DEVELOPING YOUR BULLSH*T DETECTOR: Cutting Through Hype, Jargon, and Polished Nonsense in 2025

“Revolutionary! Transformative!! Game-changing!!!” If you hear those words in the first five minutes of a pitch, your inner alarm bell should be ringing. We’ve all sat through those pitches. The buzzwords fly, the slides look amazing, and for a moment you catch yourself nodding along. But jargon doesn’t equal substance.

Leaders at WeWork once talked about “elevating the world’s consciousness,” while selling what was essentially office space with free beer. Investors bought the story, not the fundamentals, and the company’s $47-billion valuation evaporated almost overnight. Even smart executives can get dazzled by shiny language and big promises. That is why developing a BS detector is not a luxury in 2025; it is a leadership survival skill.

 

A MAGICAL METAPHOR TO REMEMBER

Think of a magician’s sleight of hand. The flourish distracts your eyes while the real trick happens elsewhere. Corporate spin works the same way. A charismatic founder’s over-hyped vision, a glossy report with flawless graphics and no meat, or an “innovation lab” demo of the best case scenario can all act like the magician’s flourish. They dazzle us so we don’t notice what is missing: evidence, substance, or common sense.

 

WHY OUR BRAINS GET FOOLED

Neuroscience offers some clues as to why BS is so effective at sneaking past smart people.

  • Halo effect: When something looks polished, we assume it must also be competent. The brain’s shortcut is ‘shiny equals credible’.

  • Amygdala and certainty: Under stress, our amygdala is activated, and we crave certainty. A slick answer feels like relief from the stress, even if it is hollow.

  • Dopamine hits: Novelty lights up our reward system, giving us a rush that feels like progress. “New and improved” is rocket fuel for our brains.

  • Social proof: If others nod along, our reward system pushes us to conform. Our need to belong can trump our instinct to question.

This is why entire boards, investment funds, and senior leadership teams can all walk straight into illusions without a single person stopping to ask, “Wait, does this actually make sense?”

 

FIVE FILTER QUESTIONS

To cut through the illusion, try this lens:

  1. What evidence supports this claim?

  2. How would it work in practice, not just theory?

  3. What problem does it actually solve?

  4. Who benefits most if we do this?

  5. If it fails, what is Plan B?

Asking even one of these questions often changes the entire conversation. Suddenly the flourish disappears, and the real substance is revealed.

 

CULTURAL RELEVANCE

Robert Cialdini’s research on persuasion shows how the halo effect can blind us to flaws in logic. And Daniel Kahneman’s work on decision fatigue is clear: we stop asking clarifying questions when our mental energy is low.

History is littered with cautionary tales. Nikola Motors once released a video of its zero-emission truck cruising down a highway. The catch: it was rolling downhill with no powertrain. Investors believed the story, and the company briefly hit a $30-billion valuation before reality set in. Nikola is a reminder that polish and storytelling can deceive even the most seasoned executives.

And there’s no shortage of examples: Juicero raised over $100 million for a Wi-Fi-connected juicer, only for customers to discover they could squeeze the juice packs by hand; Theranos promised hundreds of blood tests from a single drop, fooling investors and board members across multiple industries; and FTX was once valued at $32 billion before collapsing into one of the biggest financial frauds in recent history.

Each case shows how leaders can be seduced by big promises and polished delivery, only to see their budgets and credibility evaporate when the truth emerges.

 

YOUR COACHING CHALLENGE

Practice: The Clarity Filter

Doing:
In your next three meetings, ask at least one of the five filter questions listed above. Write down what shifted in the conversation when you did.

What to Notice:

  • What shifts in the energy of the room after you ask the question

  • How the explanation of the idea evolves once it was explored more deeply?

  • People’s body language or tone, and what new perspective it can give you about their level of confidence or conviction

Reflection Questions:

  1. What surprised me about how people responded to my question?

  2. How did the question change the conversation in ways I did not expect?

  3. What did I learn about the strength, relevance, or practicality of the idea being discussed?

  4. What does this tell me about my own comfort with disrupting group consensus?

 

We don’t need to become cynical skeptics, but in a world where polish is cheap and empty promises are plentiful, we do need sharper questions.

Reach out for a free exploratory Executive Coaching conversation at www.leslierohonczy.com

THE GREAT MEETING REBELLION: Breaking Free from Calendar Captivity

If your calendar feels like it belongs to everyone but you, you are not alone. Most of us are trapped in ‘calendar captivity’: meeting after meeting, hour after hour, leaving no oxygen for strategy, reflection, spontaneous co-creation with others, or leadership development. But take heart; cracks are forming in this culture of calendar worship, and the great meeting rebellion has begun!

