Something I think is missing from this list: make a sacrifice for the sake of the other person.
If trust has been damaged, it might take more than just talk to repair it. You may need to give the other person part of what they want as a gesture of good will. I've seen this go a long way in certain situations.
Of course, this comes with some caveats. For example, if there's a power imbalance in a damaged relationship, it's not appropriate for the disadvantaged side to be making sacrifices. Also, the person making the sacrifice is entitled to notice whether or not the other party appreciates it. After all, no one wants to be taken advantage of.
The point is sometimes you just need to demonstrate a charitable attitude when you want things to get back on track.
If you trusted that a sacrifice would be received, you wouldn't need to make it. You'd already have trust.
Instead, both sides will view themselves as disadvantaged. That's how you got into this mess.
You can do it anyway, and live with the fact that you expect it to be a waste. Sometimes that touches off a virtuous cycle. Sometimes it reinforces a vicious one. There's no way to know beforehand.
The question is: is it worth it? How far do you have to degrade yourself before you decide that the other person won't come around? Maybe it's better to just split and spend your effort elsewhere.
Super important point. And I'd say not even about degrading but more about deviating from own true self. In relationships, the need for security / protection is often measured in the degree of sacrifice the partner is willing to offer up. The problem is it's a temporary effect as this new sacrifice will at some point becomes the new baseline.
I used to sacrifice too much thinking this was how to express love, but often it's counter productive. Either becoming a crutch for the partner or completely losing a sense of self.
Example is phone messages. My girl used to get insecure and ask to see them, I had nothing to hide but obliged. Until I recognise this was feeding insecurity and crossing boundaries. I changed my perspective and the next time I said no. That was met with "arr you hiding something" (i wasnt) but explained concept of sovereignty. She stopped asking. It certainly puts the responsibility on her in that case to deal with her past issues rather than me being a bandaid for them.
That's one example, and I'm just as often the one doing the wrong in my relationship. Interesting learning experiences. But me taking this firmer position has been very important in my wellness.
Degrade is an interesting word. I am comfortable changing for others to make them comfortable because the behavior is not about me and I simply know myself a enough to not mind.
> it's not appropriate for the disadvantaged side to be making sacrifices.
No it totally is. The entire point in it being a sacrifice is that it comes at some cost and it’s not something you have to do. If you’re basically forced to do it, it’s not a sacrifice. If it’s no sweat of your back, it’s not a sacrifice. This applies to both parties. There’s no one-dimensional thing called “power”. If there was then there would be 100% absolutely nothing you could do about the situation.
It’s semantics, and I don’t mean that to be dismissive - GP sounds like they’re using a definition of “sacrifice” that’s essentially voluntary; you sound like you’re using a definition of sacrifice that’s essentially hmmm maybe “diminishing” (“I am less that I was before I sacrificed”)
I do agree with GP, in sentiment - part of the impact of giving something up in these situations is that it is voluntary.
Forced sacrifice - I don’t think that can restore trust, only subservience; which, to be sure, can be seen as trust in certain situations (the loyalty of a yes-man, for example), but I’d strongly argue that that isn’t the kind of trust the article is talking about.
Agree, this happens all the time in the real world, in fact close to the norm in some situations.
e.g. Secretary messes up bosses' calendar/email/etc... really badly, usually with the help of a computer, and has to work overtime to fix it, without extra compensation.
Sure it is. Fucking up is part of a job. If you’re working 9-5 on the clock, you don’t have to fix shit after 5. Choosing to stick around to fix your mistake off hours without pay when you could do it the next day or take comp time later is a sacrifice of your time/money.
If I hire someone to work on my house and they fuck up, e.g., hit a water or gas pipe, I expect them to fix it asap, with no additional pay. Fucking up is not part of the job if you’re doing the hiring……
Happened to me once, long time ago, I was cleaning up an oracle db production server, and by accident deleted to system datafile of the database. Sat there till midnight to fix it, but at least I had proof the backups were working…
This highlights one of the key differences between owners and employees.
Employees are not nominally liable for mistakes they make while employed, excepting things like gross negligence or malicious behavior.
If an employee makes a mistake, forcing them to work "off the clock" to fix that mistake is a violation of labor law in pretty much every jurisdiction of which I am aware.
An employee could volunteer to do so, but frankly, as a "boss" myself, I would neither expect nor accept such a gesture.
Mistakes happen. It's part of the cost of doing business, and if you're a competent businessman, you factor that in. What I expect is that that employee won't make the same mistake again.
But I have and will never expect someone to work without being paid as agreed.
I think that heavily depend on severity of the fuckup.
If you comitted a bug bringing the whole site down at 16:50 then went "welp, I won't fix it in 10 minutes, sucks to be on ops team today!", your login wouldn't work tomorrow
Yes, but I assure you the pink slip won’t mention anything about how the employee should have worked free overtime to fix their mistake.
These things all vary considerably based on the type of employment. The only thing I’m arguing is semantic, but an important distinction in terms of recognizing the dignity in choosing to work for free in regards to the original point about giving alms.
One should also expect it to take time. Perhaps the best analogy I've heard is that trust is a glass jar -- it can be slowly diminished or emptied out all at once (or the jar could indeed shatter), but absent extreme circumstances, the way in which it is usually built is by adding one marble of trust at a time and without doing anything to damage the trust until the jar is full.
As a software engineer in a fast paced high expectations team, I’ve come to realize writing tests is a good way to show this charitable attitude especially when you are new and have little knowledge and little leverage.
You don't put labor at the same level as imprisonment, aren't you?
You're free to leave the employer. If you want to sacrifice your life/free to to gain something in the specific target area you already know that this behavior is expected and usual there.
Labor is only imprisonment if you degrade yourself to it.
sorry should have added more context, this isn't about prison. It's game theory about limits of cooperation in low trust environments.
"The prisoner's dilemma is a game theory thought experiment that involves two rational agents, each of whom can cooperate for mutual benefit or betray their partner ("defect") for individual reward"
> If trust has been damaged, it might take more than just talk to repair it. You may need to give the other person part of what they want as a gesture of good will.
Reminds me of mob movies.
If one of your guys killed the rival's daughter, to avoid a war the best you can do is meet the rival, be sorry, say you should've been more vigilant and offer your guy or two (the sacrifice) so they can punish them and extract revenge.
At a point of sacrifice I would put breaks and evaluate utility and future of relationship. If we have reached a place where I am expected to be on negative return, hm it requires some roadmap.
Great read. Another helpful cue I give myself is "The opt-in". Always give your partner the chance to opt-in to the conversation.
Opt-ins can be subtle or explicit relative to the heaviness. Opt-in can be a simple pause allowing the other person to volley back. A chance to follow up with questions, contribute, or change the subject heh. TONS of people don't do this. myself included. Take a beat.
For hard conversations, explicitly ask them if they are are ok talking about X, or if they have time: "hey I wanted to talk about the fight last night, do you have time now?"
I learned this from The Effective Manager. When giving feedback you always ask if the person is open to it. It gives them the chance to avoid/delay if it's a bad day, and makes them bought in.
I remember a previous role the team leaders all went on a management training course. Everyone came back and started adding "please" to every request. I found it really patronising and felt like I was being spoken to like a 5 year old.
> "Can you run the SQL update in prod?"
Vs
> "Can you run the SQL update in prod please?"
The "please" sounds like an exasperated parent that is fed up giving the instruction.
I'm also starting to get really sick of emojis everywhere. I don't think they added to this article at all. I hope it's just a temporary fad we are going through and this isn't the future of written communication.
Yeah. This is good advice and all but it's no use if embraced only by behavior on a superficial level. Then it's just cosmetic and can be quite vile at worst, like seeing guys repeat pick-up artist tricks.
Never went on a management course and never been a manager, I always say please and thankyou. It's polite. Sorry you have a chip on your shoulder about it though.
I think there is no hard rule. Some people say that all the time, some never. Some have a friendly tone and don't need it, but if they add it suddenly it can appear like mentioned. No one said you should stop and I'm pretty sure it won't annoy people if it comes naturally.
It's the same as when sales people talk to me and intersperse "Well, Mr. wink, you know about this great offer, that will benefit you, Mr. wink, very much. As I said earlier, Mr. wink." - makes me want to end the call right at the 2nd mention.
Which would be quite impolite, tough fella. The nice thing about working in a professional environment is that I don't have to cater to your desires, I simply have to be polite and professional :)
I can't figure out if you're patronising on purpose, or genuinely polite. FWIW I suspect it's the later, and your sorrys and smiles are meant to soften the blow. But I guess that highlights the issue - it's sometimes hard to distinguish between the two, especially when the other side (like me) is used to a more direct communication.
It depends on the culture. Come to Eastern Europe (and I guess to other similar cultures, South America maybe?) and see how far you can go without saying "please" or "thank you". Not that far, I can tell you that.
Even though things are beginning to change for the worst in tech world, but, then again, many of the tech people in here see themselves as North-Westerners who happened to be born in the wrong place.
When people use a lot of emojis, the story in my head is that they care more about keeping appearances up than about honesty and transparency. It's fake positivity.
