Is Your Boss a Robot? Here’s How to Tell.

What’s the Latest Development?

At the annual Loebner Prize Competition, robots and humans compete to convince judges they are actually human. Imagine your boss took part. Would his or her communication style qualify as robotic or human? If during a discussion, your boss responds to the last sentence of the conversation rather than the larger issue at hand, he or she is probably a robot. If your boss seems to lack an idiosyncratic personality, instead consisting of attributes seemingly taken from an executive CV, you are likely dealing with a robot.

What’s the Big Idea?

Insistence on a certain kind of efficiency can easily give away one’s identity as a robot. If your boss demands efficiency in one narrow area of your work while permitting carelessness in a larger sense, you’ve got a robot. So how can a boss stop from being judged as a robot? Stop calling yourself the ‘boss’ for starters. “Above all, you might start having real adult-to-adult conversations with both the people doing the work and those for whom the work is being done.” In the process, you might just emerge as genuine person.

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