Today I stumbled over the 3rd post of some guy whose content I usually respect. His posts were about some insights from Steve Jobs (oh, the surprise! 😉 #not), about some other biggo guy manager who even applauded himself for his managers making expensive mistakes to prove that failure culture is great for building companies.

Well, I get that you need to experiment.

I understand why it would be important, especially in the pretty VUCA times we live in (then again: have they ever really been not VUCA? would people from the 30s of last century second that? I have my doubts…).

The message might be valid.

But the way he (his team + some AI tool to be realistic) tried to make you open up about it… by borrowing, capitalizing on the street credibility of others that have high acclaim (and Steve Jobs btw in the meanwhile is def. a pretty overused source at that),

that actually for me leads to downgrade my personal respect grading.

The same happened at some point to be honest with that Simon Sinek. I had been wondering what was supposedly so great about his insights and messaging… till I found out: Pretty much all of it was not even his. It was borrowed authority, borrowed fame.

Now, this is a tried and proven technique in communication (working also with the effect of “social proof” – that guy who is great is also ‘with me on this’). I do not even think it’s bad to quote the wisdom of others that has made impact for ourselves, quite the contrary. The question “what has really worked? and why? and could it work also for me?” is always super interesting.

One often forgets that the oh so easy answers such as “well, Steve did this and that or concluded that X worked for him” is just fine, BUT:

could that ever work for us?

What was the context, the environment, the skill, the muscle that made that approach really work? If you’re not super careful you will just end up with pseudo insight that might be 100% true for that person and that situation but can never work for this company. Also, I realize I continuously have a problem with people preaching / sharing about stuff they never really did themselves.

I much rather listen to a person who is well reflected, taking their valuable time to share about how they created a mid sized company even though nothing looked like that at first. I don’t want people talking authoritatively about stuff they never did – it’s like me sharing soccer training insights the whole time while my soccer experience and skill dates back to school and was limited to kicking around a tennis ball.

For contrast, there is a woman, Gala Darling, who has very much shaped and stumbled her way to her own life wisdom in her own ways, with tarot and EFT. Besides those tools, I often found here tarot readings very insightful simply for the life wisdom they convey on the side. She would normally maybe not be the classic case of “authority” – female first of all, then also very much made up (then again: it’s clearly again HER style not just borrough Kardashian), using these tools that are not as recognized – but I can tell you I derive more true “aha” moments from one of her old tarot readings than from a Sinek video.

So, I guess what I want to convey is: The internet today is an amazing library of shared wisdom.

You can get access to insights that in 1998 you did not have the tiniest chance to see or hear or learn from.

At the same time, within that quantity, dare to go for quality.

Check out the source and its quality first. If someone needs to use the insights and authority of others so much – how valuable can their own be? It might come across ‘strong’ at first, but if you give it a second thought:

For me, this borrowed authority actually weakens what could have been a strong message.

My personal priority is towards well-researched and/or well reflected authentic wisdom – I do not see a good reason to waste my time on the umptieth stirrup of the same borrowed stuff. How do you make sure a) your sources are truly helpful?