I disagree. I feel there are certain "styles" of emoji use. I don't know if I can explain it well. for example ive worked with people who are really good communicators who use things like sunglasses emoji or muscle emoji to make you actually feel good and keep concise clear communication. But people who make some big long official announcement then pepper it with random emojis to make it more "fun" can be extremely offputting. There are appropriate times to put them but you gotta anticipate how your audience is likely to feel and use them to show you're communicating in good faith, and if you're communicating in bad faith, just don't use them at all, we can all tell.
Also the choice and timing of emojis can be good or bad. Honestly I think it literally comes down to a culture difference between hr types and engineers
Then tell them that! Give them the feedback they need so they can know how to communicate with you better. (Talking about person-to-person relationships, of course)
In the end, this is a matter of taste. Just because something works for someone, it doesn't mean that it will work for everyone. But also: Just because something fails to work for someone, it doesn't mean that it will fail to work fo everyone.
I like to use emojis when they allow me to get denser content, especially if it's to be printed to a TTY. As long as there's a key somewhere, reducing var names to a single character allows you to pack in a lot more information, while simultaneously being far more expressive than eg "i", "j", "k". It gives you the benefits of columnar data without requiring scrolling back to see headers or even requiring that the columns be perfectly evenly spaced.
...aren't you afraid someone will take a golf club and hit you with it?
Honestly, the fear of saying this phrase to someone who just happened to play Bioshock and saw Ryan's monologue is enough for me to never-ever use it. I don't know how I'd react if I heard it directed at me, but I'm 99% sure I'd - at the very, very least - say "No, I would not" and go away. There's a fine line between "formative" and "traumatic" and I'm really not sure on which side that playthrough falls, even 15 years later.
Yeah I hate "please", but assuming I'm with a cohort that understands it, "pls" seems to work a lot better, i.e:
>can you merge that pr pls
I'm not sure why, I guess it just sounds a lot more casual when written down and read? It still gets across that it's a request, not a command, but without that patronising tone. Generally speaking I've very much gone from speaking very formally in chat with my teammates to casual chat where I no longer care for punctuation or capitalisation, makes it feel a lot friendlier I guess?
Obviously for official comms/emails/talking to someone I don't know I format properly and professionally but for day to day stuff I just like keeping casual, like you would speaking in the office I guess.
I find that this is a classic communication style preference. I also know people who find these "pleasantries" patronizing and unnecessary. I'm on the other end: someone saying "please" and "thank you" makes me feel like they're acknowledging me as a person, not just barking commands at me.
There's no right answer; you just have to learn what the person you work with needs.
yes, coworkers thanking me for a bugfix or a feature bothers the hell out of me. man I am not doing it for you, I am doing it for money that is thanks enough
That isn't the same thing. Your efforts can still be appreciated as it will have had had a positive impact on them. They're merely expressing it, which is something people do. After all, if everyone assumed the attitude in your last sentence, it would make for a highly unpleasant environment overall and make work a lot more stressful.
> yes, coworkers thanking me for a bugfix or a feature bothers the hell out of me. man I am not doing it for you, I am doing it for money that is thanks enough
And they're thanking you for doing something that will keep them employed.
I had a customer one time like you. I was talking with her on the phone and I was phrasing requests (as I often did) as "would you do this for me?"
"I'm not doing this for you, I'm doing this for my boss," she repeatedly responded, while repeatedly ignoring my directions.
Accept the expression of gratitude, even if your inner narcissism doesn't want you to.
The Center for Nonviolent Communication has some potentially useful ideas about this: https://www.cnvc.org/
Start with active listening by not interrupting and then confirm with the speaker what you think you heard them say. And so on. There is a community apart from the web site and the core book is worth a read.
It is interesting you mention interruption, because the original NVC book endorses certain kinds of interruptions. "Would you rather have someone pretend to listen, or to interrupt?"
> "Would you rather have someone pretend to listen, or to interrupt?"
This is very interesting. In my experience, it applies especially to people who just can't. stop. talking. When someone gives you literally no chance to say anything (not even a few words), it's really hard to actually keep listening. So I have to either pretend to listen (but my thoughts are drifting off) or start interrupting, which I hate doing.
Deciding when you need to interrupt, and interrupting in a way that shows you care about what the other person is saying, is a really important skill. I didn't realize the value of it until I took an NVC class, because I had previously assumed interrupting was always bad. But, when done well, it can be extremely helpful, not only for improving your understanding but also building connection with the other person.
> Ever meet someone you didn’t like online, and realize they’re terrific in person? Online communication loses sooooo much in transit.
This is so true. I have a good friend who is, in my opinion, really bad at this. It seems like he has a talent to make even little requests sound aggressive when using written communication. If I didn't know him so well, I would certainly interpret that as very rude, even though in RL he's not like that.
Thinking about this, I realize I have something like this as well. With close friends, I can be VERY direct in a way that's both not completely serious, but still carries my true opinion. And I think I do this without thinking too much, it just comes out (although it doesn't seem to happen with people I'm not that close with, maybe because I'm more guarded and self-conscious during those conversations). Luckily my friends can appreciate this tendency even though it would come across as super rude if I did that to a stranger.
(I guess I can't say if my friend's case above is actually very similar. Maybe he, too, uses different language with people he's less close with, trusting that his good friends know him well enough.)
> > Online communication loses sooooo much in transit.
> This is so true. I have a good friend who is, in my opinion, really bad at this.
I don't think it's true at all. Most people, I can perfectly well talk to online and can occasionally have an easier time talking to than in person. The person I'd classify as my best friend, for example, I literally speak to 1-2 times a year, the rest is text conversations (at least once a week we have a longer chat I'd estimate).
But I also know some people that are or were close to me who are terrible at texting. I can't seem to help them improve, either. If I'd believe that not everything can be learned to some extent, I'd say this is apparently something innate. They don't come across rude at all, in my case, but just no conversation flow whatsoever. It's a bit comparable to doing one of those interviews where you have to coax every word out of the interviewee.
(There is also the category of people that only ever text on a phone (slow) or just can't type at a conversational speed in the first place (50wpm/250cpm maybe? Just a guess), or have dyslexia and find reading more than half a phone screen's worth of text a significant hurdle. That's different and not what I mean about being bad at texting.)
Maybe you and the author are not people who are good at texting, and that's why you feel it is 'so true' that a lot is lost in text messages? Or maybe most of my friends and I are the outliers, that honestly wouldn't surprise me either, but either way, this thing portrayed as universal truth is far from it
I agree. My spouse accuses me of only being able to communicate properly via text, and i think it's true. I am very uncomfortable in face to face interaction and struggle to find words, but the written word uses a different part of my brain and is easy to communicate with. It drives them nuts because they struggle to express themselves appropriately in writing. So we have important conversations that are very asynchronous/slow as a result. It seems to be working, though, as we recently celebrated our 20th anniversary.
Congrats on the anniversary! That sounds like a pretty extreme form of what I meant, happy to hear you found someone who is happy to work with that system as well.
Do you find that having everything on record to look back helps you? That's one thing I mind about talking: can't look up what was said or what I/we already figured out on some topic. (Occasionally that's a feature of course, but I try to avoid both using messengers that aren't private as well as needing to say things I don't want to be on a record.)
That's part of it, but the other part is that I struggle to think rationally in emotional situations (good or bad), and so using text gives me sufficient distance to express my thoughts more accurately. I also struggled with learning my native tongue growing up, and really believe that speaking and writing use very very different parts of my brain for me.
Being able to step back, compose, and edit previous statements before "commit" is definitely an aspect, though.
I just finished reading the culture map (an HN recommendation!) and it was actually very eye opening. This is not to excuse bad behaviour in the workplace, but it's entirely possible that depending on where he comes from in eastern europe that's just how tough feedback is given and he didn't perceive it as a "crucifiction".
I felt slighted once when a former CEO of mine didn't lambast me on our weekly call. I took it to mean that I wasn't important enough to get the dressing down he was known for.
(I mean, I was still relieved to avoid it! Just thought it was funny to feel disrespected because I got gentle treatment :)
Nobody should be crucified either in public or in private. But correcting mistakes and making it explicit to the whole team what the problem was and how we'll minimize the chances of reocurring is best done in front of the team. Everyone learns together, and most importantly, they see how you react to mistakes. They won't be afraid to talk about their mistakes if they see your normal reaction. It'll also feel less bad because now everyone is aware that everyone makes one every once in a while.
Create a culture where nothing is a personal attack and performance is just what it is, instead of something to be ashamed of.
In school all the kids get all their grades publicly, you don't get public grades if you do good and private grades if you do bad on the exam. And somehow we're all here and understood that it was what it was. The problem is that it was done as a "crucification".
Shouting and blaming and being an ass to someone are wrong to do either in private or in public.
> Nobody should be crucified either in public or in private.
Serious reprimands need to happen in private. We can use euphemisms or severe language, but sometimes people need to be told, "You fouled up, you were careless, you were indiscriminate, and your reckless mistake cost the company more money than you make in a year, which may cost someone ELSE their job because of budget cuts."
