I like the idea of giving people some help expressing themselves at work. You might be interested to learn about the Power Distance Index, and the body of work on PDI and work culture.
You’ll see if you read the comments here that some people are like “the alternatives are bullshit corporate speak and infuriate me”, and some are like “yes, at last, a way to help people be more polite / better communicators”. There’s a smattering of “this is passive aggressive” thrown in.
One of the broad pitches PDI at work types make is that the lower the PDI, the more direct communications are preferred; the higher, the more ‘diplomatic’ the communications are preferred. My vibe on your list is that it’s just a tad more diplomatic than Silicon Valley wants to be, hence the slight negative ‘passive aggressive’ reactions.
Some of the lowest PDI countries in the world are Israel, and many Northern European countries, and it fits my experience that in those places additional respect is given for bluntness - as Jan Maas in Ted Lasso says “I’m not rude, I’m Dutch.” As a broad stereotype using the alternate wordings you give would be a sign you are not someone to be respected in that environment.
On the other hand, Saudi Arabia’s PDI is high, and I would bet that some of your alternate list there would still be much too rude; just a guess, I haven’t worked in Saudi.
Anyway, thanks again for this; if you stay interested, you might consider reworking this into different ‘cultural norms’ lists to help people acclimate / go both ways; at that point, I think it would be a very broadly useful resource.
One word Danes (and other N.Es) often get in trouble for is 'fuck'. In Denmark it is no problem to use this in many business meetings but will often spell trouble when we participate in a meeting with people from USA. We simply do not see using it as something to avoid.
(and pupils in Denmark will absolutely not be sent to headmaster or parents contacted if they use it. At most it will be a glance from the teacher if they use it too much).
There is a rule, never swear in a foreign language, or meow at a cat, you just don't know exactly what you are saying.
Saying fuck is very context dependent. It can make you seem familiar, in a formal context that would be unwelcome (ie, we are not friends so don't talk to me as if we were pals (eg: tu, vs vous in french))
It could be a sign of directness and frankness. It can be somewhat comedy, or it can be crass, or it can be ignorant and uneducated (ie, no other way to Express yourself without cursing, a limited vocabulary)
It also depends on how often one curses and hears them. High schoolers curse every other sentence, but when their (teacher, parent etc) curses once and for the first time in years, it means seriousness and is powerful. So something like "you little fuck" can be all the way from endearing, to the most serious of threats
I understand the sentiment, but can’t follow the rule. I meow at cats whenever I meet them. It just always seemed the right thing to do. Granted, I don’t know exactly what I’m saying when I meow (or otherwise, really) - but then I don’t know what they’re saying, either, so I figure we’re even.
In any case, none of the cats I’ve meowed at over the years have ever seemed too offended - perhaps I’ve just been lucky. Barking at dogs has been a totally different story, though…
When you work as a foreigner in Japan, you can be afforded a lot of leeway in business custom and etiquette - as you as you are polite. You are assumed to be a well-meaning Gaijin who doesn't know better/proper form.
I've always assumed it is the same with meowing at cats: "we appreciate your effort. At least you didn't shit in our litter box like Jerry"
Meow at your cat and you might just learn something. I’ve successfully learned my cat’s “language.” Thankfully it’s a small vocabulary. Unfortunately, they know that I know what they want when the subject of cat treats comes up.
Funny enough, our second cat learned the local dialect after joining the family. I guess the moral here is to just gauge the room and hope for something fishy to come out of the cabinet.
Cats only meow to communicate with humans, they don't make the sound around other adult cats. It's a holdover from kittenhood that turned out to be advantageous at getting human attention, so when they self-domesticated, so they kept it. So basically if you meow at a cat you're just saying "I'm baby".
"There is a rule, never swear in a foreign language"
I'm an anglophone - en_GB.
The word fuck has been adopted by pretty much the world as a naughty expletive that generally doesn't cause complete outrage but is expressive enough to be generally outside normal and polite conversation. I think it is a triumph of people getting something right: As a complex species with disparate concepts and languages, we have managed to pick a single word to cover quite a few concepts and situations. Fuck's time has come (ooerr).
To be honest, I'd like to be able to swear in a foreign language (I can manage German and French so far but without much enthusiasm). Please feel free to reply with your finest swearing and put downs.
If you replace 'fuck' with 'procreate' or 'fornicate', it should be more polite: Oh procreation, what have you done now?
However, as Hollywood managed to promote 'fuck' as a generic expletive with no meaning, these are actually less polite, as they emphasis the meaning that was gone.
I also wonder why people write f*ck. If you want to swear, do it. If you want to be polite, don't do it. If a censoring system won't let you use fuck, be more creative. F*ck with a star just seems to say you're a pushover.
> Please feel free to reply with your finest swearing and put downs.
How about strange?
I binge-watched all of Farscape in under a month during college over a decade ago, and "frell" (usually in the form "frelling ____") seems to have become a permanent part of my vocabulary. The word is a 1:1 translation of every meaning of "fuck", used very liberally in the series.
There's a bunch more swears and work-inappropriate sayings they also leave "untranslated", but "frell" was probably the most used.
The Irish deploy the work "feck" in nearlly the same way as the English word "fuck" but it isn't considered rude. I should probably know the full etymology of both words but can only comment on the Eng.Ang/Sax version which is basically: fuck. WP etc seem to waffle about wind fuckers/fokkers etc but fundamentally, I think the word means exactly what it means - that is how words work!
Feck is a bit more intriguing. I think feck really means the same as fuck but it is the Irish sticking it to the English and turning a rude word into a simple expletive that Mummy can use. If so - good job. I would love to hear some thoughts about this from someone from the Isle.
Same in some parts of the UK—north east of England in my case. It's fine among friends, but I'd never say it in a business meeting or to my grandmother. It's all about the context and delivery—calling someone a cunt will be taken very badly indeed if you do it in the wrong situation.
It's unclear whether you're talking about the English word "fuck" or some Danish "equivalent". Either way, the word doesn't necessarily mean the same thing to people who speak different languages, or even just different dialects, do it's unclear to what extent the difference you're referring to is cultural or linguistic.
(Is there even a clear distinction between "cultural" and "linguistic"?)
The English word, used in the way we picked up from American cultural expression like TV, movies and music. The meaning is the same but the sensitivity to it is different. To us Samuel L Jackson characters are colourful and funny, not rude or abrasive, perhaps that was lost in translation.
Lenny Bruce's 1962 "Dirty Words" album is on Spotify and Apple Music; worth a listen if you've never heard it.)
Jackson's use of fuck is typically to add emphasis to a statement, and actually, I think he uses "motherfucker" a lot more than bare fuck[1], but in any case, fuck has different meanings depending upon context. Consider: Oh fuck. Fuck off. Fuck you. I'm fucked. Hey lady, you wanna fuck?[2] This fucking bug. Let's get the fuck outta here.
It's an adaptable word but still bleeped on the air in 2022. At the same time, it's okay to allude to it on primetime TV as in: "Holy mother forking shirt balls!"
Malcolm Tucker in “The Thick of It” made extensive use of the word “fuck”, my favourite being responding to a door knock with “Come the fuck in or fuck the fuck off.” - an impressive 33% fuck content.
I feel “on the air” is a bit misleading and antiquated, and I think that’s quite relevant, because you seem to be using “the air” as some barometer of social acceptance.
Even the “cool” elderly people I know stopped listening to the radio and broadcast TV years ago. Nowadays, everything is Podcasts, Netflix, Hulu, Spotify, YouTube, TikTok, etc. and none of them censor “fuck”. Our culture is generally becoming a lot more open and accepting when it comes to the use of words like “fuck” and “shit”, however words like “cunt” are still fairly taboo.
From my perspective, broadcast TV and radio are simply a measure of how many Americans are hanging onto an antiquated culture, and I’m sure there’s significant overlap between “people who listen to broadcast” and “people who still find ‘fuck’ offensive”, and it’s likely no longer just a function of age.
Thanks for sharing the Lenny Bruce but, I had no idea that inspired Carlin!
Literally the only reason i do not use Television or terrestrial radio broadcast is the advertisements. I got sick of the advertisements back in 2001, and i have never had a CATV subscription. I have an aerial now because PBS has a channel aimed specifically at children and as it's publicly funded the advertisements (including product placement) are benign or at least unobtrusive, not loud, and not about medicines. Doctors aren't watching children's programming (generally) so that's the last refuge from the billions pharma spends on marketing every year.
90% of the freemium streaming services are the same, and i'll include SiriusXM as well.
