Newsletter Issue 236, June 2013

Sam Young Newsletter

Issue 236, June 2013

Hi guys,

Wow - what a question to ask! Do the genders tell lies differently? Check out Are Men Bigger Liars Than Women? below.

If your grandfathers were poor, and you are poor, chances are that you still work 30% less than they did, and have had 88% more schooling. Check out Working Weeks: Rich & Poor below. 

Searching for Search   TLAs for SMEs        Tips, Short & Hot Keys        Hot Linx

Don't forget, if you want to be taken off my mailing list, click here to send me a reply e-mail and I will remove your name.

 

Are Men Bigger Liars Than Women?

In this newsletter, Carol Kinsey Goman has kindly agreed for me to share with you all the difference she has found between men and women, and the telling of lies. 

Yes, men are bigger liars! 

I don’t mean that men tell more lies, or are better at lying, or are less trustworthy than women. But men and women lie about different things. 

When men lie, it’s often to look bigger – taller, richer, more powerful and more sexually attractive. In both personal ads and in face-to-face conversations, men tend to “inflate” the numbers by saying they make more money than they do, are taller than they are and have had more sexual partners than is factual. 

Women, by contrast, tend to use lies to minimize – they pretend they are younger, weigh less, and have had fewer sexual partners. 

In the workplace males and females alike fib, flatter, fabricate, prevaricate, equivocate, embellish, “take liberties with,” “bend,” or “stretch” the truth. They boast, conceal, falsify, omit, spread gossip, misinform, or cover-up embarrassing (perhaps even unethical) acts. They lie in order to avoid accepting responsibility, to build status and power, to “protect” others from hearing a negative truth, to preserve a sense of autonomy, to keep their jobs, to get out of unwanted work, to get on the good side of the boss, to be perceived as “team players” when their main interest is self-interest. They lie because they’re under pressure to perform and because (as one co-worker observed about his teammates) “they lack the guts to tell the boss that what is being asked isn’t doable.” 

Most of the lies we tell are self-serving, meaning they are lies that benefit us (the job candidate who exaggerates her accomplishments does so to look more qualified for the position). Some are intended to benefit others (the co-worker who compliments a nervous colleague does so to put that person at ease). And some lies are a mixture (the manager who tells competing candidates that he backs each of them, wants to boost the self-esteem of both people, but also wants to be “on the winning side” regardless of which one gets the job). 

While writing “The Truth About Lies in the Workplace: How to Spot Liars and What to Do About Them”, I found no valid research to suggest that men and women lie at different rates — with the exception of one study on deception in an economic setting (researchers at the Stockholm School of Economics found that men are significantly more likely than women to lie to secure a monetary benefit). 

Here again, however, is wider agreement that men and women lie differently: In the workplace, men tell more self-centered lies. They lie about their accomplishments, salaries, and status in an attempt to appear more powerful or interesting than they are. Women also tell self-centered lies, but (and this is most apparent in their business dealings with other females) they tell more “other-oriented” lies. 

In my interviews, female managers frequently reported lying to protect someone’s feelings: It’s something I’m working on. I know how important it is to be totally candid with my staff — especially during their performance reviews — but I still hate to say anything that makes someone feel bad. 

Women are also more likely to fake positive feelings – which is one reason that women smile more than men. While smiling can be a powerful and positive nonverbal cue – especially for signaling likeability and friendliness – women should be aware that, when excessive or inappropriate, smiling could also be confusing and downright deceptive. This is especially true if you smile while discussing a serious subject, expressing anger, or giving negative feedback. 

So, yes, because men are more boastful they can reasonably be described as “bigger” liars. And women’s other-focused, often well-intentioned lies (because they are less blatantly self-serving), can reasonably be described as “smaller.” 

But that isn’t the entire story. Are men bigger liars than women? The real answer is: it depends on the destructive effect of the lie being told. So please remember, what’s true in other facets of life is just as true of lying: “Size isn’t everything!”