Always remember that your foul-ups could cost someone their life or their livelihood. This isn't kindergarten. Adults need to be told honestly about the damage they caused.
The following case is interesting because it might fall in the space between what various folks on this thread consider acceptable.
An engineer on my team once merged a change that created a security vulnerability, without review. We didn't have any real users on prod yet, and the potential impact was small. But I was still angry because I had given explicit instructions (speaking as the tech lead and the one with the most security experience) that all changes had to go through code review for security issues.
I responded with an email message that was visible to the whole team (about 5 people). I knew it would sting, but I also wanted everyone to know that this was an important line not to cross, because at some point in the near future we did hope to have real users. I wrote, approximately, "You merged this change without review, and that's not okay. I explicitly told you not to do that. As a result, we now have a security vulnerability. Don't ever do that again."
I am paraphrasing from memory, but the tone was not too far off from this: stern, direct criticism without personal attack. At the time, I held myself to a simple standard of communication: stating facts and criticising actions (even bluntly) was acceptable; any criticism of personal attributes was unacceptable. The engineer in question was very hurt and angry with me, and our working relationship was difficult for many weeks after that.
Was I the asshole here? What's your standard of communication, and what would you do, from the point of view of the tech lead or as the engineer?
I think writing "you merged" rather than,"we don't do this" would be a bit better. Also not acknowledging that there were no users yet, so impact wasn't there actually, but it would be if it happened later, was also important to acknowledge as the lead.
In general I'd write a similar thing, just speaking of the team, and not overplaying the impact. If you had no users it was no problem, that's the truth. But it would be a problem in the future so you want the team to know and practice safety. People tend to be upset if you hype it more than it is, even an little, and it comes across as you just wanting to be right for rights sake. And generally we/team/process focused language is better than "you fucked up". Why did you even have merges enabled without reviews? It's more your process failure than that guy.
That being said I work in full remote with many different cultures so I have an "international average". If this was a fully Russian team or some such even what you wrote was too soft in my experience and you actually need to be very clear or they think it's nothing.
I don't think you was the asshole, but I think (i.e. in my cultural circle) that's too public. I would send this message only to the person responsible, and if necessary sent a much softer message to the team like "I noticed that recently we had some merges without a proper review. Please avoid this in the future, code review is a strict requirement in our team".
Woah! I just assumed this is how it worked everywhere. I might just need to re-think my whole stance and look this up. Thanks for sharing, I never thought to question it.
Very timely for me as well, have been having tough time with my partner especially about how unfriendly and critical I sound, even though my intentions are for general improvement and well being around home.
There is little less welcome than unsolicited "advice", especially coming from the person and place that are supposed to be the refuge from all the shit going on in the world.
A long-term partner probably knows you better than anyone. No one likes getting called out on their stuff, if you want to grow as a person or as a couple you’re going to move past that initial discomfort, reflect on it and then decide if it’s valid enough feedback to try to integrate it.
> Welcome to working with a hot-blooded eastern european
It's funny, one other commenter pointed out how you won't get far in Eastern Europe without saying "please" and "thank you" a lot. I'm from there and it's true - we have both rude and polite people!
I don’t think the historical Iron Curtain is a useful means by which to make that distinction today.
Unless you’re willing to proclaim to Berliners that you love being in Berlin despite it being in Eastern Europe. I think you would raise some eyebrows. Or fists.
You can make the exact same argument for Russia and Turkey being European. This kind of vocabulary works through consensus about attached meaning. Usage determines validity. You can tell by there being no agreed upon geographic line on a map going through countries.
Historically, “Eastern Europe” has been used as more of a derogatory signifier in places where it’s culturally acceptable to make jokes at the expense of Slavs, like in Germany or USA.
Let’s not forget that Vienna is actually geographically further East than Prague, though I doubt many Austrians would be comfortable considering themselves Eastern European.
Poland is pretty squarely in the middle of Europe by a number of metrics.
If we’re talking about time zone, Poland uses Central European [Summer] Time.
If we’re talking geographically, most of the claimants to the geographical midpoint of Europe are actually East of Poland.
If we’re talking politically, then the midpoint of the European Union is said to be in Würzburg, which is only 470km South-West from the border with Poland. And we can hardly say that anything East of Würzburg is Eastern Europe, since that would include all of Austria.
>Historically, “Eastern Europe” has been used as more of a derogatory signifier in places where it’s culturally acceptable to make jokes at the expense of Slavs, like in Germany or USA.
I am calling bullshit. It simply referenced the Soviet zone. Eastern Europe was everything behind the iron curtain, including Eastern Germany. Everything else was Western Europe, including countries in the North and South of Europe.
edit: Its also worth mentioning that framing that geopolitical conflict as racist is highly oversimplistic and counterproductive. The only upside i can think of is signaling and the stakes are far too high for such selfish endeavors. Stuff is just complicated and geopolitical conflicts even more so.
That might be the problem and the reason for your unsupported overconfidence. And its no wonder given your unwillingness to consider different perspectives.
You are welcome.
edit: I would hope nobody sees that as a confirmation for the stereotype of Poles being racist. I see no reason to not suspect a Russian sock puppet and neither should you.
Do "the countries" want to live 30 years in the past, or do you? Dividing Europe primarily into western or eastern is utterly useless categorization, as of today. You might try to divide EU that way, and only EU.
Classifying Czechs as closer to Russians than to Austrians does not have basis in today's economy, culture, geography, politics. It fits when you're considering a specific historical period or linguistics.
In particular, the parts where you are adding buffers + prefaces ahead of the important content.
That said, non-violent communication is super important, so learning to retract from more direct, factual styles in exchange for a style that make people feel understood and respected as a colleague is important.
Tense situations usually evolve because both parties are adding slight amounts of intensity/unhappiness to the situation iteratively, and the only way to get them back to peaceful is by making commitment to making _the next interaction_ some amount less tense/hostile. Do that repeatedly and you'll get somewhere.
PS: Also Stoicism helps especially with these things... great, practical text on it: "The Practicing Stoic: A Philosophical User's Manual" by Farnsworth
BLUF ("bottom line up-front") might make a lot of sense in in-person communications, especially regimented ones like the US military (the example from the article). And it's valuable advice for long-form or durable writing. But the constant casual writing ("chat") that characterizes tech work is a different environment with different pitfalls, which message board nerds have known about and discussed for-ev-er. I don't think BLUF squares well with chat environments; it seems like a recipe for being constantly misunderstood and mistrusted.
Thank you! I've been looking for this term for a while ever since someone posted a blog post about examples of US military memo writing on HN a few years ago.
If anyone can remember that link and share it I would love that!
But sometimes you have to work with people who demonstrate traits of Narcissism Personality Disorder or Borderline Personality Disorder. E.g. someone who never accepts responsibility or someone frequently demonstrating emotional lability.
I am not sure the best course of action in these situations.
Good will has to be rebuilt. If someone has exhausted all goodwill, then your relationship should take a transactional form. Transactional relationships don't have to be malicious. They're just all 'over the table'. I ask you to do X, have you done X ?
Mental illness is just 1 cause for breakdown of goodwill. It's better to ignore the cause, and focus on the optional communication mode for the level of goodwill you're operating from.
Yes, this advice is counter-productive at best for dealing with a narcissist. They will re-frame your efforts to be friendly and not abrasive into an admission of guilt over whatever the problem at hand is. In those cases, if you can't avoid communicating, just be neutral and stick to plainly stating the facts of whatever you must talk about.
If you're dealing with someone who has a mental illness then "the rules" are different. Folks throw words like "Narcissism" around when they don't really mean it. Communicating with someone with a mental illness is difficult at the best of times and you should not hold yourself to such a high standard that you will be good at communicating with them; It's not your responsibility to be able to handle every situation, especially from reading a blog post.
Yeah I think it's important to note that these techniques are for situations where trust has broken down due to something external, not due to a fundamental issue with one of the people involved.
This stuff will never help with narcissistic ass holes.
Narcissist seems to be a label that’s often applied to confident people who are direct in what they say, and because they know that what they are saying is correct (hence the confidence), they tend to be pretty inflexible on any suggested alternatives. The other parties naturally feel unheard or steamrolled over and end up calling the person a narcissistic asshole, but in my personal experience, that’s hardly ever actually the case, or at the very least, there’s no way of knowing if they are actually a narcissist.
If my experience is common (and let’s be real here, unless you’re in the psychology field none of us are qualified to diagnose narcissism), of course this stuff won’t help because the person is right and nothing would sway them, and bitter folks, or maybe jealous folks, decided to proclaim the person has a mental illness (read, they are now flawed and you are superior) as well as insulting them calling them an asshole.
And it’s kinda weird the other way too because if they do indeed have a mental illness, then they are not trying to be abrasive and often wouldn’t even be aware that they were until after the fact, so you’re calling a mentally ill person an asshole because they are mentally ill. Try doing that to someone with any other mental issue and see how well that goes over. But it’s fine to do for this one and everyone is fine with it.
