading in every college communication program.

The emperor is naked!

This is exactly what it feels like after reading this book. You won't be used any of the cool, meaningless terms or expressions after that. Plus you'll get a good laugh or at least a smile each time hear or read a presentation from one of these expensive consultants.

On the bright side it'll help you sharpen your communication skills by removing all the extraneous terms and expressions that are just meaningless.

A quick and insightful read, that should mandatory in the C-suite. This would make stupid corporate mission statement and empty corporate strategy presentations a thing of the past.

Highly recommended.

Couldn't get through it. Couldn't tell if it was too real, too out-dated, or just not written in a good flow. I have it on my kindle so may give it another chance one day.

This purchase was a class I was studying

Fugere, Hardaway, and Warshawsky make a compelling--and irreverent--argument for using plain language in communication. Using jargon does not make one sound smart. Rather it often has the opposite effect when speaking to intelligent listeners. (Speaking like an idiot to an idiot might make you appear intelligent; but what's the point?) I read this as an MBA student and have made a promise to myself to avoid speaking like an idiot. :-)

The authors give plenty of real-life examples that might sound far too familiar to you.

The first sentence of chapter 1 is probably my favorite quote from this book, and sums up the premise quite nicely: "Unless a businessperson gets cornered into speaking directly to live people - say, English teachers bearing assault rifles - we know what to expect: an indigestible main course of catchphrases and endless prose, with not a lot of substance for dessert."

English teachers with assault rifles. That's a movie scenario I could get behind!

Communication is a common buzzword in any business environment, but it means different things to different people. When a group of employees complains that communication from above is lacking, what they usually mean is that information isn't available in an easily accessible form. A typical report or batch of powerpoint slides full of meaningless, intentionally obscure, PC jargon doesn't solve that problem and can in fact be insulting to the more intelligent portion of the audience. Here the authors break corporate communication weaknesses down into four "traps": obscurity, anonymity, hard-sell and tedium. They suggest four ways to overcome these traps: storytelling, conversation, personality, and recreation. Some of the examples are eye-opening, such as a side by side comparison of an Enron memo and a Google memo, or a presentation given one week before the Columbia disaster which in hindsight might have saved the lives of the crew if anyone listening had been able to pull critically relevant safety information out of a messy, boring, repetitive slide.

It's no coincidence that the authors have a software program which will skim through your verbiage and pull out cliches or jargon for you, but they don't waste a lot of space in the book trying to sell it to you, for which I am grateful. My college genetics professor taught from his own textbook and I hated that feeling of a biased approach.

If you already have solid writing/speaking skills, the book is still a reasonable way to pass a rainy afternoon and might spark some ideas for your next presentation. Although I do believe that strong communicators are born, not made. You either have the innate talent for creativity and clarity, or you don't, and mediocre speakers or people who are lousy at getting their point across probably aren't going to get much out of this book or any other. Where I think this would have the most benefit is for young folks new to the business world who are not yet fallen into the trap of corporatespeak, or for good communicators too long exposed to the "dark side" who are struggling with finding ways to get out of the "four traps" and stand out from the crowd of faceless, dark-suited, templated drones. If the only way to get people to come to your meetings is by offering food, maybe this book is a worthy investment, but you're going to have to have at least the basic creativity skills needed to apply what you learn.