 

AN EVERYDAY OBSERVATION

I was recently standing in line at Bridgehead waiting for my tea, when I overheard two men comparing notes about who had more meetings that week. Clearly, it was a competition! They were bragging about whose calendar was more dense, as if a suffocating schedule and meeting fatigue were badges of honour, or the way to prove their value and importance. What a crock. Ever wonder how we got to the point that our working culture has normalised busyness as a way to demonstrate our significance or importance, even when it adds no value? Let’s look at the data.

 

THE DATA BEHIND IT

  • Microsoft’s Work Trend Index shows meeting time has tripled since 2020.

  • Harvard Business School found that 71% of managers consider meetings inefficient.

  • And a global survey of knowledge workers by Atlassian, the Australian software company behind Jira, Confluence, and Trello, found that employees lose about 31 hours per month to unproductive meetings and communication.

 

THE NEUROSCIENCE OF MEETING OVERLOAD

Neuroscience also helps explain why endless meetings feel so exhausting. Our brains are not designed to shift focus dozens of times a day, nor to make decisions without breaks or downtime. When calendars are packed with back-to-back meetings, there are several predictable effects that can show up in our brains:

  • Decision fatigue: Each meeting requires choices, and the prefrontal cortex tires quickly. Later in the day, people tend to make more default or shallow decisions. Leadership experts such as Dr. David Rock of the NeuroLeadership Institute recommend scheduling your most important decisions for the morning, when mental energy is highest.

  • Directed attention fatigue: Constantly forcing focus drains the part of the brain that helps us manage attention and regulate emotions. When it is overtaxed, our ability to listen generously and respond thoughtfully decreases, which is why people become more irritable, less empathetic, and quicker to snap during back-to-back meetings.

  • Default mode network: This brain network switches on when we are not focused on a specific task, such as when daydreaming, walking, showering, running, or letting our minds wander. It is critical for creativity, reflection, and for connecting disparate ideas. When calendars are overpacked, the default mode network doesn’t have the chance to activate, which means we lose the mental space where many of our best insights would normally emerge.

 

PUBLIC EXAMPLES OF PUSHBACK

Shopify made headlines in 2023 by introducing a ‘calendar purge’ in early 2023, cancelling many recurring meetings with more than two people, enforcing a meeting-free day (Wednesdays), and limiting large gatherings. I don’t know if that policy is still in place (perhaps someone from Spotify can chime in below), but at the time, the changes yielded a measurable drop in meeting overload, and it got people talking about meeting necessity.

Deloitte Canada’s hybrid work-research shows employees increasingly value flexibility and well-being, and many describe strain from coordination overload and excessive meetings. Leaders are responding with bold resets: no-meeting days, mandatory agendas, decision-only rules.

 

WHAT THE REBELLION LOOKS LIKE

Leaders who have begun to push back against calendar overload are not doing it with small tweaks. They are redesigning how time is used, putting in place clear rules and experiments that challenge the default culture of ‘meetings first.’ The rebellion is not about eliminating every meeting; rather, it’s about treating each one as a costly investment of attention that must earn its place on the calendar.

Here are some of the strategies that are gaining traction:

YOUR COACHING CHALLENGE

Reclaim the Calendar

Doing:
For the next two weeks, conduct a personal calendar audit. Label every meeting as one of three types:

  • A = Action (a decision or choice needs to be made)

  • C = Check-in (information-only updates needed)

  • T = Transfer (asynchronous: share documents, Slack, or AI-generated notes).

Cancel or reframe at least one meeting in each category. For example, shift an information meeting into a written update, or shorten a decision meeting by clarifying the decision before it begins.

 

What to Notice:

  • When a meeting is labelled as Action, did it truly lead to a clear decision or next step?

  • For Check-in meetings, did the conversation actually create alignment, or could the same update have been delivered another way?

  • For Transfer items, what happened when I moved them out of the calendar and into a written or asynchronous channel?

  • How did my focus, energy, or availability shift as I applied the ACT filter across my schedule?

 

Reflection Questions:

  1. Which meetings truly belonged in the Action category, and which ones slipped in without a real decision attached?

  2. How much value did my Check-in meetings add, and where did I see opportunities to streamline or shorten them?

  3. What did I learn about the effectiveness of moving Transfer items into asynchronous channels?

  4. How did applying ACT change my sense of control over my calendar?

  5. If I made ACT a habit across my team, how might it shift the culture of meetings in my organisation?

 The most radical leadership act of 2025 may be refusing to waste your professional life in bad meetings.

 

Reach out for a free exploratory Executive Coaching conversation at www.leslierohonczy.com.