It’s shitty to go into a conversation with the best intentions and yet you always end up fucking it all up, hurting the relationship with that person when your goals were the exact opposite, being confused about why that always happens, and reflecting after the damage is done and seeing where you fucked up, tossing that onto the never ending pile of regret that follows you though life, your lonely lonely life because it’s impossible to maintain any relationship at all, not for long anyway… and then on top of it you’re called an asshole by someone who doesn’t have any idea how much it blows having narcissistic personality disorder (or what kind of childhood environment it takes for such a disorder to take root), or, they don’t understand that it’s not the same thing as someone choosing to be a dick in a conversation.
To be clear, I don't think genuine pathological narcissism is actually a particularly common trait, maybe 5% type levels.
The problem is that a single genuine narcissist can make an environment absolutely horrible for a large number of people, meaning that even at 1/20, if you work in an area with 50-60 people, you're likely to have at least 2-3 narcissists in that group.
One other thing, I wouldn't call narcissism a "mental illness". There's a difference between a "mental illness" and a personality disorder. Narcissist Personality Disorder is effectively the clinical name for what is commonly known as "being an ass-hole", in the same way that anti-social personality disorder is just the clinical name for what is commonly known as "being a psycho".
Unfortunately, these diagnoses seem to get flung around by people quite unqualified to do so. My guess is that context and timing matters a lot and that these conditions are quite rare.
True, a more useful diagnosis in such case is "I don't trust this person and I expect anything I say will be used against me". Am I qualified to determine that? I think I am.
> Approximately 0.5% of the United States population, or one 1 in 200 people, has the disorder
Regardless, your point does appear valid about male dominated fields:
> There are significant gender differences when it comes to the prevalence of the disorder; about 75% of people with narcissistic personality disorder are men.
> As of 2018, overall prevalence is estimated to range from 0.8% to 6.2%.[68][69] In 2008 under the DSM-IV, lifetime prevalence of NPD was estimated to be 6.2%, with 7.7% for men and 4.8% for women
I do it all the time. There's no "rule book" on it.
Just my PoV:
Everyone is different, and we need to start by doing our best to understand them.
Sometimes, we understand that they are selfish, cowardly pricks, and that we just have to accept that.
That's seldom the case.
One of the lessons I learned, a long time ago, is that hurt people tend to be incredibly self-absorbed. This is people in mental or physical pain. Mother Theresa might have kicked her cat, when she was having a particularly nasty headache. We'll never know.
Understanding people is different from advocating for them, or "taking their side." If you want to understand rats, talk to an exterminator. I know a couple, and they really understand the little buggers.
But also keeping control of my side of the relationship is incredibly important. It should not depend on them. If they are unreliable or dangerous, then it is incumbent upon me, to limit the scope of our relationship.
Easy enough, if we are not in a situation that demands we work together, but I have also done a lot of work, with some very difficult people.
It can be done, but, in my case, it requires that I be quite self-aware, and take responsibility for my part of the relationship; which includes not expecting stuff from people that can't give it.
There are far, far more problems in the DSM-5 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSM-5 ) than just Narcissism and Borderline. Some people have long "cycle times" in their symptoms. Or random-ish "episodes". Or are perfectly fine - until some f'ing idiot new psychiatrist assigned to them decides to switch them off a medication that was working fine for them, to something "new". (This has happened more than once to a good friend's niece. Fortunately she's survived...)
And there are plenty of people with no real psychiatric disorder, but who are "problematic" to deal with.
And there is the question of how interested the other person is in rebuilding trust.
And there is just asking yourself "am I a person with the the personality, understanding, skills, and patience to deal with this situation?".
Overcommunication isn't necessarily a bad way to handle that type of interaction, either. Trying to get things into a recorded medium helps, if nothing else, when you look back on the interactions and find that you communicated what you'd do, did what you said, communicated what you did, and the other person is unreasonable, you have evidence (at least for yourself) that you're being reasonable and the other person isn't.
Then you can take whatever appropriate actions after that. Sometimes that's get yourself out of the situation where you work or live with them. Sometimes it's decide that while this person is unreasonable to deal with, the rest of the situation makes it reasonable for you to stay, at least for the moment.
"the story in my head" sounds really weird to me as a non-native speaker. Is that a common phrase?
I guess "The story in my head is that you asked me to send that status email ..." means that this is what they remember. On the other hand "... the story in my head is that you think owning that number is part of my job, and now you’re upset with me, or you think I’m incompetent at my job" sounds like they mean "the story [that I made up] in my head". Can someone explain?
It’s a philosophical construct acknowledging that the speaker’s reality might not match the listener’s. It stems from the idea that we all perceive the world differently and that there is no universal truth. It’s a longer form of “I think”, which takes ownership of your thoughts and doesn’t force the other person to conform to your reality.
It’s also an attempt to make an “unarguable” statement. You and I can debate forever if a chair is blue. But if I say “I think the chair looks blue”, it’s typically unreasonable for you to debate what thoughts are in my head.
Despite how careful someone may be when communicating, there's almost always room for different interpretations of what's been communicated. The "story in my head" is another way of saying: "There's a few different ways to interpret what you're saying, and here's the interpretation that I've settled on. Is that the one you intended?"
Yeah, that's what they mean. I don't think it's a common phrase, but it might be intentionally weird?
I might instead instead say 'So, what I'm hearing is you want me to send that email.' But that phrase is often used for passive aggression, so it shouldn't be used in a low trust situation.
The usual way I hear it and say it is, "I have a story that...".
The intended purpose is to create some space between my mental model (which includes my beliefs about your intentions and feelings) and yours. It allows me to share information about my thoughts while inviting you to offer a different point of view.
Making direct statements about another person's feelings or thoughts ("You're angry", "You think I'm incompetent") will usually offend them or provoke immediate defensiveness. Saying "I have a story..." turns an aggressive-sounding statement into a more vulnerable one.
You've pretty much got it bang on. I suspect the author of the article is referencing this concept from Brené Brown who has written a full book around it. It's definitely a great read if your interested I've found her writing style flows really nicely.
She does relate some concepts to her other books though so you may end up getting 3 books by the end of it :)
Step 0: determine whether or not rebuilding trust is even worth the time and effort. When trust is lost, you’re not starting over—-you’re starting with a deficit.
The POV of this article is a founder / co-founder though; calling it quits in those cases means possibly leaving a LOT of money on the table, or having to buy the other party out.
It's not so much a human relationship as it's a business relationship with high stakes. Human relationships can pass, business relationships become expensive.
How many people stay in a married relationship because of factors outside of themselves?
From experience CC advice and other similar corp bs techniques are like “self defense class” techniques of communication meaning they only work if the other party is well meaning and actively cooperating. Which is to say they rarely work even if properly executed.
If your team is mostly comprised of people operating in bad faith, no advice (other than "disband") is going to help you. The premise of this article is that you have a team operating in good faith, but with fragile trust, which is a much more common problem in startups than a team of vipers.
That’s certainly true but these techniques also dont work on people who just don’t care rather than being outright malicious and there seems to be a lot more of those
I'd say it's more like defensive driving techniques. They are not guaranteed to save you from a wreck in all situations, but they maximize your chances of getting the best outcome possible. But still, sometimes you just get t-boned by a lunatic.
Why? Of course, someone might just be toxic. But if someone is actively trying to repair a relationship, wouldn't it be better for everyone to see it as that and try and reciprocate?
Look at the speech patterns of the boss in Office Space, they are somewhat similarly passive aggressive sounding to the rewording advice in the article.
It's a difficult one; it's clearly NOT natural behaviour for a lot of people, that is, it becomes learned behaviour. But because you're aware of it being learned behaviour - techniques people pick up from a book or website - anyone doing it instantly flags up as being untruthful.
Example; some twenty years ago I learned this "factoid" that if you hold your palm downwards when giving a handshake (like turn your hand inwards), you will come across as dominant and assertive.
Cue loads of people trying an awkward downward handshake. But to me it comes across as "I am trying to dominate you", and instantly dislike the person.
It's like Trump yanking people in when giving a handshake.
I like that this is battle tested advice derived from a real context (between the author and co founder).
There are tons of articles on LinkedIn written by people who don’t have lived experience in what they’re writing about so they read like a book summary.
Empiricists on the other hand will preside test ideas.
My number one advice for handling difficult people is try not to internalize their behavior. It’s not about you or anything you did. It’s a “them” problem.
Articles like this can make people on the receiving end of bad behavior are somehow at fault because they’re not saying please/thank you, etc. it’s a common fallacy, for example, that victims try to anticipate an abusers behavior and take on their own shoulders managing the chaos that is the abusers mood. When in reality there’s nothing you can do.
I’ve learned trust is something you can’t lie to yourself about. It’s mentally so taxing to walk on eggshells constantly. The other side has to put in work.
And I don’t need justification for not trusting someone else. The burden on proof for trust should be relatively high. You can 100% just trust your gut without having to understand or diagnose the other side. In the same way you trust your gut when in love or other situations.
> It’s not about you or anything you did. It’s a “them” problem.
