My workmates think our boss is a genius. How do I convince them otherwise?

A leader in my workplace is considered by many to be a brilliant debater and negotiator. I just don’t see it. I find much of what they say unpersuasive and sometimes plain dopey. The problem is that they now have a big say in how things are done, and because any pushback is met with “brilliant” rhetoric, their way almost always goes. Some of their decisions are objectively dire.

How do we, the few people who aren’t convinced about this person’s genius, overcome this difficult situation?

You’re right in thinking this person is not the corporate mastermind they think they are. But convincing others of this will be far more difficult.Credit: John Shakespeare

I really wish we could repeat some of the examples of your leader’s rhetorical wizardry that you provided in your longer email. Some are so dumb they made me laugh out loud. Others certainly have the shape of a good argument but are completely hollow inside.

To be clear, you’re not imagining it: this person is not a good debater. There is no substance to their arguments, just a knack for employing thought-terminating cliches and abruptly ending important discussions.

“Thought-terminating cliche” is a term coined by the American psychiatrist and author, Robert Jay Lifton. It’s a platitude that closes off someone else’s argument, not with reasoning, but with what Lifton himself describes as a “brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrase”.

This is language that is abstract, jargon-filled and, “to anyone but its most devoted advocate, deadly dull”. At the same time, though, it is “easily memorised and easily expressed”.

A cult of personality is never a good thing – certainly not in a professional setting.

Lifton wrote about this more than 60 years ago (he is still alive and nearing his 100th birthday), and in his original work, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, he was talking about Chinese communism and re-education camps. More recently he described how Donald Trump uses this kind of language, such as when he lies about the 2020 election being stolen.

How’s all this information going to help you? Well, my point is that you’ve correctly identified that this person is not the corporate mastermind they think they are. By understanding the specific tactics they use to furnish and plump their undeserved reputation, you and your fellow non-believers may be better able to undermine it.

Standing up to a person in power is never easy. Convincing their acolytes that the emperor may have his bits showing can sometimes be just as difficult. But it’s not impossible, especially if the endless stream of bad decisions is starting to have a material effect on people’s work lives.

So, in addition to questioning this person’s empty bromides – for example, “what does ‘it is what it is’ actually mean?” – I would also contrast what they say with the reality in your workplace.

I mentioned earlier that dictatorial and dogmatic regimes that employed thought-terminating cliches to shape the system. I’m hoping your workplace isn’t quite at that stage of cultish authoritarianism yet, but it does sound like this leader has absolute control over certain aspects of your work life and has no time for dissenting ideas or views.

If this has tipped over into a quasi-religion, in which your colleagues have such blind faith in “dear leader” that they’ve become deaf to counter-arguments, pointing out inconsistencies and a lack of logic may be futile.

What should you do if appealing to reason is out of the question? I know this may sound rich coming from an agony aunt column, but I think we often place far too much emphasis on what a single, relatively powerless person can do in the face of a huge structural problem.

Instead, we should expect more of the people in charge of that structure. A cult of personality is never a good thing – certainly not in a professional setting. Other leaders at the organisation you work for should have nipped this in the bud a long while ago.

They still can – but now it’s a matter of urgency.

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