That all being said, I personally consider sectioning off parts of the language (colorful or whatever) a net positive. In my opinion, disallowing words that have "universal meaning" forces children (and people who want to run for office, be an instructor, whatever) to find better and more descriptive ways to express themselves. The alternative, as an extreme, would be two utterances: "Fuck yes!" for good things, and "aw, fuck!" for bad things.
I may just be a simple big city technologist, but there's something really vim-like about broadcast that I thoroughly appreciate. I sure hope I'm not the only one who sees value in such things!
God should be added to that list of dirty words because not every one is religious and being constantly reminded of the presence of what is old school law and order but in the extreme psychological warfare is just as nasty if not worse.
The other problem is who are these people imposing those rules on us? Is this the thought police who hide behind the anonymity of public outrage and public morals but typically work for media outlets as editors, or legislators or law enforcement and judiciary? Are they an anagram of Non Technical Computer Users?
The "these people" are us, and I don't believe there's actually a formal list of banned words. Rather, Federal law prohibits obscene, indecent and profane content from being broadcast[1].
It's then up to us, the public, to work out whether content falls into one of these categories. NBC could, for example, choose not to bleep fuck during a daytime podcast. That would probably lead to a bunch of complaints to the FCC. The FCC would then fine NBC, and I gather, ultimately could revoke NBC's broadcasting license.
What's offensive changes over time[1]. Maybe fuck won't be seen as offensive some day, and then networks will be free to broadcast it over the air because no one complains to the FCC about it.
> Not using it in vain is one of the ten commandments:
Religion has only been around for about 2000-3000 years, and if it was banned so we couldnt utter the word god anymore, I wonder how long it would take for the epigenetics to work out of the gene pool.
In todays world, I have a hunch most kids have learnt to swear by the time they start primary school, so why the mental bondage to use a euphemism and to have an excuse to beat a kind mentally and/or physically for saying it?
Would it really bring that much chaos to the world, considering the psychological idea that something banned or illicit is more highly treasured?
Consider what happens when I say "the 'n' word" - do you think of a racial slur in your head? If so, because I do in fact mean the slur but I am not allowed to say it regardless of context, should I have just said the word to begin with anyway? Am I free from obscenity because I used a euphemism and you are a racist for thinking of the non-euphemism? The mental burden concept is iffy here.
If I was younger under the legal guardianship of my parents the N word would be No. However the news & social media has been very informative and educational at hilighting other peoples vulnerabilities giving would be agent provocateurs new angles of attack, so now I tend to associate the N word with a subsection of society getting angry at the non subsection of society using it. What I see is a subsection of society trying to own a word which can only be used by themselves. I think this happens when a subsection dont have many material possessions to keep them occupied with like toys for kids so like with religion, if you dont have much you start inventing things and laying claim to things that where there is no proof.
As to the cognitive dissonance angle, for having racist thoughts regarding a non euphemism, there is nothing quite like cognitive dissonance to mess people up, but what I find interesting about it is how it affects us as our chemistry changes, ie we age, we get more intelligent, we get wise, so then we start employing innuendo to avoid the legal and societal constraints, and there is another subsection of society which does innuendo brilliantly.
Kale should be added to that list of dirty words because not every one is a health nut, and being constantly reminded of the presence of what is new school law and order but in the extreme psychological warfare is just as nasty if not worse.
Yes it was traditionally a pro health fad food - and this is precisely one the reasons Wendy’s is marketing it. That and it still has a little panache as being more “upscale” than iceberg.
In the 00sKFC tried to market their chicken as a pro health Atkins type food with none other than Jason Alexander. That one was so bad that even the fucking ad industry criticized it. Marketing the unhealthiest of fast food as somewhat healthy is not a new thing.
KFC was considered healthy by the uneducated long before that. Growing up in the late 80s, early 90s, I remember my family and my friends' families treating KFC as the healthy fast food option.
It really wasn't until the Double Down era that the absurdity of KFC was apparent to everyone.
Kale is also high in Oxalate. If you have had kidney stones, you care about this.
It's not as high as Spinach or Almonds, but it's still in the top ten.
So, maybe they need to be sued by someone who has had kidney stones, before they reconsider that idea, or at least required to put a huge warning on that item?
if you have a bunch of lettuce (like iceberg or whatever) and do an extraction - i'm not sure what type other than distillate - the resulting compound is narcotic.
You can go online or to a drug store and buy wild lettuce and/or lettuce extract and take it for pain or inflammation.
Most plants that we class as food have been domesticated to avoid some of the wild experiences that might get documented on Erowid.org but in the past were explained away as religious experiences and documented as such.
I take wild lettuce, and tumeric with black pepper fairly often. in 1998 or so there were "tobacco-less" cigarettes that my partner at the time bought me to try, i think they're probably used as props on movie sets and for people who want to look "smoker cool" without the whole cancer and emphysema aspects - these were 100% wild lettuce, and smelled like what, at the time, i assumed was marijuana. I've since discovered that more people around that area were smoking catnip/wild lettuce than weed, since they're different, and it's not really that subtle.
Plants, and how our gut bacteria interact with them - or not - are one of the most interesting things i can think of.
> how our gut bacteria interact with them - or not - are one of the most interesting things i can think of
Well if you want a laugh then, try some L-Tryptophan, a few grams a day but you can do more spread out over the day.
You gut bacteria will turn it into serotonin and you'll know why serotonin is found in the outer shell of seeds. Lets just say it can give you a toilet experience much like having a hot spicy curry, you see serotonin irritates the gut in animals so the seeds get pooped out pretty much in tact so the plants can spread around, but serotonin can cause some tissues to sting enormously which is why curry can also sting.
About 20 years ago I was also bothered by people bringing in their religion in my face too much. Then I realized that they have the right to speak their mind, same as I have the right to speak my mind, and their view of the world is as good to them as it is mine to me. I had no problem with any religion per se (I grew in places with antagonistic religions and I learned to be neutral), just with their "in your face" attitude, but I realized there is a huge differences between being polite and banning.
I dont think you realise how dangerous some of these people really are, which is why banning is essential. Cognitive dissonance is extremely dangerous and religions have caused a lot of unnecessary deaths.
This really depends on the company, at least in tech. In the US, I've never felt awkward using the work "fuck" in meetings but I've also only worked in less uptight cultures. We also would prefer the direct phrases instead of the passive "polite" ones in the posted site.
Ahh this brought me back! I wrote a paper in college about swearwords, taboo words, and euphemisms in first and second languages and interviewed one of my Danish friends, who shared similar sentiments about the word fuck. As an American, I feel trepidation to even type that word out here in a public forum lol. At least what I remember him saying is that he learned it from the film Raw by Eddie Murphy.
And you've brought me back to a childhood memory of my older brother, age 13 with a big smile on his face, brought me into the closet where he had a portable cassette player and a newly acquired copy of Raw, and we listened to it and had our vocabulary suddenly expanded to a new level.
Lol, the level of secrecy we had back in those days, no two-way headphones, no phones, just had to scurry into corners to do the things our parents would say are bad, even though they did them just in their own scurried away corners. Thank you for sharing this story :-D
One thing that is more inappropriate and offensive than using the word "fuck" is suggesting that someone is mentally ill because they're not comfortable doing so.
Such a comment annoys me, even if in jest. I feel glad that I pause to think about how my words may impact people based on their expectations. I'm not sure what you were trying to imply by "go and visit a therapist"—that I should not care at all about how others feel? Maybe you think I care too much about how they feel and too little about how I feel but I still said the word, more to share how I believe HN has an expectation of not using that word too often.
EDIT: I also have my name attached to my words here and in most places on the internet, so I'm more mindful of how things said here can be read in other contexts where certain words are more taboo.
Also just realized part of it is the worry that I'll get downvoted with little to no knowledge of why, which is one thing that bothers me on HN. This "am I playing by the rules" uncertainty, which I even feel as I type this. Is this a meta-comment that breaks some HN rule? Doesn't have enough curiosity?
All that to say there are often platform-specific norms about these things and I rarely see curse words on here.
I would say this is generally true, except in SV start up culture. "Fuck" is used so ubiquitously there that it's almost seen as weird if you don't use it frequently.
Fuck is generally very acceptable in meetings at my (large tech) company (in US at least), depending of course on context. I hear it a lot less from our APAC and EU offices though.
There is going to be a word (or several) in your native language that your grandparents would never expect to hear you say, and you would get at the very least severe talking-to from your parents if you said it in public as a young child. For those who grew up in english-speaking countries, fuck is one such word. It falls below other words, such as cunt and whore, (which I struggle to type out without asterisks or somesuch self-censoring) but it is not tolerated in children.
