Social motivation

Y’all know how much of a kick I get out of people on social media, especially on the Twitters-dot-com, where you’re constrained by the 140-character limit. It’s really impressive how much self-promotion people can cram into so short a space.

I’ll bet that the most frequently used descriptor there is “expert”, which pretty much has debased the coinage.

I was struck, for instance, by this woman’s rather contradictory profile:

She describes herself as an “Author and expert on #motivation”, but her banner proclaims that motivation has apparently been superseded by something she calls “The New Science of Leading, Energizing and Engaging”. This makes me throw up a little in my throat: both the part about being a motivation expert and the claptrap about engagement.

Because “engagement” is the corpspeak mot du jour. Last week I had to keep a straight face on my head while telling 400 of my colleagues that the goal of internal communications is to “Connect, Inform and Engage” employees. Repeatedly.

But what actually drew my attention to Ms. Motivation was not her expert-ness, but her claim to authorhood. Because her tweets demonstrate with dreadful clarity that being an “author” does not in any way mean you are a “writer”.

Also: you really should not depend on spellcheck to watch your back.