Carol has a new book out, this time on lying, entitled "The Truth About Lies in the Workplace: How to Spot Liars and What to Do About Them". As usual, Carol's book is a pleasure - and an education! - to read. Check out the excerpt at http://ckg.com/The_Truth_About_Lies_in_the_Workplace_EXCERPT.pdf and buy at http://ckg.com/lies-in-the-workplace.php.

Carol's article above can also be read on the Forbes online site at http://www.forbes.com/sites/carolkinseygoman/2013/06/04/are-men-bigger-liars-than-women/ 

Author bio: Carol Kinsey Goman (PhD) is an executive coach, leadership consultant, and international keynote speaker at corporate, government, and association events. She’s an expert contributor for The Washington Post’s “On Leadership” column, a leadership blogger on Forbes.com, a business body language columnist for “the Market” magazine, and author of many books including “THE SILENT LANGUAGE OF LEADERS: How Body Language Can help – or Hurt – How You Lead” and "The Truth About Lies in the Workplace: How to Spot Liars and What to Do About Them" To contact Carol about speaking or coaching, email CGoman@CKG.com or visit Carol’s website http://www.ckg.com/ 

Working Weeks: Rich & Poor

Apparently in the US in 1890, the poorest 10% of blokes worked around 58 hours/week. The wealthiest worked around 40 hours. 

According to Diego Restuccia (University of Toronto) and Guillaume Vandenbroucke (University of Southern California), in 1990, the poorest amongst us were down to almost 40 hours/week. The hours worked by the wealthiest haven't changed in the intervening century, so are now the same length as the poorest. 

Diego & Guillaume found that the productivity of the poorest amongst us has risen dramatically, with their increased earnings allowing them to spend less time working, and more time going to school. They "find that the increase in wages and life expectancy account for 80% of the increase in years of schooling and 88% of the reduction in hours of work. Wages alone account for the bulk of the increase in schooling (75%) and the decline in hours (97%). Life expectancy plays a significant role in the increase in schooling, accounting by itself for 25% of the increase, but its contribution to the decline in hours is small" (2013, p. 1864).

Diego & Guillaume's research, "A Century of Human Capital and Hours" can be accessed at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2261571 or from Wiley online at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1465-7295.

• Restuccia, Diego & Vandenbroucke, Guillaume (2013). A Century of Human Capital and Hours. Economic Inquiry, July 2013, Volume 51, Issue 3 (pp. 1849-1866). 

Searching for Search

Now I have always named my files sensibly. I put dates, years, subjects and customers in file names. I store things in sensible project folders. If I end up with a faulty association with a file, I create shortcuts to where the actual file is stored from the wrong association. In other words, I am not a data numpty. 

I think through where, how, when and why I store things. I think about the file names. And I do that so that I can find those things again. The trouble is that after twenty years my computer files - 300Gb - have stacked up, and it can get hard to find the very thing I am looking for. If I have created something once in the past, it is easier to springboard off that than to completely recreate it. 

Those of you who are using Windows 7 and Windows 8 may have found that the search function has changed. This may or may not worry you. If it does worry you, because you can no longer do tiered searches (ie, search for a file type, and some words in the file, and by date, and by size, all at once), you may be feeling a little frustrated.

Once you could think about that "wee job I did for Anna someone in about 1999. Was that a Word document? Or was that an htm file? Oh, at least I know I created a pdf", and go to advanced search and look for "*.pdf" in the file name, "Anna *" inside the document and in the date range put 01/01/1998 to 01/01/2002 and search just your customer folders to return just a few items. Now you can only look for "anna" - which will return everything from part of a file name to part of a word in the contents. Then you can try searching within the results if the "search within results" link ungreys (and it often doesn't). What a marvellous improvement, Microsoft!

I had tested Windows 7 when it was first released, and had found to my horror this lack of tiered searchability. Search was so intrinsic in my work, and would become so intensely frustrating that it reminded me of what the Russian verb 'to buy' came to mean under communism: "to procure with great difficulty" (hah! Or "not at all", in some instances). While the workplaces I dealt with upgraded, I resisted moving to Windows 7 that until (a) my old PC died and (b) XP was no longer going to be supported. In other words, Microsoft forced me into it. 