There are plenty of less severe words in english that can be used, such as "bloody" or "damn" which roughly equate to how those who speak english as a second language use "fuck"
> One word Danes (and other N.Es) often get in trouble for is 'fuck'. In Denmark it is no problem to use this in many business meetings but will often spell trouble when we participate in a meeting with people from USA. We simply do not see using it as something to avoid.
Reminds me of a slide[1] DHH did at a Rails conference presentation.
I’m currently interviewing for jobs in Israel and their “straight talk” habit is honestly number one problem for me.
People never schedule meetings, they just ask for your phone number and call whether it’s appropriate for them. They interrupt you in the meetings, tell your solution is bad.
It may sound refreshing on paper, but honestly you feel treated like a low-skilled worker in a laundry or a kitchen. I’m not a Westerner, but I do come from a background of working with an English company and the difference in respect to boundaries and time is night and day.
Radical honesty is something that I would appreciate and find quite refreshing.
Offensiveness just for the sake of being offensive and trying to make other people feel powerless around you, that kind of thing I would not appreciate.
Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between these two.
Now, scheduling, I'm not quite as bad as the Germans, but I do require that stuff get put on the calendar, and you make a really strong effort to hold to that schedule.
If you think you can just call me whenever you want, then you can just fuck off. Not even my wife can just call me whenever she wants. Fortunately, she knows this.
I've worked in hi tech in Israel for 20 years and now have a completely international clientele that I work with, and I don't think Israelis in general are like that.
My general impression is that “corporate” structures may have some veneer of a professional workplace culture in Israel, but with startups all bets are off.
I felt like being at a bazaar where a stranger talks to you like a person they know all their life. Which probably sounds appealing for people tired of Western sugarcoating and is probably great at a party when drinks flow freely. But at workspace it just feels unprofessional and disrespectful.
Local friends explained to me that this is cultural. Workplace in Israel is catered to locals and they rarely hire outsiders or expats. People have very short distance, they serve in army together, go to parties together, hide from bombings together. So hierarchy and workspace mannerisms make little sense in that context.
Being Dutch might influence my take, but I love the no BS communication in Israel. What you describe as troublesome cuts both ways BTW. You are allowed to be as direct. Got no time? Say so. Got other priorities? Say so. Just be clear and to the point and do not waste the callers time with an elaborate story.
The explanation I got was that no one has time to beat around the bush since every single day might be your last.
That was 30 years ago when things where a lot less safe than it is now.
Thank you for sharing your insights and information about PDI (will be looking more in depth about this), and I agree with what you mentioned how based on demographics and the relationship between the two person can totally change how you communicate with them.
The basic intent of the project was to curate a list of things what you might feel like saying vs how you can say it (more professionally I guess)
Would be happy to see how the data can be improved which can be better suited for majority of people.
Idea: alter the repo to add a diplomacy dimension with a few notches in it, and invite contributions of alternate wordings appropriate for different scenarios. (The focus being on creating an obvious void in the hope people fill it with insight)
From there, I was originally imagining the site could use a slider to cycle back and forth through wordings, but the associative and comparative value of just displaying them all simultaneously in columns under each heading is probably worth the tight information density.
Maybe also alter the site (now, while trending!) to indicate you're looking for additional data (for both the situation and diplomacy-level dimensions) - the GitHub link at the bottom is a tiny bit... I have to go looking for it myself, which is very good, but you might be able to passively collect that bit more low hanging fruit by making it more of a (polite :D) call to action.
Here in Finland, if you honestly think something sounds like a horrible idea, you're essentially duty bound to say "that sounds like a horrible idea". Be prepared to say why, but don't mince words.
Even I as a New Yorker had to acclimate to that level of bluntness.
(I hate nationalistic stereotyping, but all the same I did always love this joke/guide to workplace culture):
You've just finished your report, which happens to absolutely awful in every way. You send copies to each of your colleagues and later today, talk to each of them about their thoughts.
American colleague: Good job! Excellent! Great piece of work!
English colleague: Some great material in here. A few parts might benefit from a rewrite, but its a great start.
French colleague: I think we can probably use a lot of this, but there are substantial parts that really need rewriting.
German colleague: This is pretty terrible. A few parts are ok, perhaps, but it needs a complete rewrite.
Israeli colleague: This is shit. We'll get someone else to do it.
Yes, but as vassanas points out, you are not achieving this - because it is different from culture to culture!
If you add the specific culture / region you are targeting this at, it could already mitigate that issue.
As vassanas points out, the phrases you suggest would work to your disadvantage in more confrontational cultures, because you will be perceived as bullshitting and beating around the bush, but not as a serious contributer one should listen to.
I currently work for a federal public sector client. The substitutes are all I hear day in and day out.
We can talk about what oughta be all day long; and that's a fun and important conversation of its own; but should not be confused with what is -- at my current client/project, you definitely need to learn the language if you want to be successful. And not in a "BS-y management successful", I mean get anything done including architecture and development. C'est la vie!
(FWIW, after decades of complaining and moaning, I decided to approach people / projects / relationships with at least a fraction of analytical mindset and effort that I take to technical problems. It's been both rewarding and effective and fascinating, and dear gawd I wish I paid attention to it earlier rather than spending all that time moaning and complaining. Again, we can have a discussion about how ideal world should be, and we can work toward changing it, but it absolutely has to start with actually understanding it. I'll take a look at the PDI, anything that helps understand the mechanics of work relationships is beneficial - thx! :)
As an Israeli, I'm fully accustomed and conditioned to tell others their solution is idiotic and their ideas are dumb. But having worked abroad, I've come to depreciate this "quality" more as just bad taste and lack of manners, and less as "straight talking".
It really adds little to the conversation. It's just an IDF inheritance that should be eradicated.
I think PDI negatively correlates strongly with social safety. In the IDF you are unlikely to be punished for speaking up, and in general that's true in Dutch and Israeli culture for locals talking to one another. Frankness is not punished. In more hierarchical societies where you can be put in jail for pissing off the wrong cousin, frankness can be severely punished, and stories are abound of such.
So when the social consequences shift for an individual who is moved to a new setting, then the PDI for that individual will shift hard. Hence you find this working abroad and you've adapted your communication style. But we can do thought experiments on the PDI for the following situations:
- Arab talking to Israeli, inside Israel vs inside home country
- Israeli outside Israel talking to Jewish vs non-Jewish person
- Consumer Salesperson (small commission product, very frequent close opportunities) vs Enterprise Salesperson (large commission product, lots of confirmation pre-close meetings across org, leading to the final sale)
I think in each case the PDI will correlate with the negative consequences for the speaker speaking out of turn, once they become habituated to the situation of course.
I remember asking an American vet what the communication style was within the US military and he said, "Someone who outranks you tells you what to do and there's always someone who outranks you."
How you would describe the communication style within the IDF?
It depends on your commander, you can buff your commander and tell him he is suggesting something stupid, though if he pushes it you have no real option but to do it. Though if the specific commander was all too happy to assert his rank you knew not to bother.
I guess it also depends on what unit you are in, there is likely a very big difference between fighting units (infantry, armor, artillery) with which I'm more familiar and the back-office units.
I've not heard of the "PDI" concept before this, but I believe the same thing can be achieved by simply adapting to your audience.
The problem is actually knowing your audience (as individuals) well enough to assess how they will interpret your words.
Can you assume that all Saudi's, for instance, will react well to the somewhat cloying language suggested by the OP's post? I think not. But if you don't personally know the audience it's also tricky to know what each culture's acceptably polite "default" is.
I've gotten myself into some etiquette faux-pas in the past by using sarcasm and irreverent humor around Chinese colleagues. My previous experience with Chinese folks had been limited to grad school and I had just (wrongly) assumed that such communication was OK as the default.
The minimum of polite language is higher. Profanity can get you in trouble like getting a written warning, and graphic profanity can land you in handcuffs, like insulting someone's mother. Saying son of a bitch is a misdemeanor.
My experience in big corps is that the PDI is high but the power isn't so concerned with neutral formal phrasing. Phrasing in Saudi culture can be shockingly informal even at the highest level, since open tribal gatherings were the highest authority in the land until recently. The King and Princes still run open tribal gatherings where citizens can speak informally. Corporate speak is new and still seen as intrusive to how we do business.
How PDI would express itself would be preserving face, I guess. You can't contradict superiors or even coworkers too openly and directly, you can't openly disrespect or be irreverent. All possibly disruptive feedback must be private or you're bringing shame to yourself and others.