It’s much easier to consider a conflict a “them” problem. That’s most people’s default. I’ve heard thousands of people complain about “them”, but they were never being abused or bullied.
Instead you probably want to default to a conflict resolution attempt, or two or three, or whatever your tolerance is with that person. If those don’t work, then it’s an “us” problem. You tried your best, which is all you can control but the result isn’t working for you and that’s OK. The other person doesn’t have to change and neither do you, but you don’t need to work at it anymore if you’ve given all you’re willing to give.
When I say “difficult people” I define it as you’ve put in energy over time and it hasn’t been reciprocated. The other side hasn’t owned their part. Can’t admit mistakes after you have.
But really if you’ve given it a go, and it just feels not great, unsafe, icky, whatever. Just trust your gut. Don’t overanalyze it.
I find the parent comment insightful, because my immediate reaction to seeing this article headline was, "that's what I needed when dealing with that difficult person recently...".
> Person B: “…. Hey, sorry to interrupt, but the story in my head is that you think owning that number is part of my job, and now you’re upset with me, or you think I’m incompetent at my job.”
Depending on the exact phrasing and group and company dynamics, I'd be worried a bit by saying something like this because Person A might think I'm trying to push off work or responsibility for some metric that I'm tangentially responsible for.
Same thing with “try to sound friendly.” Please and thank you are essential. But there are few things I hate more than cloying emails that start with “Hi!” (the exclamation point is the problem) and emoji are definitely worse.
Being polite is professional and shows mutual respect; IMO it implies an intention to build trust.
Affecting the trappings of friendliness or even loose intimacy in a professional setting or any setting where the relationship is in a rough spot has a strong chance of coming off as disingenuous.
It's actually ridiculous how effective all these little things are.
In my experience, men, engineers, and especially engineers who are men tend to think of this as unnecessary fluff. They often decline to add these little social niceties because to them, they sound inauthentic.
That's not a character flaw or anything! You have every right to feel that way. I do think it is just categorically wrong, though.
I don't know a better way to say it, but: you should really just start doing this. Even if it feels weird to you, it is incredible the degree to which it eases text-based interactions. Even if you aren't noticing it, I promise that other people are.
I think people forget that the written word has a tendency to come across stern unless you make an effort to soften it.
I know I forget this. There have been numerous times even here on HN where people have thought I was being critical or argumentative when that wasn't remotely what I was trying to communicate.
It's definitely a problem I've run into on both the sending and receiving side, despite being very familiar with it. I can't say that I know any universal solutions, but I've found it effective to essentially acknowledge it up front when first communicating with someone (e.g. a new member joining the team); despite working remotely, I always try to hop on a voice call with new teammates the first time I ever help them with anything so that I can better convey that I genuinely do want them to feel comfortable reaching out to me and that I will never be unhappy with them reaching out to ask something, even if it turns out that I might not be able to for some reason. At least for people I need to communicate with on an ongoing basis, being able to make a clear first impression can help mitigate any potential misunderstandings later on.
In the absence of being able to do a voice call for an initial impression (e.g. if someone needs immediate help and I'm not available to do a call, or if it's someone I don't expect to need to talk to again in the future), the best strategy I've found is to directly state my good intentions. When I've had one-off discussions with support engineers at my current job to try to help them figure out a customer issue, I often start off by saying something like "I definitely can help you with this issue! If I'm slow to respond or accidentally miss some piece of information, it's totally fine to ping me again as much as needed; I might have to temporarily stop focusing on helping you to deal with other stuff that comes my way, but if I haven't said otherwise, you can assume that any prolonged radio silence on my end is from me forgetting rather than not wanting to help still :)". Even though this doesn't specifically address the idea of messages sounding more stern than intended, my experience is that being able to assure someone of good faith in general will help prevent any misunderstandings later on, regardless of the specific circumstances.
It's the easiest thing in the world to forget -- after all, you know how it's supposed to sound! How could they possibly misinterpret your very clear message? ;)
Exactly. It's analogous to the game where one person taps out the rhythm of a melody and the other person tries to guess which song it is. It seems so obvious to the person doing the tapping, because their head is loaded with all the other context of the song; namely, the harmony and melody. None of that context is available to the recipient.
> In my experience, men, engineers, and especially engineers who are men tend to think of this as unnecessary fluff. They often decline to add these little social niceties because to them, they sound inauthentic.
I really hate to make such a clichéd and usually flawed argument, but can you imagine the reverse going down well? And if the male cohort (to continue this stereotype/generalisation/simplification) don't like it, it's only a 'social nicety' for the rest right? It's not at all obvious to me that that should be a goal.
It's a lot easier to have your diverse group 'transmit' in the way they each prefer than it is to invert and have them use the others' preference - and it's not clear that that's better anyway? Especially if you're aiming for equity on the team, in which event it would be arbitrary, so why not go for easy.
But really I think people are so diverse in personality and communication style that, especially on a people-you-actually-work-with sized team, gender is irrelevant even if you're correct about its link to exclamation marks, not least because there'll be so much else besides them.
Something I have been doing semi-consciously is using question marks more, even though it was grammatically a statement. Sort of: I'm not ordering you to do this thing (I'm not in a position to anyway but maybe that's not clear) I'm just pretty confident in this, but you should feel able to correct or 'challenge' me.
E.g. (code review context)
I don't think we should wazzle the foobar here, because the splines aren't reticulated until L94.
Vs.
I don't think we should wazzle the foobar here, the splines aren't reticulated until L94?
One question, though: do you think it would make the rest of your comment materially worse communication if you added just one excessively positive but non-load-bearing sentence at the beginning? Maybe something like “That’s a good perspective to bring!”
Maybe that’s not the way you communicate most sincerely, the way it is for me and others. Maybe I sound insincere to you right now, in which case, please do say so!
But all else being equal, if you knew that that single change would make me and others materially more receptive to the rest of your comment, would you consider just… doing it anyways, out of pure self-interest?
If we can be honest with one another though, your comment reads to me as not just insincere, but condescending. This might be cultural more than ..'genderal' - I was hearing echoes of 'thank you so much! You're so welcome!' familiar from even the most mundane interactions in the US. (It's quite jarring when you say 'thanks', for having been sold something in a shop say, expecting to leave it at that, to be told you're so welcome.)
What I was intending to get at above was that if I have a duty to communicate with you as you'd like to be communicated with(!), then surely you would also want to reciprocate? If there are just these two 'communication personas' on the team, and they're evenly split, isn't it a lot of effort for nothing, aren't we better off using what makes most sense to us personally, since just as many others agree as disagree anyway?
In principle, I agree -- no one is entitled to one communication style or another, and we should all respect each others' preferences.
But the problem is that the flow between those personas is not bidirectional.
Again, generalizing a lot here, but let's call them Cold and Warm personas.
If a Cold receives a Warm message, generally speaking the worst they might feel is that the other person is being inauthentic. In my experience, what usually happens is that they just filter out all the niceties as extraneous and get on with their day. As time goes on, they won't necessarily change their communications or relationship with that person -- after all, they're still getting what they need from them.
On the other hand, if a Warm receives a Cold message -- if they notice a pattern of receiving Cold messages -- they might take that as standoffishness or outright hostility. Even if it's not that negative, the Warm simply won't build as much trust as they otherwise might. They aren't getting what they need.
So in this scenario, if everyone communicates as they naturally would, Colds don't notice anything wrong, while Warms feel like they're actively missing out on something important to them.
I would also note that, again in my experience, most people who describe themselves as Cold communicators ("I don't want fluff, just communicate directly with me") actually really appreciate people who communicate with lots of social niceties. They respond to them more quickly, they're willing to explain misconceptions, and so on. They just don't think it's because of communication style.
I don't agree. I am what you would call a Cold, but maybe just have slightly more social awareness than you're imagining. I can't just "filter out the niceties". I perceive them as setting the expectation that I will reciprocate similarly. I usually at least try to do so, but it not intuitive for me and requires a lot of energy.
not a big deal either way, I can muster up a few friendly greetings on my way into the office every day, and the Warms I encounter could also try to read the room a little better. I just don't agree that the impact is as asymmetric as you say.
> I perceive them as setting the expectation that I will reciprocate similarly.
You know, this might be challenging to hear... I think there is such an expectation. And along the lines of what 'ketzo said above, I kind of think it's a categorically good expectation.
The only thing you might be missing, not because you're not socially sensitive, but just because it's non-native communication to you, is that those people genuinely care. The expectation isn't that you'll respond with a cheery reply-- it's that you'll respond with care.
What I might put on the table for you is, what if you think about it as replying in kind, rather than in form? If someone says something cheerily nice to you, you don't have to say "omg thank you!! :D". You can just say "Thank you.", from the heart, however you say it when you really mean it.
And yeah, some people will still take that as you being unkind. And if you mean it, that means they're the socially insensitive ones. They're the ones who don't really care! You don't owe them anything more.
But... I think you might be surprised at how many people really are willing to meet you exactly where you are, as long as you really do care.