So I asked around for alternative search options. There are a couple of freeware download solutions being touted on the web. These two are "Everything" and "Copernic". Everything is quick & okay to use to search for file names only. However, that is the end of Everything's helpfulness: you can't really do anything else with it, and you can't do tiered searches. Copernic was freeware, but didn't perform the way the promos said it would (in fact, it spent ages indexing everything, and you had to go away and make a latte while you waited for it to search the folder you were in. A bit like going back to booting up in Windows 2.0).

Some techie people on the web feel that the Windows 7+ search is OK. You can write a bit of code in the little search field, like "type:word modified:11/05/04...11/05/05" and find what you are looking for (perhaps). There is a list of the codes at http://blogs.windows.com/windows/archive/b/windowsvista/archive/2007/05/09/advanced-search-techniques.aspx. I didn't find that very user friendly - actually, it was clunky and it didn't always work. As well, I had to constantly look up - or guess - the code, as the wording wasn't that intuitive and my Kiwi brain didn't create the memory associations. It might work for you, though.

I felt that there MUST be a better way. So if you too are feeling frustrated, read on, because I have an easy, and relatively cheap, fix for you.

My hunt was rewarded by the wonderful creators of FileSearchEX. Ah - my prayers were answered: it is a fantastic bit of software.  It really is a really simple, elegant and economical answer to search. It is not freeware, but costs USD$30 per site. I have set it up to show on my right-mouse pop-up menu, and it is pinned to the taskbar. It does everything the old Windows searches used to do. I can run my search just once by defining a few parameters - such as for words in the title, eg "*.pdf"; AND some words within the file, eg "Anna"; AND by date (between 1998 and 2002). It knocks Microsoft's native Windows 7+ search into a cocked hat. I may have paid a little for FileSearchEX, but man - for the hours of total, hair-tearing out frustration it saved me to find the stuff I know I have, it was worth an awful lot more than $30. Check it out at http://goffconcepts.com/products/filesearchex/index.html

Pay & download FileSearchEX at http://goffconcepts.com/products/filesearchex/purchase.html

 

TLAs for SMEs

Here are this newsletter's TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms) for you:

• Internet of Things, IoT. Consists primarily of machines talking to one another - M2M - with computer-connected nodes (anything with a sensor on it) uploading. We humans will observe, analyse and act on  the resulting 'big data'.

Please feel free to email me with any TLAs that you want to get the bottom (meaning!) of.

Tips, Short+Hot Keys

In this newsletter, for those of you who use Screenr, we are going to show you all the Screenr keyboard shortcuts:

• "When recording, pause and resume recording" Alt & D  (Option & D on Mac)
• "When playing, mouse-select the screencast, then toggle play/pause" Spacebar
• "When playing, rewind 10%" Left arrow
• "When playing, jump forward 10%" Right arrow
• "When playing, increase volume" Up arrow
• "When playing, decrease volume" Down arrow
• "When playing, zoom full screen" Z

Hot Linx

Check Diarmuid Mallon’s argument for a ‘life scrobbler’ at http://www.zdnet.com/uk/i-need-a-life-scrobbler-7000012660/?s_cid=rSINGLE

If you want to highlight certain values in a spreadsheet so they automatically stand out, consider using conditional formatting. TechRepublic’s Excel guru, Susan Harkins, walks us though the process at http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/window-on-windows/three-tips-for-using-excels-conditional-formatting-more-efficiently/7480?tag=nl.e064&s_cid=e064&ttag=e064

What happens when you have added new software to Windows 8 & don’t get the option to add a tile to the start screen? Don’t panic: TechRepublic have posted a how to at http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7RrDQm_NZVs#!

So what is all this “Internet of Things” bizzo about, then? Check out what ZDNet have to say about M2M and IoT at http://www.zdnet.com/m2m-and-the-internet-of-things-7000008219/

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                                Catch you again soon!! E-mail your suggestions to me here