Startups are not like that at all. They're young, irreverent, and passionate. The young people really express themselves in those spaces with barely any hint of the old school social expectations. Guys and gals taking smoke breaks together and focusing on getting the job done.
I'm really curious how this interacts with display rules, or the emotions we're allowed to show/communicate in different contexts.
When you talk of preserving face:
> You can't contradict superiors or even coworkers too openly and directly, you can't openly disrespect or be irreverent. All possibly disruptive feedback must be private or you're bringing shame to yourself and others.
Are you saying that you're not allowed to express anger to superiors or coworkers in public? Is it the way it's said, the emotion behind it, or something else that seems to matter the most?
I'll give more details, but keep in mind Saudi society's norms are in massive flux. Even specifically the things I'm saying are changing. The new nationalism is bringing down a lot of old hierarchies. This might be more useful to understand the past than the future at this point.
It's not specifically the way it's said because like I said informal speech is accepted at all level. I meant that the act of embarrassing others is very scandalous.
It's a concept called الستر (the veil or the cover) which has a high place in both the faith and the culture. Hide your own flaws, helps others hide their flaws, and if you see another's flaw don't look too closely. You could translate it to shame but it doesn't have the inner shame or guilt connotation. It's more about conducting yourself in public.
Another common concept is قطع الأعناق و لا قطع الأرزاق (rather cut necks than cut livelihoods) which puts affecting people's livelihoods on the same level as murder.
So if you criticize openly, and jeopridize someone's career, it probably won't matter whether you're right or wrong. You're violating many social contracts and there will be social consequences. The preferred way would be to approach someone privately, tell them what you think, and even better, provide a solution that includes a cover story for why things weren't done correctly in the first place.
Oops, turns out I waited too long to edit it so I'll reply here.
> I'll give more details, but keep in mind Saudi society's norms are in massive flux. Even specifically the things I'm saying are changing. The new nationalism is bringing down a lot of old hierarchies. This might be more useful to understand the past than the future at this point.
I appreciate you saying this.
> It's not specifically the way it's said because like I said informal speech is accepted at all level. I meant that the act of embarrassing others is very scandalous.
Ah, so then it's less about the delivery and more about the result?
> It's a concept called الستر (the veil or the cover) which has a high place in both the faith and the culture. Hide your own flaws, helps others hide their flaws, and if you see another's flaw don't look too closely. You could translate it to shame but it doesn't have the inner shame or guilt connotation. It's more about conducting yourself in public.
I'm curious if this applies to not just flaws but a more general "don't share too much about one's own or another's internal/private life with strangers," because, I would think it would be hard to a priori determine what is considered a flaw or not. Would this concept equally apply to publicly sharing, for example, one's biggest dreams and hopes as well?
Also, I've tried to search the internet for الستر but am struggling to find any links. Will you share some with me so I can learn more about it?
> Another common concept is قطع الأعناق و لا قطع الأرزاق (rather cut necks than cut livelihoods) which puts affecting people's livelihoods on the same level as murder.
Ah, yeah, I wonder about the etymology of that phrase. I've read a lot about how excommunication historically could equal death, as being kicked out of the human group doesn't bode well for surviving in the wild. Yet, I think it still applies today in different ways, as being ostracized or losing one's job can really wreak havoc on our emotional lives, leading to suicide, murder, and many other mortal results.
I'm curious, if one's reputation is tarnished in a part of Saudi Arabia, is it tarnished throughout? In other words, how quickly and pervasively do you think gossip spreads?
I'm not trying to single out Saudi Arabia, more so to try to understand if it has that small-town feel, where if one person hears something, everyone will hear it, or more like a NYC, where a person could reinvent themselves in some way.
Also, how easy/difficult would you say it is to choose a new career/profession?
> So if you criticize openly, and jeopridize someone's career, it probably won't matter whether you're right or wrong. You're violating many social contracts and there will be social consequences. The preferred way would be to approach someone privately, tell them what you think, and even better, provide a solution that includes a cover story for why things weren't done correctly in the first place.
I imagine this approach also works pretty well in the US (where I'm at). I think private 1-on-1 conflict resolution can be much easier than public 1-on-1 resolution, as in public, there are so many other people watching and listening and reacting in different ways.
When I think of living in a place (again, not just Saudi Arabia, I'm talking of the dynamic which I think happen in many places) where people are constantly giving cover stories, I imagine I would start to distrust a lot of what people say. Do you think that most people 1) see through the cover stories and 2) get annoyed with hearing cover stories all the time but feel afraid to say they feel annoyed?
I'm so grateful for you writing this and helping me reflect more, thank you.
I enjoy talking about Saudi culture so I'm glad you're interested.
> Ah, so then it's less about the delivery and more about the result?
Yes it's definitely about the result. The politeness of something is measured by the embarrassment it caused.
> I'm curious if this applies to not just flaws
So the origin of الستر is the Islamic command to conceal the sins of a Muslim, unless they're a known repeat offender. Here's an article about that: https://www.arabnews.com/news/480916#:~:text=If%20someone%20... So in Islam it's always worse to sin in public than to sin in private. This also leads to non-Saudis misunderstanding about rule of law and the penal code, because the punishment for drinking alcohol was whipping, but what it doesn't say is that no one was ever caught privately drinking alcohol at their own home. They get caught smuggling, producing, with alcohol in their car, at a large party, or publicly drunk. It is very rare for a victimless private crime to ever be investigated, and bringing it to public is itself a sin. You can apply that to apostasy, drinking, sex, homosexuality, etc.
So that's the Islamic origin, which is taught to grade schoolers. How it presents itself in culture is a lot more general. It's concealment of all flaws. So if you tell someone a story that makes you sound laughable, you might say استر علي (conceal me) which calls on this religious and cultural value to conceal flaws and therefore not retell this story. Or you called in sick and you coworker saw you taking a trip, etc. As far as what constitutes a flaw, it's anything embarrassing or puts you in a bad light. It could be anything.
I don't believe it extends to sharing any and all information. It's not a general tight-lipness. So it wouldn't apply at all to dreams and hopes, unless there's something specifically bad about them.
> Ah, yeah, I wonder about the etymology of that phrase.
It's not a religious text, but it's very popular to reinforces a religious and cultural value. It's also not literal in its comparison. It's an exaggeration to show how sacred livelihoods are. And in a sense there is a belief that they are sacred. Muslims believe livelihood (رزق) is granted by God, and so interfering with that is an ugly crime.
It present itself in a very funny way in today's world. You go to a small town baker's Instagram page, and then a customer would write a negative comment about stale goods or high prices, and the comments would gang up on the customer rather than the business! They would use that specific phrase, advise them to go private, if you don't like it don't buy, and so on.
> I'm curious, if one's reputation is tarnished in a part of Saudi Arabia
Yes reputation is very important. I don't have a concise description for it, but here's an example. If you're marrying outside of your tribe/community and proposing to "strangers", a lot of asking around will happen. Providing references is common. The bride's father will want to talk to your friends, your boss, and anyone in your circle. Before they ask them about you, they will remind them of integrity and honor, and tell them he's asking for his precious daughter, "imagine if he was marrying your sister or daughter would you accept him", and so on. People whose reputations are ruined, for example a man who's a known drunk or criminal, might not be able to marry any Saudi woman.
This kind of social investigation also happens for jobs to a lesser extent. What people say will be more important than the CV. It's commonly known that when you're asked such questions for a job seeker or marriage suitor, that the truth is a matter of integrity and honor, rather than concealment. After all they're asking in private.
In that sense it's not gossip. It's commonly practiced and formal. Gossip, of course still happens, but also seen as a sin against the value of concealment.
Although this all happens, I can say I don't know of anyone who's completely locked out of an industry that way, not for a small thing. I heard of a man who forged a contract at work once, and he got fired and became completely unhirable. He had to leave the country. But that case seemed exceptionally sensitive. Livelihood will always be more important than reputation.
Barring such glaring ethical issues, I think switching careers is not too difficult. The actual obstacle is that people kind of pigeon-hole you into your major/job like "you studied computer science we can't fund your agricultural business" kind of thing.
> Do you think that most people 1) see through the cover stories and 2) get annoyed with hearing cover stories all the time but feel afraid to say they feel annoyed?
It can be difficult when accountability is important. Everything can be systemized these days and information is abundant. I imagine it was extremely difficult in the past when your entire workforce colludes to hide their flaws, and the leadership colludes to hide the organization's flaws, and so on. But unless uncovering the cover story is of practical importance, you're expected to let it go.
It's simply a different environment. I've seen it play out for good and for bad.
Good kids caught by police doing dumb things being let go to cover for them, backstabbing and blackmail might hurt the person doing it more than the target, you feel safer because even your superiors cover for you, and so on.
