Baldness vs. Shortness for CEOs
A USA Today article that weighs the importance of hair and height to the success of CEOs’ careers reveals fascinating insight into the psychology of appearance. But it fails to offer the kind of organization that could help hold readers attention. The piece kicks off with a confusing lead that fails to clearly identify the thesis that Del Jones attempts to convey. After considering the points throughout the following several paragraphs, it becomes clearer that the author’s research has resulted in the conclusion that, for CEOs, to be bald is better than to be short. Yet, the third and fourth sentences, which essentially serve as the lead, read: “They even know a few leadership lessons that aren’t taught in business school–such as, it helps to be tall. But an unscientific survey of USA Today’s panel of CEOs and other evidence suggest that baldness might be a blind spot for many.” What is he trying to say in the latter sentence? That baldness might be a largely ignored, yet impeding factor to one’s success? Or that baldness has little impact on most people’s judgement of leaders? Whichever it is, Jones could have used more understandable, less fancy language to get across his point. Following this bungled introduction is a much more apparent, well-worded barrage of information supporting the general consensus among CEOs that height outweighs hair. Notable is the use of a comical quote by CEO Murray Martin that would have been stupid not to include: “‘Lack of hair can only mean the brain is busy with more important functions,’” he says. After four more paragraphs that retain modest organization, the author begins a bullet list of his follicular findings. This would be acceptable–as it would be hard to arrange these facts in a coherent order–but without paying attention to the little black dots, it’s hard to decipher just where exactly the list stops. It seems that, from here on out, Jones resigns to simply let the facts fly in a haphazard way that leaves organization at the door opening into the bullet list. He deserves credit–logically connecting the dots here would have been tough–but its almost as if he hoped the designer would cut him off at the end of the list. Reading the rest consequently becomes ho-hum, and basically unnecessary. One more thing: Jones should have researched the psychology behind a powerful appearance, rather than just spit off a bunch of glorified hearsay. He could have interviewed psychologists. Maybe even read a little. One question he should have asked is, could there be a deeper reason that CEOs and politicians tend to have hair, such as the confidence a head of hair gives a man? It would have bolstered the credibility of his article, which currently rests on the results of a few surveys and the opinions of some pencil-pushers. The idea for this article was creative, but that was where the ingenuity stopped.
