In the grand list of “how to win friends and influence people”, boasting has never been something that I’ve seen as being near the top of the list. Nor has false modesty, either, to be honest.

I’ve always felt that if you’re good at something, the most appropriate way to deal with it is just to continue to do whatever it is that you’re doing without shouting about it from the rooftops, but equally to accept praise if it comes your way. That seems fair.

Yet according to the BBC, boasting is becoming a desirable trait for employees…

Boasting used to be a very un-British trait – but in a world of work where its hard to measure one employee against another, it’s increasingly important,Lucy Kellaway, BBC Magazine

I’m not sure about this. You get boasting on your reality TV shows (which is where the article comes in, referencing The Apprentice), where you generally get a bunch of people attempting to be the single best from a particular field. Ego carries you along so far, and you aren’t exactly going to be taking part in The Apprentice in the first place unless you’re starting with a high opinion of yourself, but I’m not sure this applies in all situations.

In a job interview, you want to appear the best candidate. In order to do that, you have to sell yourself; tell the interviewers — demonstrate if possible — your range of skills and abilities and convince them that you are the best candidate. But that’s not boasting to me. Boasting carries with it an unpleasant undercurrent of selfishness, one-upmanship and arrogance.

…and if you do that, I wouldn’t think you’d be coming across as the sort of person that it would be fun to work with.

For example, who but an unpleasant braggart would say something like this:

What? You only got 53% on that test? I got 65% and I was still so pissed from the night before I could barely focus on the exam paper…!student X

And yes, that unpleasant braggart was me. In my defence, I was… no, no, come to think of it I was a cocky insufferable arrogant son-of-a-bitch at the time. Immediately afterwards, I realised how that would make the other person feel, but by then that was too late.

That is boasting. Were I to say now that I have a good understanding of HTML, accessibility and that I believe myself to be a good IT project manager, that wouldn’t be boasting. That would just be an acknowledgement that there are things that I’m good at, and that I have skills in.

Everyone has different skills and the assumption that one set of skills or abilities carries more inherent worth is where the problems arise. For example, David James is a pretty good goalkeeper, but Stephen Hawking is a better physicist, but you wouldn’t make a value judgement between them on this basis…

But the BBC’s correspondent believes that in today’s society, boasting is an essential requirement:

There is, however, a sounder reason for the rehabilitation of boasting. Most of us now work in jobs where the quality of our work is hard to measure and often pretty subjective. If we don’t tout our own wares on a fairly regular basis we will be overlooked altogether.Lucy Kellaway

Again, I’d — respectfully — beg to differ. That may be the case for some people if the management of a particular group of people don’t have the necessary skills to understand what the different people bring to the team, but an effective manager should understand the skills, abilities and also weaknesses of the staff working for them. If they aren’t capable of doing that, then they aren’t managing.

Boasting is unpleasant. False modesty can be just as unpleasant. Surely the correct thing to do is to strike that middle ground… if it’s relevant to the conversation, or you’re in an interview or suchlike, then by all means tell people your skills. But don’t throw it into conversation because you want to show off.

At this point it might be worth me telling you that I don’t care how much you earn. I don’t care how much your house cost. Frankly, I wish mine had cost less, as a smaller mortgage would be nice…

(Note that in my ‘blog’ voice, I frequently take a slightly superior tone. This isn’t because I feel I necessarily am superior — although I’m not perfect and do lapse into arrogance from time to time — but mostly because I find that slightly superior looking down on the world is quite a fun writing style)

But not everyone does this self-boasting stuff. Some people boast about the achievements of their children, and that’s just as dull and pointless one-upmanship. If Jocasta got fourteen A* at GCSE, that’s great, but “she did very well” is more than sufficient unless someone has specifically asked about her exam results.

Of course, as a father of two children, I may on occasion find myself using this technique. I will try to avoid it, I promise. So if either of my kids ever grow up to score an FA Cup winning goal for Newcastle United, I promise not to go on about it for more than about … thirty years.

So give life your best shot. Try and achieve every last scrap of potential you have… but please, don’t keep banging on about it…