But the incompetent, the lazy, the corrupt also abuse an environment where accountability is flexible. While a normal person with a conscience will appreciate the cover when they slip up, it's very hard to get rid of the people you need to get rid of. Everyone knows they're lazy but they keep their job to avoid scandal and cruelty.
For example, if a coworker is obviously and visibly missing, their teammates will still scratch their heads if asked about them. "I might have seen them. They're around." Saying they didn't come today when asked, out in the open, is as rude as it gets.
"I feel really angry that you said my colleague was lazy. As her manager, I know that she has been working late every day, including the weekends, to hit these deadlines."
EDIT: Another example: "I feel quite angry right now and it probably has less to do with what you did and more to do with the fact that I haven't eaten yet. So before we do my performance review, could we get lunch so I might be in a better mood to hear it?"
I think that would be a way to express anger connected to facts. Do you think that is still something people should keep to themselves?
I'd say it could be a slippery slope. But so can passive aggression. I believe the emotion often leaks out in other ways regardless, whether thru our comments or our distancing or more distrust etc. I guess I believe that articulating it can stop the slope from slipping so much.
I definitely have my bread buttered on the low PDI side, but this is a fascinating concept and I'm sure will help me manage cultural differences productively.
I did have a read about that, the PDI makes a lot of sense to me and is pretty interesting if a little pseudoscientific (nowhere can quite seem to pin down how the numbered ratings are calculated but it seems arbritrary) - this being said its not clear if a thing such as cultural difference can have numbers put to it easily if at all, and I'd largely agree with the ratings of countries I have experience with.
But man that got me into looking at some of the other measures used alongside that, and the "Long Term Orientation" might be some of the most inane, incoherent garbage I have ever heard. I'd say it's asian exceptionalism but it's not even that - it just doesn't make sense. Every explanation of it seems different, and most explanations aren't internally consistent, literally including examples of the same thing at opposite ends as though it were different. As far as I can tell the original concept seems to have started out with "lets make a rating that puts china at the top/I heard of yin and yang once" and gone from there, but even then as described it usually is stupid, putting things like "belief in tradition" and "desire for stability" as things in the SHORT term column and "adaptability" in the long term column like lol what
People that aren't in power not being able to communicate equally with those in power is why we have 1.Gossip[1] 2.Sarcasm[2][3] and 3.Passive Agressiveness[4]. Sometimes it even manifests as quiet protest and doing small destructive things like not meeting deadlines or other small acts of sabotage[4].
This is rarely understood by those in power though, they would see it only as disrespect rather than the only way to regain some small amount of power.
It's also worth thinking about not just broad strokes societal culture at a national level, but also family culture, like the metafilter post[5] about guess vs ask cultures explains, some feel comfortable asking for anything leaving the responder to say no (putting the load from the requester to the requested) while others guess and try to predict and will only ask when they know it will likely be a positive response (putting the load on the requester instead of the requested). Ask culture is probably more healthy, but despite that the real problems are when the two clash.
I appreciate so much in this post. I also had never heard of the Ask/Guess culture description. I wonder if there could be another component, a Tell culture. I don't ask you, I don't guess, I just tell you how it is or what you'll do.
I think that's another way we communicate and often is even more so a way to avoid the possibility of being rejected. If I ask, you can say no. If I guess, then I can maybe figure out if you say no before you actually do so you don't have to. If I tell you, then there's not much way for you to say no, or if you do, then it is a clear violation of the agreement.
I think this happens with some people who are in military culture or other top-down hierarchies where there seems to be a "Tell culture" (I don't like labeling cultures too much with such identity descriptors because I think it can lock them into existence). And I think that can be one of the hardest things for people trying to reintegrate as veterans, to go from telling people what to do and being told what to do to telling your 5-year-old what to do and they say no...and then having to learn to guess or even ask...or more deep down, opening up first and then asking, maybe the most emotionally raw version.
Direct language also suggest commitment, so clearly you dial that back in higher positions where every word is put on a scale.
It still remains bullshit corporate speak as the language isn't just more polite, it tries to stay non-binding, basically a refusal at communication.
It doesn't say anything about hostility either. A support worker will still smile while having unsavory thoughts about the customer. Hence many people think of it as a dishonest form of communication which it basically is.
If you represent a company in public, you have no real choice not to use it. Rules of amoral businesses.
Your comment on different communication styles between cultures reminds me of a (famous?) metafilter comment, the difference between Ask Culture and Guess Culture:
That is a hilarious thread. My take is that the initial request is quite rude, not for asking, but for including a veiled threat that they won't be able to see each other if it doesn't work out. This is classic manipulation, and I hope the couple said no!
"I hope this works out /so/ we can see each other!"
Implies that they won't be able to see each other unless the host allows the guest to stay with them. Of course, this only works as a threat if the guest assumes the host wants their company in the first place. I don't find it to be a threat because the guest would only be withholding something the host doesn't want in the first place. That said, changing one word makes a big difference:
"I hope this works out /and/ we can see each other!"
This way seeing each other is disconnected from the hosting.
FWIW I don't find the request rude in the first place. The asker doesn't know she's making the request of someone who doesn't like her. Jeff seems offended that the woman mentioned his name ("I don't even know this woman.") But to me, that's just being polite as opposed to leaving him out entirely or referring to him generally (i.e. "you and your husband").
Thanks for explaining. I'm a native English speaker who grew up in a (fairly?) strongly guess culture, and I'm still really surprised that anyone would find this rude or threatening. It's interesting to see the very different interpretations.
"I hope this works out /so/ we can see each other!"
It's not physically threatening, but this makes a strong implication that the relationship will be potentially damaged by refusing to comply with the request. Consider this alternative, "I hope this works out. It would be great to catch up either way!" This makes it clear that the relationship will not be harmed if this doesn't work out.
Yes, I am reading into things, and I was raised as a Guesser but consider myself bilingual. IMO being an Asker is fine, but if you hold the relationship hostage, it's Demanding, not Asking.
I can't speak for my culture generally, but my personal interpretation of the quote is that it is fairly neutral in its current form. I read it as saying that cohabiting will make it easier for the guest to see the hosts.
That is to say, I interpret this:
"I hope this works out so we can see each other!"
As this:
"I hope this works out because I would like to see you and by living under the same roof for a short time we will be able to see each other!"
I have to say, though, that this might be dependent on my relationship with the person. If I like them, I'm more likely to have the generous interpretation of this phrase.
No[1]. Unless a surprising proportion of the Jews from the "Former USSR" are from the Baltics, there are far more Israeli Jews from e.g. Morocco than from Northern Europe.
What are some good resources for learning more about the PDI, its meaning and how it's measured?
Also, how does one apply this information?
Lastly, what about international teams? I have colleagues from different parts of the world - how would this apply in a meeting where some are USAnians, some Canadians, some German and some Eastern a European.
Lastly, the US is huge. SoCal is probably different from Missouri from Cambridge, MA.
Living in the UK I used to find all the French acted very rude. Then I spent enough time in France to realize the French don't find each other rude, it's just the way they communicate. Once you understand the culture it all makes sense, they're not trying to be dicks.
This version of "professionalism" has the stereotypical West Coast problem: the message it claims to be sending gets not only lost in translation, but distorted into something more superficially inoffensive, but underneath that, more opaque and manipulative. It encourages indirection and avoidance rather than respectful candor.
Let's start with the first example. The polite way to say "you are overcomplicating this" is "I think this could be simpler". Not "let's concentrate on initial scope", which isn't remotely the same thing in general. The latter is less generally applicable (how do we know there was an initial scope?), less specific (why stick to initial scope?), and more prescriptive ("let's do this" instead of "I listened to your idea and this is what I think of it").
Now, being less specific and more prescriptive may be some people's idea of effective self-interested corporate behavior, since it works to minimize your vulnerabilities and maximize the obligations of others. But I think communication is more meaningful, effective, and respectful if you explain how you evaluate others' ideas (which implies you at least gave them the respect of listening) before just telling them what to do.
They're not all bad though! I definitely think "that's a horrible idea" is productively replaced with some version of "I have these concerns" or "I think there may be better alternatives". It's generally good to avoid terms that communicate nothing but negative affect and instead communicate whatever ideas that prompted the negative affect.
Apparently I have a very strong preference for low PDI culture, as do most of you. But it's good to be aware that that's not universal and our style may require adaptation for success with diverse audiences.
While I agree with the rest of your point, I don't think it's a West coast thing.