> You know, this might be challenging to hear... I think there is such an expectation. And along the lines of what 'ketzo said above, I kind of think it's a categorically good expectation.
> The only thing you might be missing, not because you're not socially sensitive, but just because it's non-native communication to you, is that those people genuinely care. The expectation isn't that you'll respond with a cheery reply-- it's that you'll respond with care.
I will genuinely reflect on this, but my initial reaction is that I still don't agree. I think context may be important here.
I am going to work for a very specific reason: to complete enough tasks between 9am and 5pm so that I do not have to stay until 6, 7, or 8pm. I don't have a choice on this; my employer requires my physical presence in the office X days a week, and I am still figuring out how to maintain the same level of output that I achieved during WFH. "connection" is not something I seek at the office (among other things, I am in an unusual situation where 0% of my org actually works at the location I am assigned to). to be very frank, I am only there for the money, and I don't welcome distractions from that goal.
outside of work is a different story. in that context I basically agree with you, so I won't restate what you said.
I will leave you with one idea though: the concept of "peace". peace is what I feel when I walk from the metro stop to my office with my earbuds in. it is the last moment in my work day (before my commute home) when I can just exist. this is what people are disturbing with their niceties, genuinely felt or otherwise. I don't expect the entire world to conform to my way of being, I just don't agree that mine is categorically worse in the specific context of work.
And I genuinely appreciate that. Your care does shine through in those words. To me, you don’t need to say more… I don’t desire to be agreed with more than I desire peace for your life.
You’ve said you don’t seek “connection” at the office, and without knowing exactly what that means to you, I can’t assume that you’re seeking it here either. So, take this as you will:
You made me feel listened to. To me, that’s enough. Thank you.
(And yes, I’d probably put an emoji here if I could, chosen to emphasize gentleness and compassion. Likely a leaf, a sprig, or one of the non-romantic flowers. To me, this all feels so heavy without it, and lightening the words would undercut them.
Maybe a sparkle… idk. I wouldn’t normally think about it, but it seems important to say out loud, here.
When you read this, maybe you can picture a little flower, just meant to help you believe that I really do care how what I’ve said makes you feel.)
> They respond to them more quickly, they're willing to explain misconceptions, and so on. They just don't think it's because of communication style.
Dropping a follow-up comment for future data scientists:
Take a closer look at this one! Possible outlier. Check out how the root thread hasn’t really risen to the top of the list — that usually means a lot of people didn’t like the form of it, or disagreed with its self-referential opinion.
And but so also check out your sentiment scores on this thread— the grandparent is overtly a bit snide, not in a mean spirited way, but just really not agreeing with the root’s thesis that this advice leads to more productive engagement. Make sure you scored that correctly!
Then, what does your sentiment analysis have to say about the engagement here as compared to other threads? I have a prediction, obviously, and if I’m still around I’d love to read the paper :)
Yeah, I totally get that. And I absolutely knew going in that suggesting you write exactly the same thing I wrote in that exact comment couldn’t help but sound condescending.
But in complete honesty, hedging around it any more than that would have felt insincere to me. And in exchange I got sincere feedback! So really, I’m just doing things your way, and I’ve seen the benefit of it :)
With that said, for your future reference: if you hadn’t said “Interesting!” first, I wouldn’t be engaging charitably right now— I’d be debating whether to engage at all. Based on the next sentence I’m guessing you meant it more as a way to call my sincerity bluff, but I’m telling you it fucking works. Might be an idea to keep around?
To your parenthetical: One other thing to keep in mind is that those employees (I’ve been one) have to talk to terse, grumpy people all day long, and even if it’s not reciprocated, that can be a way to carve out a little moment of real human kindness. I’d keep some weight on the possibility that, sometimes, for a moment, they do just genuinely hope you have a good rest of the day.
I know there’s probably no way I can now convince you that I genuinely hope you have a good rest of the day, so, uh… take care?
I understand your point about the (theoretical) equal split between styles, so why close one or the other.
But I think you've landed on choosing your own way, when really you should try and match the vocal tone of the other person. After all the point of communicating is to get the other person receptive to your point.
And this goes both ways, I think overly perky and chipper people need to understand introverts and low-energy communicators, and match their tone as well.
Yes, this is exactly how I approach professional communication. My emails sent to different stakeholders vary wildly in style.
If you’re invested in getting something out of a conversational partner, it’s obviously best to write in a way that sounds like a thought they, themselves, could have had— in fact, are having. And contra 'ketzo’s original point, I deeply appreciate that so many we-have-to-say-mostly male tech stakeholders purposely don’t massage their language that much, and thereby make their brains that much easier to hijack.
I bring my effusively positive personality to HN largely because I don’t have any real motive or theory of change, other than possibly making it a slightly more comfortable environment for people who will read my comments precisely as written.
Oh, I’m so curious if this comment sounds more sincere to the reader :)
It was the reasoning I objected to rather than the specific advice, and I may have misread/misunderstood but I thought it was tied just to exclamation marks anyway, not emoticons.
> It's a lot easier to have your diverse group 'transmit' in the way they each prefer
Your post was thought provoking, something I appreciate. I wondered about the above statement.
Are you saying that "receivers" should be expected to expend more effort than "transmitters"?
Wouldn't it be optimal to try to meet in the middle, the sweet spot of easy-as-possible transmission and best-as-possible reception, both sides putting in some effort?
My thinking is that communication is about a meeting of the minds, and anything either side can do to make that better helps.
Is that why some people overuse question marks? I really, really don't like it as it muddles the sentence. I mentally hear the inflection and it makes the person sound like a valley girl in my head.
That's fair, I'm writing from a West-Coast-USA-tech-company perspective.
An exclamation point from a partner at a law firm... probably hits a little different!
But in more informal communication, I think exclamation points are good because they help convey tone and energy in a way that is often lacking. It helps break up a message that can otherwise feel flat and cold.
As an engineer, I’ve gotten used to being told off for …using exclamation points, or not using then actually, or using them a little. Apparently an exclamation point on a joke makes it aggressive.
And at one age, I got popular, muscular. That’s long gone now, but when I was, I could write whatever I wanted and people didn’t find it offensive. I found it funny when I discovered that people no longer told me off for what I said, or wrote. Now at my age (and weight), I notice again people telling me that I didn’t speak properly of whoever, I ask them what I said, they say it’s not the words, it’s not the tone, it’s not the smile, it’s the intent.
It’s almost as if engineer-men were the socialy lowlys, on which people could train their ability to explain how to others how they ought to behave better.
The world goes back to the stone age without engineers. Our status should be inherently much higher. Imagine if we all went on strike for it at once, we'd get what we wanted in days as none of the people looking down on us could get anything done.
Emojis and emoticons in any serious piece of communication are simply unprofessional and insincere. Do not use them, unless your intent is actually to piss your recipient off.
Textbook example is the recent fiasco over at Linus Tech Tips, where they even used an emoji in an email to Billet Labs saying they "accidentally" auctioned off Billet's stuff. Anyone worth their paycheck doesn't use emojis in business communiques.
If your communication is straightforwardly positive you can use as many emoji as you want without much in the way of consequences. Sticking :tada: in a Slack announcement of good quarterly performance, or even an official blog post, is unlikely to upset anyone in the same way "You're fired! :fire:" would.
What's your opinion of slack? Seems to be the gold standard of team communication platforms (all other platforms follow their lead) and emojis are an integral part of it.
You're right about the "unexpected" part. I think it really depends on the context and the person. Both factors play a big role here.
Imagine being in a spot to review a new hire's PR and you've barely interacted with them before this encounter.
A reply of "Your method technically works but next time try xyz instead. It's more efficient. ;)" is extremely hostile in my mind. That phrasing is already over the top horrendous but the ;) amplifies it by 10x.
As for a breakdown of why I think it's horrendous:
"Your method" <-- You're already tying it directly to them
"technically" <-- An unnecessary word, it's adding salt to the wound and makes you come off as arrogant
"Next time" <-- Majorly condescending
"Try xyz instead" <-- A bit direct
"It's more efficient" <-- At least it describes the 'why' but there's 100 other ways to say this
";)" <-- Keyser Söze tier ruthlessness
I think if I were really in this spot I'd probably reply with something like: "Hey, I ran your solution and it's working nicely. Thanks a lot! By the way, recently I've been working on profiling our code so performance is on the top of my mind. I ran the profiler against this PR and noticed a dip in performance in one of the functions. Do you want to hop on a call sometime to explore a few ways we can refactor xyz function? Really curious to hear what you think and after thinking about this for a while I have an idea or 2."
the fact that neither of your wordings makes it clear whether I actually have to address your comment to get my code merged is much worse than the tone of the first version.
like it or not, you are temporarily in a position of power when you are a required reviewer on someone else's change. they need to satisfy you to move their ticket into the "done" column, and you both know it. rather than dance around this uncomfortable situation with soft wordings, just focus on making it clear what is mandatory and what is optional.
