Present Like a Bro

Stoneslide would like to propel junior executives clamoring up the corporate ladder with a business tip they won’t get at Ross, Haas, Kellogg, or Sloan. Liberally use “Sit your ass down” during any meeting you’ve been selected to lead. It’s the latest in business jargon so you can add muscle to meetings.

“Meetings are a key part of this modern workplace and individuals need to develop effective communication skills for them,” say experts at Virtual Speech.¹

But meetings have morphed into molly-coddling; spading for common ground; and drawing circle maps for brainstorming. That nonsense sucks time and lays waste to meeting effectiveness. Imagine free-climbing the superstructure of the org chart like a giant Pomeranian with one simple, linguistic embellishment: “Sit your ass down.”  

“Sit your ass down” can be sprinkled into every meeting moment. Take staid business openings, for example:

• “I’d like to thank everyone for coming today. My name is Miles Wilkie. I arranged this meeting, now sit your ass down.”
• “Let’s go around the table. Introduce yourself with your name, title, and company then sit your ass down.”
• “We’re here today to discuss the Q3 shortfall and prospects for a sale to BSF, now sit your asses down.” 

At the predictable point in any meeting when everyone’s individual, front-burner issue takes over the actual agenda, try this on for size:

• “It seems we’ve wandered. I’d like us to refocus, so if you could all sit your asses back down in your original seats and get off Amazon, that would be exceptional.”

When lunch arrives, and everyone stands without permission to grab clean soups and gluten-free sandwiches, the script is written for you: 

• “Let’s break for lunch courtesy today of HR. Please help yourself. No need to leave. Just sit your asses down at the table. You got everything you need: napkins, water, and ten minutes.”

Bathroom breaks?

• “You can wait. Sit your ass down.”

And when it comes time to assign action items, be especially firm and exacting. (Note: variations here and throughout are always acceptable and especially effective when paired with heavy stereotyping, personal attacks, and sexual innuendo.): 

• “Duke, you need to sit your dim ass down at your desk for the next week and trace where that 1.1 million-dollar expense error occurred.”
• “Pedro, you are to supervise the procurement of any outside financing. I don’t want to see your ass doing anything but sitting in that pigskin equipale chair of yours working on this. Comprendo?”
• “And Ayiana, you’re going to update the copy on the content-marketing blog. Keep those sweet, sweet cheeks of yours in your seat on this, honey. It’s Monday. You got till Friday for a first draft.”

Meetings are ripe with moments to use this power suffix, so don’t feel hemmed in by any timed agenda items. Freestyle some. For instance, let’s say you can tell just by looking at one of your coworkers that they hate America. You might say, “Sit your Fauci-worshipping ass down, Judith.”

You can even make your attacks highly local. Say [for a moment] you have a colleague whose kids attend a school that’s academically superior, but whose sports teams are punching bags. It’s a gimme to toss out, “Okay, Tad, sit your Fighting Lord Fauntleroys-ass down.”

Running “Sit Your Ass Down”-themed meetings coalesces your authority and gets people talking about you and your management style. Don’t be surprised if words such as Dean or Eminence get attached to your name. Your goal is to build — “Sit Your Ass Down” Meeting by “Sit Your Ass Down” Meeting — the perception of you as “guiding a team, rather than doing a job.”²

Remember: The Musher is the only member of a sledding team not on the gangline. Everyone else is a Lexus-driving ass.

Notes

1 – https://virtualspeech.com/blog/english-phrases-workplace-meeting, Virtual Speech, “Common business English phrases for a workplace meeting,” Dom Barnard, 2/17/18.

2 –  https://hbr.org/1976/03/how-to-run-a-meeting, Harvard Business Review, “How to Run a Meeting,” Antony Jay, March 1976.

Image

“Iron Fist,” Photo by Michael Li, Flickr Creative Commons https://tinyurl.com/y9qy6ta7