Personally I find it across the range of the US (and of course other countries), but people in different areas will phrase it differently where the meaning can be clearer/lost depending on the familiarity with both the phrasing of the sentence and the culture of the person (I.e I find people in southern US will sugarcoat things differently but it's harder/easier to pickup depending on your familiarity with it).
> (I.e I find people in southern US will sugarcoat things differently but it's harder/easier to pickup depending on your familiarity with it).
As a Southerner that's worked in tech for a long time, I would say the broad-stroke difference between the way Southern US and West Coast approach sugarcoating is that Southerners will try to avoid saying anything directly negative /about the person/ but will have no problem being directly negative about the problem. Outside of religious contexts or in less conservative / more blue-collar surroundings, even profanity is acceptable in professional settings in the South. E.g. rather than "Bill didn't maintain the hydraulics properly on this piece of equipment." it'd be "The fucking bucket is stuck again on the backhoe." Where everyone involves knows it was Bill's job, but nobody is going to call him out directly.
Where, in West Coast settings, there's a sort of indirection that tries to (in my opinion) remove agency from the people involved entirely and sets the problem up as being inherently systemic. WRT to example above, e.g. "The maintenance process for heavy equipment should be revised to prevent future issues." when everybody involved presumably knows it's /a particular piece of equipment/ that's actually the problem, and one person failed to do their job, but nobody will say either of those things directly.
The result, as I see it, is the Southern approach prevents /direct/ blame, but creates indirect blame/accountability for individuals, and focuses on specific/smaller problem areas. The West Coast approach avoids accountability (and agency) of the people involved entirely, but has the benefit of looking at problems more systemically (although sometimes that's a waste of time/effort).
> "The maintenance process for heavy equipment should be revised to prevent future issues."
This is absolutely the diplomatic way to communicate and handle the situation on the West Coast, but interestingly, while we talk about the problem systemically, that's not necessarily what's actually happening. By putting in place a process-driven solution, Bill isn't directly blamed, but some of his autonomy is stripped away.
Sometimes the proposed systematic solution isn't even ever implemented, because what's actually being communicated is just "Don't fuck this up again, Bill."
> By putting in place a process-driven solution, Bill isn't directly blamed, but some of his autonomy is stripped away.
This is key, but something that goes beyond communication styles. One reason I feel our society is dying in bureaucracy at every level is that larger organizations and more broad functions within industries always get standardized and then rigidly turned into processes, usually incrementally over time. Every time someone makes a mistake, we have a "this is why we can't have nice things" moment, but to some degree I bridle at this and feel it's inherently dehumanizing. Organizations and societies are made up of people, and people should be free to make mistakes, the structures in place merely need to prevent disastrous consequences, not /any/ consequences. Autonomy is a function of personal well-being and fulfillment, and it's literally dehumanizing to strip it away, even if "it's for a good cause".
The net effect of all of this is why the US (and the West generally) can't successfully complete any major infrastructure projects on time and under budget for a reasonable price. These types of projects can happen pretty easily in the developing world (although the pendulum probably swings too far towards callousness to human life there).
Agreed. Certainly within the UK, we're infamous for our sugar coating and nonchalant understatements. Politeness is the word in terms of business transactions or discussion, and I've found it often hampers everyone in reaching the end result of the problem at hand by muddying waters.
It's a pretty entrenched stereotype, but I don't have enough personal experience with it to vouch for or against even a general statistical validity relative to other regions and cultures.
I find it better to say: "Do you think there is a way to make this simpler?". This has far better convincing power as it gives the individual space to provide input and it doesn't distance them. Slight variation of this usually makes it far worse – "Don't you think there is a way to make this simpler?".
Alternatively, "I think this can be simpler. Your thoughts?"
I don't think I agree with most of these. The professional way to say "I told you so" is to not say it. If there are specific action items you can bring them up in a post mortem without pointing fingers.
If you feel like you genuinely need to let people know that something wasn't your fault (which would be a bit of an organizational red flag) that's an action item for you to make sure your interjections are more visible next time.
"I told you so" has no value to a conversation, relationship or business results. 100%
I think it can be very productive to say something like "hey, I'm a little upset because I tried to get ahead of this problem and to me, it didn't feel like my concerns and ideas were taken into account and now we're considerably behind. I'd like to be helpful on these types of problems in the future, can we make a change to support that?"
If the statement is just about ego, it shouldn't be said. If there's something deeper that is causing relationship or business issues, find a way to dig it up and say it clearly with the goal clearly outlined.
"I told you so", perhaps wrapped in a corpspeak package if the recipient is resonant to those frequencies, adds a lot of value in terms of me not having to handle the fallout. Yes, I know some people want to do an awesome job, be noticed or whatever, but the easier solution (and fairer) is to let the fire burn under whoever caused it. OTOH if you find yourself in a situation when you have to clean up mess that was caused by indifference to your own concerns then it simply means you've lost politically, sadly.
So instead of saying, "I told you so" in four words, you stretched it out to 30+ words.
I can almost guarantee that if someone is saying, "I told you so", they've probably also tried to explain to someone why X is a bad idea or why Y isn't going to work the way they think it will, or at all.
Personally I would prefer "I told you so" from anyone I care about instead of these lamentations. Chances are high that I would completely ignore such input depending on the situation if I were the receiver. If I did indeed do a mistake, which doesn't have to be the case in business, it will be easier to learn from it if people communicate directly.
If I am your supervisor chances are that I would package it more friendly, but it depends. More importantly is that we put this conflict behind us. Depending on the relationship it could be "I told you so, next time let us do X".
Agree. Haven’t gone through the whole list, but the first few strike me as avoidance wrapped in fancy jargon.
I think a direct, kind, but clear and unambiguous response would go a lot farther. Followed by a suggestion, to demonstrate you’re not just complaining, you’re trying to be helpful.
To your point about culture: feeing like you couldn’t say any of the following probably says a lot about either the environment, or about your own comfort with candor.
You are overcomplicating this -> This sounds overcomplicated to me. Have you considered X instead?
That meeting sounds like a waste of my time -> Can you clarify what you’re hoping for from me being in this meeting? Can I read the notes, or send feedback async instead?
I told you so -> (Ask yourself why you want to even say this. Then, don’t say it, and say the why instead.) 1. “Well, that’s a shame. Are you looking for suggestions on next steps?” 2. “Should we go back and consider plan X?” 3. “What did we learn from this outcome?”
I've seen it happen often enough that someone's concerns are summarily ignored that I don't think you can always blame the person raising issues for not being loud or visible enough.
The way this often goes down is that someone who is perceived as more senior will push something through, steamrolling right over well-formed interjections. If someone lower on the org chart tries to make more noise than the steam roller, the consequences can be quite bad for them.
If something then fails as predicted, why shouldn't that be noted? If someone has expertise that was ignored, that should be taken into account in the future, and part of the post mortem should be figuring out why their expertise was ignored.
The thing is, it should probably be noted by management or whoever is in the chain of responsibility and probably not by the person who was ignored, but management often doesn't want to admit mistakes of this type.
So what do you do then? How is it constructive to ignore a glaring issue in your planning and decision making process?
> The professional way to say "I told you so" is to not say it.
The professional way to say "I told you so" is to write a post mortem.
- What was the problem?
- What solutions were considered?
- Why was the chosen solution implemented?
- How did the chosen solution fail?
- How would have considered but discarded alternatives fared?
- What will be the choice in the future?
That's basically "I told you so" in report form. Just stick to the facts and it's not petty but helpful. Hidden under the ego stroke of "I told you so" is a lost opportunity to have taken the correct or better path when it was available. Understanding why that opportunity was lost is important for an organization.
Step one is for everyone to agree the outcome was poor (or for the client to say so, or the market, or senior leadership, etc.).
Otherwise writing that report is very literally "I told you so", written to make a point.
(I do think it is a related scenario where the outcome was fine but you still believe an alternative approach has value; so you then have to make a choice between accepting "my way is not the only way" and moving on or repeating your point)
that's an action item for you to make sure your interjections are more visible next time.
Takes a certain skill to be tactful and deliberate enough to do this.
Yet it takes mastery and wisdom to know when to say your peace and rest on that.
It's been my experience that even with a sufficient and proper amount of CYA, visibility and otherwise intentional effort put forth so that your actions and words toe the line and dutifully provide context, one can still find themselves on the pointy end of the blame stick being wielded by the more powerful, persuasive or otherwise popular trying to cover their own asses.
You can politely explain to someone that you think they are wrong now evidenced by the fact they they were proven wrong in a similar situation before.
In fact, I would argue its literally your job to do so. You’re paid to make the right decisions AND to persuade others (and to be persuadable if you’re wrong).
