Where do you fall on the Smell/Likeability quadrant?

April 17, 2014 11:10 AM

Is your business persona working for you? Stanley Bing as posted an exerpt from his new book, The Curriculum: Everything You Need to Know to Be a Master of the Business Arts.

To succeed in business you must assume a working personality that supplants your own, at least in part, while you grow on the job. Those who do not have a functional business persona distinct from their "true" personality either go mad or become the CEO.

Bing has been a contributor to Esquire and Fortune, as well as an author of many humerous, but true, books about business.

Bing is the pen name of Gil Schwartz, a VP of Corporate Communications at CBS.

posted by Ruthless Bunny (17 comments total)

This is 27.0% humorous, 15.5% useful, 26.5% specious, 27.8% too context dependent to apply generally and 12.2% ready-for-the-glue-factory.

Needs more focus-grouping?
posted by bonehead at 11:37 AM on April 17, 2014 [3 favorites]

I've liked Stanley Bing since his days at Esquire but this reminded me of how suit and tie corporate and guy-centric his writing is. It's like women don't even exist.
posted by ITravelMontana at 11:41 AM on April 17, 2014 [9 favorites]

It's like women don't even exist.

I find that it's dead on for corporate America, in that women don't exist.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 11:51 AM on April 17, 2014 [3 favorites]

He was on NPR yesterday. He did not seemed terribly keyed in to the current hiring environment.
posted by maryr at 11:55 AM on April 17, 2014 [2 favorites]

(I don't disagree with him but I did not like him.)
posted by maryr at 11:55 AM on April 17, 2014

You must cultivate a working personality that grows from a boil on your neck, until it forms a functional business persona capable of supplanting your "true" vestigial personality.
posted by benzenedream at 12:00 PM on April 17, 2014 [13 favorites]

Also salacious nodding.
posted by maryr at 12:02 PM on April 17, 2014

Do not allow your work persona to interact with or acknowledge the existence of your parasitic twin.
posted by that's candlepin at 12:04 PM on April 17, 2014

This is not nearly as succinct or accurate as Gervais principle as far as I can see.
posted by bukvich at 12:05 PM on April 17, 2014 [3 favorites]

You must cultivate a working personality that grows from a boil on your neck, until it forms a functional business persona capable of supplanting your "true" vestigial personality.

Hey, I'm just trying to get a head.
posted by octobersurprise at 12:07 PM on April 17, 2014 [3 favorites]

I find that it's dead on for corporate America, in that women don't exist.

Women do exist in corporate America, and pretending otherwise is quite rude. I assume you were kidding, but I kind of don't think that Bing is.

I am thinking very dark thoughts about Stanley Bing right now.
posted by ErikaB at 12:14 PM on April 17, 2014 [2 favorites]

I assume you were kidding, but I kind of don't think that Bing is.

As a woman in corporate America, yes, I was kidding.

My problem is that while I totally see the sexism in Bing's writing, I really love how he turns a phrase and how funny he can be. FWIW, I also have affection for P.J. O'Roarke's writing, but I pretty much HATE his politics. It's a conundrum.

I was miffed that there wasn't a woman's hairstyle chart.

I should have my own column.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 12:20 PM on April 17, 2014 [2 favorites]

Part of the reason I like being an engineer instead of a manager is the comparatively minor importance of this type of gamesmanship. Granted, there are similar hierarchical sorts that happen (anyone who gives off a whiff of avoiding responsibility for their mistakes is permanently and irretrievably hosed at that job, for example), but for the most part, you avoid the "I am rolling up my sleeves to look like I'm going to get down in the trenches and git 'er done" businessman mentality, if only because even business people learn that, when interacting with engineers, that earns them no credit.
posted by sonic meat machine at 12:21 PM on April 17, 2014 [1 favorite]

"Each student will have to determine what kind of mix upon which he or she will settle, but the constituent parts of the whole are relatively immutable ... "

So assembling a business personality is kind of like inventing a superhero, right down to the costume? Which reminds me, I'd be much more eager to read Bing's book if it promised to reveal Everything You Need to Know to Be a Master of the Mystic Arts.

And speaking of business personalities, I recently received a call from an unknown number and a little googling led me to this guy. I honestly can't tell if that profile is a gag or not, but somebody's been crafting their business personality!
posted by octobersurprise at 12:37 PM on April 17, 2014 [2 favorites]

@benzenedream: All this talk about improving your self image, pimples, and getting ahead remind me of the advice from the film "How to Get Ahead in Advertising."
posted by Nanukthedog at 1:07 PM on April 17, 2014 [1 favorite]

You just need to not be a dbag. Not hard for most people.
posted by jpe at 3:41 PM on April 17, 2014

At first I started reading this thinking that he had a point about how you have to have a fake work persona (god knows I have to now, I have to be Perky! And Friendly! to the point of making people who know me gag) and once you get into power, you can do whatever you want and be however you want (because god knows those folks do). And then it devolved into male-only stereotyping crap. Feh.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:40 PM on April 17, 2014 [1 favorite]