Are you "over-qualified"?
I recently heard a ten-minute presentation from a leading professional in their field regarding academic policies - a straightforward and fact-based topic. The presenter was without question the expert in the room. Unfortunately, the speaker eroded their qualifications and authority from the outset - sentence by sentence - through the use of qualifiers. In the course of the short presentation, more than 30 qualifiers (an average of one every 20 seconds) were used. I'm sure you'll recognize them - "A little bit" - five times "I think" - four times "Just" - three times "Kind of" - three times "Trying to" - three times "Some" - Twice "Maybe" - Twice "Probably" "Approximately" "At times" "A few" "A couple" "Pretty good" "As possible" And there were some compound-qualifiers such as "probably a little bi...