If it turns out you were right but failed to convince others because you failed to present all valid arguments, then you are negligent.
Sure, I agree, politely explaining what went wrong is good. Just saying "I told you so" (or similar) is different, though, and doesn't provide any actionable information. But I get the motivation to say it, so I suggest just saying it internally to let off some steam.
Sometimes you have to highlight that specific people were wrong before, particularly in a power imbalance.
Unfortunately, most organizations don’t do distributed meritocratic decision making. The hierarchical structure is often a key component of the failure lattice, and it’s attributes and effects need to be confronted directly.
The most infuriating item I’ve ever received on a performance review was that I’d warned the engineering organization of our poor source code control practices, but then took no action to prevent the inevitable failure of Microsoft Visual Sourcesafe. (I still have that review in printed paper form from 2003.)
At the time, I felt like “no one asked me to fix this, and I was doing all these other things you did ask me to do, so why are you bitching that I didn’t fix it?”
Subsequently, I wasn’t so sure and now lean towards thinking that I was in the wrong for not taking initiative on an item that was that critical and where I was the company expert.
Almost none of these are "professional" or the sort of corporate double speak the author wants to convey. In fact, I find a lot of the "alternatives" more passive aggressive and rude than the original intentions! Instead of "stop bothering me" being:
You have not heard from me because further information is not available at this time, Once I have an update I’ll be sure to loop you in
It should be something like "Let's sync up later" or "I will ping you once I have an update." Way less hostile.
I'm not sure I agree with most of these, it's not the way I'd go about them, but also I don't see what I do in the comments so I'll add my own hopefully unique perspective here. For example with:
"you are overcomplicating this"
I would put it in the 3rd person or include myself in the problem, and I would apologise at the start for saying something negative, so I would say for example:
"Sorry, but I think we're overcomplicating this, what do we think about the following idea..."
I've found that works fantastically because I'm sort of saying I'm wrong or have caused an issue (I haven't) and they're included in my suggested solution (they're not really) so it makes a great way to change peoples minds (if you don't mind pretending you're having a bad idea too and giving them credit for yours).
I apply this to everything and it works great. You get a lot of people taking credit for your good ideas, but I don't mind if it means the solution is better.
This is how I would approach it too. Specifically creating an "us" or "we".
The reason for me is that I am in a reasonably senior leadership role. So even these diplomatically framed options would come across the same way "don't bother me" etc.
Investing myself as part of the team is a key way to make sure I can give feedback in a safe and engaged way.
You do have to actually be engaged though. And it can be a fine balance between engaged and interfering.
Upwards & with direct reports I am more blunt, depending on the dynamic of the relationship. For people I have minimal relationship with (say peers in a different part of the business) I'll tend to flip it as a question; so not "this meeting is not a good use of my time" but instead "what, specifically, might you need from me in the session" (asking for clarification also has the advantage of challenging your assumptions)
This is my approach almost to a T. Managing upward, be direct and take personal responsibility for saying something with friction. Only use we when taking credit. This what your bosses want; their egos are secure but they don’t have time to parse indirect communication and guess what you want (source: I was until recently in sr management)
Managing down, I use “we” and (narratively, if not always in practice) to include everyone in a decision. (Some caveats: e.g. just be direct about stuff they have no say in; no one wants you to pretend they’re included in like reorgs or something). This isn’t about tricking them into misunderstanding how much power they have—it’s about creating the safety for them to push back directly on something they disagree on, despite being objectively less powerful. They’ll feel more comfortable doing the managing upward part directly and effectively.
I’d never say most of the things on that list for fear of feeling squirmy, evasive, or, yes, passive aggressive.
In general, people want firm but open bosses, and bold but accepting staff, where this way of approaching communication works. If you don’t have that, you should find them.
It's not really disingenuous if you look at it from another perspective that you really are a team. It's generally productive to try to position things from the same side of the table rather than opposing sides of the table. It's cooperation instead of competition. In your example you're not attacking someone else's suggestion, you're evaluating your teams current path, you're removing ego which removes defensiveness.
I like it. I think when most people use the word "direct" they mean using the 2nd-person and stating an "objective" truth about their actions or person. Whereas in you using direct, you meant more directly sharing how one is feeling/thinking on the inside, 1st-person disclosure.
For me, I often try to add a 2nd-person component in there, so it goes 1st-person (singular), 2nd-person (singular), 1st-person (collective).
"I think this is overly complicated, and I imagine you might as well. Shall we find a way to simplify it?"
My $0.02: "You are complicating this" is an accusation of the recipient. In my opinion, offering the alternative you see as simpler can make the dialogue more productive, e.g., have you considered y? It's simpler because abc... and also achieves the same objective. How did you arrive at this solution? This also saves your own face if/when it turns out things are indeed more complicated than you originally thought.
I mostly agree, but for the sake of argument, I do wonder how much time and emotional energy is spent developing and articulating those kind & plain responses in situations where the {requests/demands} that prompted them were unreasonable in the first place.
(if the onus moves to the demand-makers instead, then perhaps we can improve workplace cultures and find something more like the root cause(s))
"Sorry, but I think we're overcomplicating this, what do we think about the following idea..."
"Oh, fuck...i messed up real big. This is not a fucking 'we' situation, at all".
Thank goodness I told my boss to stop the bullshit. And, regarding myself, they stopped. When they do it with others, and I am present, they realise...and then stop.
This will be very useful when using with GPT-3. Thanks so much!
Some examples generated using the site title and tagline in the beginning of the prompt, confidence 0, and the first 3 samples. Some are misses, but it can be tweaked to come in very useful when I don't know how to provide constructive criticism or feedback.
There is a fly in my soup: I’m afraid there is something in this food that shouldn’t be here.
Fuck you: I strongly disagree with your approach/decision.
You make me cringe: Your delivery makes me feel uncomfortable.
I never loved you: Our relationship was purely professional.
I am so tired of all your fucking meetings: I’m not able to attend all the meetings you’re scheduling. Can we review which ones I can be of most help with?
I'm fed up with all these dumb "coaching" courses: I’ve taken a number of courses on this topic and I’m not convinced that this is the most effective use of my time.
I'd like to end our contract as you have been late for the deadline twice and haven't even given me a heads up: I regret to inform you that I will be terminating our contract as of today.
Wow, this is great, surely GPT-3 can provide more sophisticated results and can also help in improving the data set here.
Would really appreciate if you would, could run the current data set through GPT-3 and share your results?
It's no longer possible to comment on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30914209, but I want you to know that is the funniest thing I have read on this website and is possibly my favourite. Logged in today specifically to re-read it.
Reserving opinion on how much I agree with the sentiment :)
Good idea, but a lot of these feel like saying the professional way of telling someone to eat shit and die is “consume fecal matter and perish in an inferno”.
Yes. The difference between acting professionally and not is usually in what you choose to say, not how you choose to say it. Dressing up an unprofessional comment in bigger words doesn't make the comment more professional, just more pretentious.
There are some here that are okay, but a lot just shouldn't be said (like "I told you so").
This. The worst sin is the "I'm not saying X, but... (then proceeds describe a euphemized form of X)". Mentioning that you are not mentioning something is the most blatant form of passive aggression, and it's entirely counterproductive.
What’s the likely outcome of doing so?* Why are you saying it? To show you were right? To make them feel stupid for not listening to you? How will you feel afterwards? How will they feel? How will that likely affect your interactions with them in the future?
Maybe you're fine with the likely outcome. But maybe not.
* And there’s a distinction between what’s likely to happen and what you think should happen. They’re not always the same thing.
There's nothing to gain from saying it to a coworker. You should:
- Remind them next time it's relevant - "Remember last time we touched this service and the Widget crashed and took the rest of switch down with it? I think this could be similar and we should reconsider my plan to isolate the network before hand."
- Mention it to your manager. Failing to heed a warning can be blameless and rational, but if you're consistently right when others aren't that's a sign you should have more formal influence (and responsibility). You won't get that by complaining to peers.
- If it was extremely serious (it rarely is - the really bad stuff is usually stuff no one foresaw) and your concerns dismissed out-of-hand (also rarely the case - people legitimately have different priorities), discuss it with your/their manager.
You can also of course do it if there is no other escalation path - CEOs and EMs ideally didn't get where they are by being unable to take criticism - but you should also be very sure your advice really was right, and not a stopped clock.
If you make a prediction correctly, and it is ignored, then that's an indication that you should either make it more assertively next time, or you just can't work with this person.
And anyway, some humbleness is due -- sometimes we think we've given good advice, but it ends up being somehow inapplicable to the problem for reasons that are outside our scope.
