Are you a wimp in the workplace? Are you so incompetent, so useless, so meek that you seriously need a Fast Company article to teach you how to talk smack?
The questions above may be rude and a little bit goading, but they also illustrate the potency of trash talk. After all, you’re still reading this article, trying to understand why I would be so mean and what I might have against you. In his new book, Trash Talk: The Only Book About Destroying Your Rivals That Isn’t Total Garbage, Rafi Kohan explores how talking smack can help or hinder a person in any situation—from the sports field to the workplace. Fast Company caught up with Kohan to ask him about how trash talk can motivate teams at work, how to respond when someone starts flapping gums your way, and how to use trash talk to get ahead.
What is trash talk?
On the most basic level, it’s the language of competition. There is a kind of antagonism that is inherent to almost all trash talk. Functionally, trash talk is the presentation of a challenge. It raises the stakes of competition. Trash talk operates on an existential level in that it creates meaning; it makes something matter that doesn’t have inherent meaning. If we agree that something matters, then it matters. That’s true for sports: There’s nothing inherently meaningful about the New York Yankees playing the Boston Red Sox, for example. Trash talk is a way to come to a consensus about what the thing people are doing means.
Where do you think trash talk can go wrong?
You’re almost always being purposefully rude or upsetting or insulting, but there is a line. I would suggest that being verbally abusive to someone is no longer trash talk. If you’re leveraging wider systems of power and oppression, then you’re unleveling the playing field. That is antithetical to what trash talk should be. It can also backfire when you miscalculate how someone will respond to your trash talk.
How so?
There’s a failed mental model around trash talk. The universal expectation of people who are employing trash talk is that the targets of trash talk will have a depressed motivation level and give less effort as a result. But the opposite is true. When you are the target of trash talk, you try harder because you’re more motivated to see the person trash talking you lose. You could be trash talking and suddenly, Michael Jordan, who has been going a little easy on you on the court, is trying as hard to beat you as he can.
So how can you succeed at trash talk?
You have to be really clear on what your intentions are for it. You have to understand if it is to motivate yourself or get yourself in the optimal performance zone, or if it’s to demotivate someone else and knock them out of their own peak performance state. It could also be to garner attention or hype around an event or spectacle. If you’re not clear about what your intention is, it’s hard to kind of gauge the metrics of whether your trash talk is successful or not.
Do you think there’s a place for trash talk in the workplace?
The workplace is a great example of a setting in which trash talk can definitely go wrong, especially if there are uneven power dynamics at play. You don’t want to create a toxic work environment. And you don’t know what kind of psychic guardrails people have up on an individual level. Trash talk is most effectively employed among people who have a certain level of trust. But there’s ways of deploying it other than walking around to individual work stations and telling people they suck at their jobs.
What’s a healthy way to use it?
You can allow for the cultivation of bonds among the workforce that wouldn’t otherwise exist. Think about a coach before a big game pinning an article up against a bulletin board in the locker room and saying, “Can you believe what these guys said about us?” That creates a sense of us versus them, which is incredibly powerful. One of the all-time great trash talkers is [former NBA point guard] Gary Payton. He hated practicing. So his coaches would assign another player, David Wingate, to talk trash to Payton during practice. He would always increase his intensity and motivation because then he felt like there was something on the line.
What’s the best way to respond to trash talk?
Whichever way will lead to your optimal performance. At its core, trash talk is a presentation of a challenge. So the response to trash talk depends on your ability to perform under pressure. Self-awareness helps, right? Do you need to acknowledge it and discard it? Or will it motivate you to perform better? You need to appraise the situation as either a challenge or a threat.
Give me an example of how I could use trash talk constructively.
If you’re going to be giving a presentation in front of 500 colleagues and you’re nervous about it, [someone trash-talking you] can allow you to create a stressful situation for yourself ahead of time to practice. You would then be familiar with that level of stress to be prepared to perform in spite or because of that level of stress.
Who is your favorite trash talker?
Muhammad Ali. He’s the godfather of modern trash talk. He demonstrated so many of the functions of trash talk—from using it for self-promotion and hype to investing his audience to watch the match. He demonstrated the value of being a heel or a villain. He also used it in the ring.
Give me an example.
He used it to gain an edge against some folks by trying to get them mad and ruin their game plan. In “The Rumble in the Jungle” [championship boxing match] against George Foreman, Ali was trash talking in the ring as part of his strategy. He was going to lay against the ropes and kind of take all these hits from Foreman while saying, “That’s all you got?” until Foreman wore himself out too early. He also used it to motivate himself. He didn’t like going to training camps, but by talking smack and inviting reporters and fans to watch him, he upped the stakes even in those moments.
Can you trash talk me now?
These are very bad questions.
