As a professional trainer and speaker. I stand up in front of people and teach them useful skills for living and working more effectively. It used to be that people who did this were said to be part of the “Self Help” business. Now it is the “Personal Development Industry.” Whatever you call it I have come to love this business. I love the look that I see in my students’ eyes when they realize that the have just accomplished something they did not think possible. I dig it when a student tells me a story about how what I taught them helped them in some way. My mission is to give people tools to help them to live better lives, and it gives me great satisfaction.

But I gotta tell ya, there are a lot of things about this business that drive me batty. Today, my pet peeve is the “urban legends” of my business. These are stories and illustrations that you will find widely quoted as fact in books, CD’s, seminars and presentations. They are quoted as fact, but as far as I can tell, they have no real basis anywhere. Could be that I’m just missing something? I don’t think so. In fact, I think I smell something pretty stinky around these stories.

The first is the story of the Bamboo Tree. The story has is that when a bamboo farmer (is there really such a thing as a bamboo farmer?) plants a bamboo, he waters it and tends it for 10 years with no visible results. Then in the 10th year, the plant suddenly shoots out of the ground and grows at some astronomical rate, like a foot a week or something. The moral is that much of our work is like this. We plant and water and tend to our business, and the results are slow in coming. But if we are faithful, and don’t give up, the results will be spectacular. It’s a really good story, but as far as I can tell it’s completely made up. I have been unable to find any documentation of the growth cycle of bamboo that supports this story.

Second is the widely reported statistic that 97% of our communication is non-verbal. I first heard this in college in my Introduction to Communication class. You will read it in books and hear it used in all kinds of training in effective speaking. It seems to be generally accepted as fact, yet I have found no studies or documentation to actually support the claim. How do you measure verbal and non-verbal communication? What is the methodology used in the studies that came up with that number? As an illustration, this statistic works because if feels true. It may even actually be true. But we don’t know that it’s true, we just accept it on faith. I cannot find any actual studies that support it. It seems more likely that it is merely a made up thing that has worked its way into the collective psyche.

The third training urban legend is the widely referenced Harvard University Study on Goal Setting. The story is that “once upon a time” Harvard Business School did a study. They asked a sample of people if they had goals, what they were, and if they had written them down. Only 3% had written goals. 30 years later, they looked up the same people and guess what they found? The 3% who had written down their goals now rule the world. The rest of the sample now lives in poverty in Bangladesh. OK, that’s not exactly how it goes, but close enough. It’s a dramatic illustration of the importance, nay, the power of setting goals. Here’s the rub. I cannot find any such study. The only specific detail the story gives us is that it happened at Harvard. There is no date of publication, no author cited, no name of a publication to look up. Nothing. Again, it may be true that people who set goals and write them down are more successful, but why must we resort to made up stories to teach the truth? Aren’t there enough real stories?

I am currently reading Awaken the Giant Within by Tony Robbins. I have tremendous respect for Tony and his work, and I’m really enjoying and learning a lot from the book, but one thing in he wrote really rubbed me wrong. As an example of the power of constant and never-ending improvement, Robbins cites basketball coach Pat Riley. Robbins relates this story that took place at the start of the 1986 season with the Lakers.

He convinced the players that increasing the quality of their game by a mere 1 percent over their personal best would make a major difference in their season. This seems ridiculously small, but when you think about 12 players increasing by 1 percent their court skills over 5 areas the combined effort makes a team that is 60% more effective than it was before.

Ok, I’m not a math whiz so I can’t explain why in technical terms, but the logic here just seems wrong to me. A one percent increase in 5 separate areas for 12 players does NOT add up to 60% overall improvement. The categories are mixed up. This sort of noodling with the facts just drives me bonkers. Aren’t there enough REAL stories to illustrate the point? Can’t you use actual logic, rather than made up pseudo-math?

How about one more? To the current pile, let’s add the Word Budget. The common wisdom cites a study (ah yes! The ubiquitous attribution to a “study”) that found that men typically use 15,000 words per day, while women tend to use around 30,000 words per day. Again, where is the beef on this one? Someone actually went looking for details on this story. Among other things, he found that the actual numbers cited vary widely. See the details here. http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003420.html

These legends carry such power because stories and word pictures touch a place deep within. They are very useful for helping people to grasp the abstract concepts, not just cognitively, but emotionally as well. That’s why speakers like to use stories like these. When people change behavior, it is almost always the result of some sort of change in emotional state, not a logical decision. Stories and images tap into emotions much more effectively than facts. The power of facts often comes from the emotional weight granted to authorities like Harvard.

I believe that goal setting is indeed a powerful tool for living an intentional and purposeful life. I agree that we should persevere even when results seem to be delayed. I am certain that how we say things is often more powerful than what we actually say. And I believe that constants incremental improvement can add up to dramatic progress over time.

Yup. I believe all these things because I have experienced them myself, and seen them at work in the lives of my associates, friends and students. But I don’t buy the stories, and I wish I would stop running into them.

Be Free!

David Denis
Instructor