Talk your way to the top

I fear I’m becoming a bad listener at work. The things my colleagues say are increasingly going in one ear and out the other while my eyes defocus. I don’t think it’s my fault, though, and I don’t think it’s your fault if the same thing is happening to you. The problem is that most of the people we work with are bad talkers.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned so far in my year and a half in the corporate-ish world, it’s that talk is king. Talk is a substitute for results in a job where the results are nearly identical no matter who’s standing in front of the computer. Talk is what distinguishes a professional from a mere worker. And talk is a way of inflating the mundane reality of jobs we’d rather not do.

Most everyone at work is constantly looking for an opportunity to interject. Sit back and observe the next meeting you get called into. It will likely be a barely controlled riot of interruptions, tangents, and self-repetitions. You will leave wondering what was decided and what was accomplished. The answer is nothing, and that’s because meetings are not places to decide or accomplish things. They are places to talk.

In my organization (and in plenty of others, I imagine), most of the work we do is individual. We work and work by ourselves, and then at specific intervals we briefly connect our work with that of others. This isolation, coupled with the generally procedural nature of the tasks, makes it nearly impossible to discern adequate work from outstanding work. In some cases, sadly, the constraints of one’s organizational role might prevent outstanding work from even happening. I can hardly tell if the people in my own department are great or just good enough, and I certainly can’t tell about people on the other side of the building.

Most people realize this on some level, even if only unconscious. Those who are insecure compensate by talking. Thus talk becomes the professional currency. I have no way of knowing if Ursula in Logistics is worth her wages, Ursula knows I have no way of knowing, Ursula wants me to know, so the next time Ursula and I get thrown in a meeting together, she talks until she’s blue in the face. Evidence that others are buying it is how much they talk in turn. A thriving trade develops.

Most of the talkers mean well enough. They’ve found themselves in jobs that mean little to them and that offer few intrinsic rewards, but in which they’re stuck for one reason or another. Talking emphatically about their work to a basically captive audience provides badly needed validation. The sad part is that all the talk only contributes to the wall of pretense surrounding any professional-type job. And that pretense makes it more difficult to actually change one’s position within the organization or to have the self-honesty to leave.

And of course the frustrating part is that I and the handful of other quiet people in the place, who have my utmost respect, have to sit and listen to all the talk. My own solution to occupational dissatisfaction—withdrawing in silence while plotting ways to save money and quit—isn’t anything to be terribly proud of. But at least my withdrawal doesn’t go in anyone else’s ears.