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I have been blogging a bit about the strategic use of swearing (see here and here), which was originally inspired by Dan McGinn's great post at HBR on "Should Leaders Ever Swear?" This was followed by a podcast at HBR where I talked about about the same subject. NPR got wind of all this and I was interviewed for a story that aired on NPR recently on All Things Considered. It is called Power Players and Profanity it a four minute segment that covers characters from Yahoo!'s Carol Bartz and Michelle Obama, to President's Obama and Bush, to General George Patton. Here is a little excerpt from the transcript:
Gen. Patton was once quoted as saying, "When I want it to stick, I give it to them loud and dirty." Sutton says that's consistent with the idea that words are just tools in an executive toolbox.
"Sometimes, when you really need that wallop, you want to get out the word. But then there's other times when you don't want to give it to them 'loud and dirty,' because you embarrass them. You get them all cranked up and you've got a mess on your hands."
This comment was inspired by psychologist Timothy Jay's work on the evolutionary value of swearing. As noted in an earlier post, he wrote:
Taboo words persist because they can intensify emotional communication to a degree that nontaboo words cannot . Fuck you! immediately conveys a level of contempt unparalleled by nontaboo words; there is no way to convey Fuck You! with polite speech."
Finally, a comment about the experience with NPR; I was interviewed by Lynn Neary, on tape, and had felt as if I had not answered a couple of the questions very well. NPR's great editing made me sound much more coherent than I was, and I appreciate it.
P.S. The link to the story has both a written summary and the audio.
P.P.S. I am rather amazed by how many requests for press interviews this swearing stuff has generated. I have declined quite a few requests since the NPR story, partly because I am focused on the boss book and partly because I fear I have already said more than 125% of what I know on the subject!
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