> Hey, I ran your solution and it's working nicely. Thanks a lot! By the way, recently I've been working on profiling our code so performance is on the top of my mind. I ran the profiler against this PR and noticed a dip in performance in one of the functions. Do you want to hop on a call sometime to explore a few ways we can refactor xyz function? Really curious to hear what you think and after thinking about this for a while I have an idea or 2.
But that's making a PR comment into a meeting, which is something I'd kinda dread and want to avoid.
That said, I agree that this
> Your method technically works but next time try xyz instead. It's more efficient. ;)
is awful. But it's not just the use of an emoticon. It's that it's the wrong emoticon.
> this works, but xyz would be better (more efficient) :)
Would be a bit ambiguous in tone, but I think at least invites an optimistic reading as well.
For me I'd rather the niceties in a PR (as well as proposals to meet) live in a comment at the beginning or end of a PR. Individuak requests for specific changes within a PR review should be clear and simple, not bogged down in formal crap or fluff, imo.
Yeah, for me at least. I feel like that would make a meeting more awkward, not less. Also, if I were in the new hire's shoes, scheduling a meeting that's essentially about criticism would make me more anxious, not less. And the time gap between
the scheduling of the meeting and the start of the meeting might be pretty fretful. If someone just lays out what they want changed in 1 or 2 sentences, I can immediately know that it's not some big problem they want to meet about.
At the same time, I would feel bad if I found out that I had really distressed a new hire in a code review. And I do try to soften things when I say something that I anticipate might be perceived as harsh in a way that I don't intend. (I use emoji a lot, I DM people, and I tend not to use standalone sentences that end in periods except in email. I use parentheticals and qualifiers, make jokes, etc.) I do schedule meetings to go over things including criticisms/problems/objections, but only when I feel like it would be faster and more natural, or I think it's really essential that I make a realtime demand on someone's attention to get their input.
I feel almost as if this comment was designed to bother people.
Personally, I’m rarely if ever so excited about something at work where I’d feel the need to add “!”. I’m sorry but I don’t get pumped about things that often at the place I have to be at so I can afford to feed my family.
If I use “!” at work it’s never about work related conversation, and is almost exclusively used to show excitement for or to congratulate a coworker on a work or personal achievement.
Short of celebrating with a coworker in their excitement for something, using “!” in the context like what you’re suggesting, ie “Sure, I’d love to help!” feels insincere for me to say, because I’m not actually excited, and personally I know that my coworkers who knew me in the slightest would also read that as insincere, possibly passive aggressive, or just kiss ass. We don’t need to be enthusiastic about doing shit at a place we wouldn’t choose to be at if we didn’t have to, which wastes the biggest parts of our lives.
My former boss replied to her cousin over text "ok!"
The cousin took that as yelling and anger not the (what I consider obvious) intended enthusiasm. He didn't talk to her for a really long time and when they finally talked about it he didn't accept the answer and stayed angry.
I used to do this as well, maybe a bit _too_ much. After reading an article somewhere (I forget which) that had just an absolutely excessive amount of exclamations I've toned it back down a lot. But for the folks who don't ever use it -- try it out! It doesn't mean you're shouting, it maps to basically a slight increase in tone.
A manager of mine in the past used exclamation marks and emojis a lot. I never grew to trust the "friendliness" of it. The use of emojis and exclamations over the trivialist things made very interaction feel forced.
Probably I should’ve added more context, but it usually come through the conversation in a “dismissive” manner or a way to signal “you were wrong and idiot”, and I also noticed it’s different among the age (older people don’t care or notice) and culture (Chinese for example take it as an insult), I don’t have an example but goes like this:
Person A: I turned on the PC and have a blue screen.
Person B: No you can’t do that, you have to plug Y first then turn it on :)!
Or something along the lines, I can’t remember an example right now but I’ve seen it firsthand, give a look at this it might gives you some more context
gotcha, I can see where you are coming from. fwiw, I tend to end potentially negatively received comments with a smile to let the person know I'm not angry or anything, just happy to be helping :)
My fianceé's a doctor, and from what I hear it's mainly indirect terse notes on patient files, and confrontational phone calls. (A only calls B to request something - imaging, transfer, whatever; B default doesn't want to do it, but might come around.)
I tend to have this problem but only with certain people... Ironically though, I find that people who distrust me are often themselves untrustworthy and they are projecting. I think maybe it's because I have an unusual personality with high confidence but without status-seeking which makes certain people distrust me and doubt my motives. I often talk myself down and openly criticize my own decisions when they were subpar - I'm thinking that this combination of confidence and self-criticizing throws most people off. Most successful people only talk themselves up and shift blame when they make a mistake.
It might help you to know that a lot of people are living predominantly via creating identities through social learning with a high focus on their ego (and the resulting reactions). Joscha Bach referenced it in his recent Lex Fridman appearance (#392) if you are curious. "Stages of Life", "Identity", "Enlightenment" and "How we think" are the relevant segments if i recall correctly.
Fun stuff: I initially thought it would talk about a more technical aspect of trust and communication (e.g how do you have two services chat when you don't trust transport), and was expecting something like Byzantine faults or two generals problem, and such topics.
But that made me wonder, are there any algorithms and techniques from the computer science world, related to communication in low trust, that could be retrofitted into the real world? Stuff like shared secrets, ACKs and such?
I think a single take-away from this is to generally overcommunicate rather than under, especially around the social context stuff (e.g. expectations from either side).
"That's not a character flaw or anything! You have every right to feel that way. I do think it is just categorically wrong, though."
Do you have any idea how asinine that statement is? Let me translate it into English: "I respect your opinion, but actually I don't. You should communicate the way I prefer, not the way you prefer, because my feelings matter and yours don't".
Don't tell me that's not what you said, because it absolutely is.
Is it really that shocking that you don't always get much more respect than you give?
Not sure why this is downvoted. Your assumption could be wrong and categorically ruling that out without giving any real reasons means you likely are. Either way its far from a respectful attitude and doing that on shaky grounds is even worse.
At best your opinion is incomplete. It overlooks that people often take faked niceties quite bad. Like the parent post. And are not free but require mental effort. With humans not really doing multi tasking. And while a positive attitude is healthier all around, we are talking work environment here. I shouldnt need to worry if somebody thinks a short and precise "Yes!" could be impolite or sarcastic. Its an accurate response and i shouldnt have to worry about babysitting your interpretation. Seeing as we are all working together give me the benefit of the doubt. Its as simple as that. And if you figure that to be misplaced, do inform me as i might be overlooking something. That wont be a difficult conversation, i will be grateful.
edit: I would also be really worried how likely difficult conversations will be in such an environment. No amount of sugarcoating makes you fine with me kicking your favorite feature. And it might need kicking, no matter how attached you are.
edit1: In case it helps, the reason people take fake niceties in the workplace so badly is because it selfishly increases the required effort from everyone else to meet the bar you already set rather high. When considering what is acceptable people now have to plan around you lying. Instead of cooperation you are getting managed because you require too much effort and dont say what you want for which reasons.
Downvotes make a lot of sense seeing as he responded to the wrong post (ketzo was the post referenced)
At that point we are discussing intention (stupidity vs malice) which makes it little better then analyzing for sarcasm. Benefit of the doubt goes both ways and the most charitable take is bad enough.
Fake nicety - I pretend to be your friend or thankful or praise you while not thinking much of you.
Passive aggression - I am intentionally trying to insult you or be condescending to you or stanf in your way while keeping plausible deniality.
Intention matters. The above sentence does nit sound like someone pretending to be nice or think well of you. It sounds like someone telling you they don't think much of you, while trying to make it harder for you to address the disagreement.
Thanks for the elaboration, i meant i fail to see the distinction beyond intention. Since determining intention is error prone and unreliable giving the benefit of the doubt might still be a beneficial strategy. Even with you giving a good description of the problems that incurs.
I think it boils down to what kind of costs are at stake. False positive for negative intention leads to conflict and breakdown of cooperation, while entertaining a passive aggressive person increases the burden on you in favor of continued cooperation and additional information.
While a direct stop is beneficial for short games, reducing false positives is beneficial for productive long games and comes at only temporary costs.
Or differently put, while stupidity is not always the better explanation then malice, assuming stupidity first can be beneficial regardless. If people are then unwilling or unable to fix stupid it becomes another discussion. But those false positives sum up quickly.
If you do not push back agains the above, it will be read as "you was wrong or overly emotional" by third parties on the meeting. That is after all what you was accused of. If you are negotiating, you will be at worst position.
Moreover, the regular insults and unaddressed put downs will accumulate. If you accept communication like that, over time you will loose confidence or at least become more passive and weak at asserting your needs or opinions.
Intention matters for the response. If you treat passive aggression or thinly veiled insult as something genuine or harmless fake compliment, you are in for a very bad time. Because you will be target of more and more of it. You need to stop or adress the dynamic, directly or indirectly.
Again, i see the cost and risk of doing this. However
> Moreover, the regular insults and unaddressed put downs will accumulate.
> If you treat passive aggression or thinly veiled insult as something genuine or harmless fake compliment, you are in for a very bad time. Because you will be target of more and more of it.
is working as intended. We arent talking schoolyard but workplace. You are checking if cooperation is possible so you have to spend less effort on managing the people around you and your reaction to them. Getting a clear signal on that means you can go over to actual conflict if you enjoy that and use some levers. Or just get a better environment so you can focus on work.
The image that presents for third parties is another issue and brings us back to short vs long games. That you shouldnt be reacting is besides the point. You arent describing a professional, let alone cooperative environment if they reward pointless personal short term conflict dragging everyone down to that level. And even if you are stuck in a dog kernel, your approach isnt without its own dangers. Goating somebody into overreacting is a tried and true strategy to make them look bad / unstable.
In the end defaulting on personal workplace conflict means you opt into playing emotional games. Which i see no reason to do, especially as idiots doing this have home field advantage. If they really made a decision for conflict and you fancy joining in make sure you have the advantage and mop the floor with them. They arent all too smart after all. But cooperation will be off the table, you will have to constantly mince every word.
edit: This is really about job description. Do you really want to be a dog trainer?
I do appreciate the feedback, i hope this isnt a language barrier. I do agree that your advice is valuable if you are stuck in an environment where you have to manage malicious people. But i can not overstate how much effort that starts to suck up for every person. You are then working on them instead of the project at hand. Setting the default environment is really important here, because it determines the risk of creating conflict with people who would have normally defaulted on mutually beneficial cooperation if communication hadnt broken down over assumptions of intention.
Your approach results in an overall reduction in cooperation potential for the sake of managing the excess of toxic actors short term who will be a constant burden anyway. Even if you keep them from acting out, you still have to work around them. By being given the benefit of the doubt and getting engaged towards cooperation people are pushed on either higher or lower levels. Either the negative behavior piles up or you manage to open actual communication. It tells you who you need to be concerned about and what motivates them. Its a filter that looks at peoples intention and ability. Which makes it possible to differentiate malice from stupidity. Which reduces the overall burden immensely as problems from stupidity often stem from misunderstandings and reactions turning into cycles because people get emotionally involved in a conflict.
Some coworkers not wanting to make the journey towards a professional work environment doesnt mean its not a beneficial thing to do either way. Letting such people drag everyone down is the worst case, even if its done to prevent short term direct conflict.
We're all thin-skinned at times, which is why this article's take is so valuable, and it's helpful to just be careful with everybody, or at least have a set of tools ready to deploy if you manage to step in it, or someone manages to step in it with you.
If you’re approaching someone and have judgmental thoughts about them, it’s probably leaking out through body language, tone or other social cues, causing you to have to be extra careful to compensate.
If you don’t like having to use these techniques, respect and appreciation also goes a long way. Instead of judging them as “thin-skinned colleagues who need little pats on the head”, maybe try getting to know them and how their childhood might have played a role, or how their personality benefits them or the community in certain ways.
For example, maybe you see it as a chance to practice gratitude, which is a virtue in many cultures.
I find this to be an unrealistic standard. We all have lapses given the right moment (attention, tiredness, distraction). The question is do people comprehend the problem and are willing to work on it/ adjust for it?
Differently put, the issue isnt just one of detecting problems but detecting those that cant be fixed/adjusted for. Which means putting resources into debugging how they appear for which reasons. Seeing as walking away is costly, that can often be a worth while investment.
This is less about trusting and more about valuing functioning team relationships. Benefit of the doubt is a good strategy for team building, at the very least for information gathering.
I thought I was going to like this, but other than 'Give people the opening to do better' section, the advised interactions seem not great to me?
e.g.
I want to say something, but I am having a hard time with it.
I have something to say, but I don’t know how you’ll take it.
I need to tell you something and I am anxious about your reaction.
are (1) making me anxious while I wait for you to say whatever it is; (2) absolving you of any responsibility for what it is or how I feel about it before I even know what it is?
… or check in afterwards.
so now you've given me bad news, poor feedback, whatever - and I have to make you feel better about it?
In theory, I'm with you; in practicality, I have always found that literally just a one-sentence lead-in -- even if it's not perfect -- goes a long way towards a better conversation.
I kind agree with you on your reading of the subtexts, here, but in a conversation, I just don't think these sentiments come off that way.
Rather, we tend to interpret them as noise that lets the other person know that a difficult topic is coming, instead of just dunking them in head first.
"Hey, I wanted to let you know about some bad news. one-breath pause <bad news here>" has always worked better for me, as both the deliverer and the recipient, than "Hey, <bad news>."
Basically what I'm saying is that you could definitely read into these suggested phrases, as you have; but they play out way differently in a real-life conversation.
I unreservedly love this article and found a lot of it valuable despite decades of career experience stepping in it with coworkers (and vice versa).
But I agree with you about up-front acknowledgements of hard conversations. They're the workplace equivalent of "we need to talk". I'm an anxious person by nature, so "we need to talk" is about the most painful thing you can say to me: my mind will immediately project out the worst possible case, and the relief I get when your real issue is nowhere nearly that bad isn't going to fully absorb the cortisol the opening generates for me.
Fortunately, the article anticipates this, and you've misread it a bit. Notice the headline for the follow-up is "OR check in afterwards", not "AND check in afterwards".
Checking in afterwards is the right alternative when you're working with me. It might not be with other people.
And, the straightforward answer to the question your comment asks: yes. Yes, you have to make them feel better about it. When you're working on a team, part of your responsibility as a team member is to keep relationships working smoothly.
To put it in Reddit parlance: if someone steps in it with you, and then asks you to make them feel better about it afterwards, and you get irritated about the check-in: YTA. Not ESH: YTA. They did the right thing by (1) being concerned they handled the initial interaction poorly and (2) following up on it to clear the air. You'd have punished them for doing the right thing, which is worse than handling the initial interaction poorly!
I didn't misread it, at least I did read it as 'or', I just don't like that either. Yes I will reply Hey no sweat yeah just doing your job cheers whatever - but it's definitely making me feel even worse than I already was about whatever the negative thing was you had to say to me in the first place.
The whole thing is just making it more about the counterparty, like they're the real victim for having unfortunately to give you this bad news - it's not their fault you did the bad thing after all!
I'm afraid the Reddit parlance is lost on me, what's YTA & ESH?
Team members should reflect on interactions and give a quick sanity check to whether they may have come across rude, condescending, or aggrieved. And, if they have to ask, they should ask. You, as someone who shares the role of "team member", should be prepared to hear those check-ins in the spirit they're intended: as acknowledgements that everybody agrees that it's not OK to be rude or passive-aggressive. You don't have to absolve people: if they were rude, you can say "thanks, I did take that comment as a little hostile, and I'm glad it wasn't just me."
(There's a whole, very popular, subreddit dedicated to adjudicating "NTA", "ESH", "YTA", and "NAH" in a variety of user-submitted scenarios. It's a hoot.)
I think I understand what you're saying. Pre-statement anxiety may be preferable to mid-statement anxiety though?
And I think the intent is not to absolve responsibility, but to specifically acknowledge it. But it depends on how authentic it feels, which may be a problem if we're building trust.
There's a difference between saying "I have something to say, but I don’t know how you’ll take it." and "I have something to say, but I don’t want you to be upset." ... where the first one is letting you know of potential trouble ahead, and the second one is demanding you react in a certain way.
I met this toxic nutcase who had made up a concept like this, it essentially boiled down to
“I’m going to tell you something thats unsubstantiated about you, which you’ll be obligated to be defensive about, so dont respond at all, and I dont want to talk about it”
its that absolving of any responsibility that gets me
> Person B: “…. Hey, sorry to interrupt, but the story in my head is that you think owning that number is part of my job, and now you’re upset with me, or you think I’m incompetent at my job.”
It's a bit clumsy, but yes - this is a clunky version of explicitly stating your own emotions and what's giving rise to those feelings.
Putting those things out clearly in the open during difficult discussions can be incredibly powerful, awkward though it may be to achieve.
Nonviolent Communication is the gold standard text on how to use this style of communication, and for people like myself who didn't learn how to communicate about emotions as children, it can be life-changing.
Not in a casual conversation. But sadly yes, sometimes that's the kind of super crafted sentence you come up with because you're trying to land on very tensed subject from an angle that is somewhat neutral.
It's pretty complicated to start the subject from the other end, like "You seem to think I'm horrible at this job, but I quite disagree"
From my experience communication isn’t the problem, the root cause is always power struggle, directly or indirectly, and everything else follows, surprisingly it is the case also between nations throughout history.
Wow, that's quite the accusation. I did some quick searching and couldn't find anything, but it's not the sort of thing that I would expect to be easily findable.
If trust has been damaged, it might take more than just talk to repair it. You may need to give the other person part of what they want as a gesture of good will. I've seen this go a long way in certain situations.
Of course, this comes with some caveats. For example, if there's a power imbalance in a damaged relationship, it's not appropriate for the disadvantaged side to be making sacrifices. Also, the person making the sacrifice is entitled to notice whether or not the other party appreciates it. After all, no one wants to be taken advantage of.
The point is sometimes you just need to demonstrate a charitable attitude when you want things to get back on track.