Maybe therein lies the rub (a fun idiom): if one wants to say "I told you so", or whichever variant to say "I was right", then one should also say "I did not tell you so", or the "I was wrong" when that person made an incorrect prediction :-D
Yes; that's correct. There's a change of language register to "corporate workplace" but no change of meaning or intent.
I can still tell you're being an asshole even if you write in business English, so can others who read it, and no-one is giving bonus marks for "professionalism".
It's like the old gag where someone uses a thesaurus on every word in their letter to make it sound cleverer, but just ends up demonstrating their own lack of knowledge.
I've worked in the UK and in Germany. In the UK there's much more of a tendency to use roundabout phrases to get across what you mean, much like many of this site's suggestions. In Germany, people tend to be more abrupt. Both registers can be just as kind and supportive, and just as cutting and destructive. But either way, there's no magic politeness spell you can cast that stops you from appearing to be, like the parent commenter says, an asshole.
Exactly--many of these are hostile sentiments; it would be a mistake to assume that re-wording them will lead to a better outcome, as most people will (correctly) perceive the hostile intent in spite of the re-wording. A more useful list would perhaps be, "How to _not_ say", which could guide you through a way of successfully resolving the conflict when you find yourself wanting to express one of the listed sentiments.
This is a great resource that'll be useful to many people. To the author, thank you for taking the time to write these down and put them online. It would be a fascinating sociological/psychological research project to go one level deeper and give a few variants of each response, noting the implications and nuanced differences in the connotation of each.
For example, for "answer my emails", the author suggests: "If there’s a better way to get in contact with you please let me know as I am hoping to have this resolved as soon as possible". This is a totally valid and common way to say that. However, taken literally, it's silly! The person would need to read this email in order to know to suggest a different way to get in contact with the sender. Who's going to reply and say (basically) "I got your email, but please contact me with the same inquiry on (different contact method)"?
Another way to rephrase "answer my emails" would be to say "Just checking: did this email get flagged by your spam filter?" It's similarly facially silly: if it was flagged as spam, then this followup would likely also be flagged as spam, so the recipient wouldn't see it. But it signals to the recipient that you don't/won't consider their slow reply to be their fault, which could increase your likelihood of getting a reply. And other things (eg the recipient doesn't want to be seen as having a dumb spam filter, short 1-question emails get the highest response rate, the recipient now has an opportunity to immediately help clear up a simple question--was the email flagged as spam--which is an immediate reward for them, etc.).
Ah, the infinite complexity of human communication.
I find that the majority of these suggestions take a needlessly adversarial approach. I lack the energy to write more right now, but overall a collaborative approach should be taken. Here's my version of the first dozen or so:
- You are overcomplicating this
Wow, You've put a lot of thought into this- that's great! I think we can probably simplify it a bit though. What do you think?
- That meeting sounds like a waste of my time
Is attendance mandatory? I'm not sure what I'll be able to bring to the table on this one.
- I told you so
(Silence is golden)
- That sounds like a horrible idea
That would probably work if $thing were true, but in this case I don't think it'll apply. What do you think?
Oh, I think this is something we already covered. Did you you remember when we talked about $this?
- Can you answer all of the question I asked and not just pick and choose one?
OK, so for $question, you're saying $this. What do you think about $otherquestion(s)?
- Did you even read my email?
Oh, I think I actually covered this in the email I sent this morning - is $emailsubject not what you're referring to?
- Stop bothering me
I really wish I had a better answer right now, but I simply don't. Feel free to check with me later today, but as soon as I hear back on this I'll definitely keep you in the loop.
- Do your job!
Oh, I thought you were the right person to go to for this. Who should I be talking to instead?
- That's not my job
Oh, I don't know the answer to that, I usually don't deal with $thing. Have you talked to so-and-so? Here lets hop on a call with them and we'll get it figured out together.
- Stop assigning me so many tasks if you want any of them to
get done
I'll be glad to do it, thanks. I do need to know if you want this done before or after $things though, since those are still in progress.
I completely agree. It took me many years to learn the lesson, but communication like you have above produces better short term and long term results in 100% of cases. The website's answer come off as passive aggressive.
I've gotten way better and your post is an excellent way to do so, but I still struggle to find a good way to phrase "Stop asking me to work on the weekends for things that are very low impact".
> I still struggle to find a good way to phrase "Stop asking me to work on the weekends for things that are very low impact".
The first step would be to confirm that you are in fact being asked to do this, and what you think the consequences of ignoring the request would be.
It can be okay to just not do something you're asked to do, or at least not do it right away. People don't have a right to your time and effort just because they wrote you an email or a Slack message.
I agree it'd be nice not to be asked in the first place, but the first step in a situation like this is to minimize the impact of the requests on you.
- Stop asking me to work on the weekends for things that are very low impact
I need to adjust my work/life balance a bit. If anything super urgent comes up on the weekend, definitely let me know. Otherwise It'll need to wait until Monday. Thanks for understanding :)
To phrase what you are saying another way for OP, the issue is the website's substitutions are more professional, but not always more polite.
In other words, no would would ever say "stop bothering me" in a professional environment. However, saying "you have not heard from me because there is no information" is still extremely strong and direct.
While it's possible to imagine someone saying this in an office, if I heard it, I would assume that the speaker is very frustrated, perhaps a bit angry, and probably wanted to say a bit more if they could get away with it. That might be appropriate if someone really is literally calling you every two minutes, but otherwise, it is not really appropriate in a context where you are trying to maintain good relations with a customer/coworker.
Oh dear. That might be politer. But just look how you have inflated the number of words.
Why can't we be just efficient and say what we're thinking? So much time is wasted at work simply because we have so differently compared to when we are with friends/family.
What's wrong with more words? Are they at a premium? Would you rather be succinct, or polite? You can be both, but given a binary option, I'd rather be polite.
For what it’s worth, I would roll my eyes and be annoyed by half of these improvements too. But I really dislike speech which is purposefully obfuscated to try and hide the “negative” aspects.
I think it’s far better to find a genuinely more empathetic thought process and then express those thoughts without having to specially obfuscate it to sound nice.
To each their own. But if you look carefully, nothing is obfuscated. Each of them says exactly what the issue is without being rude about it. Yes, some might be a bit too soft for some cases, but that's the beauty of words. We can use our own as needed ;-)
- Group 1 : These alternatives suggestions are great!
- Group 2 : These alternatives sound like corporate-drone-speak that are passive-aggressive and condescending.
The differences in perception seems like a unintended Rorschach Test. The differing interpretations looks like a worthy candidate for somebody's PhD psych research paper.
Conclusion: Projecting an intended tone to a universal audience is hard. Possibly unresolvable.
I mean, it's both: They are all great (I've used many of them in the past) AND it's stupid that we have to use polite euphemistic speech at work!
I wish I could tell people at work "Check your goddamn E-mail, this is the third time I've asked you to do your job!" or "Can you stop talking? You're derailing this fucking meeting!" but we can't if we expect our careers to go anywhere besides the basement.
I think another awesome translator would be the reverse: When someone tells you something in corporate-drone-speak that sounds CorporateUpbeat, help me to figure out what it's really saying. Is this person really happy, or are they seething with rage at something I did, and can't articulate their anger in a work setting without coating it with passive aggressive euphemisms?
If someone needed to tell you to check your email, or stop interrupting the meeting, how would you want them to do it? How would you want to have others see you being told that?
"Hey, [name], could you check your E-mail? Your TPS report was due yesterday!" I mean, it's not offensive, and if I did screw up, I would want to know clearly and directly that I screwed up.
I've worked in a blue collar setting where people were direct and unambiguous. "You need to put the wrench back after you're done using it." is much better than "I would like to encourage you to address the speed at which you submit your TPS reports, given our well understood weekly cadence."
But generally I think that's where a lot of conflict in workplaces (and not only there) comes from. People have different preferences for talking, also because of having different goals, speaking habits and interests. Telling someone who speaks very diplomatically to read their goddamn email might come off intimidating while another person might just think this is really important. Or vice-versa passive aggressive/condescending. Both sides knowing this would already help a lot. IMHO this would even make frameworks like non-violent communication obsolete. People trying to bend their way of talking too much is definitely not fun
So almost like a training on different metalanguages we use? Not sure if that's the right word for it, maybe linguistic styles? I hesitate to use "communication styles" as I don't think it gets to the core language part of it, but maybe communication styles. EDIT: maybe "emotional communication"?
I ask because I work in this space and have avoided going into corporate spaces after quitting consulting about 10 years ago and am curious to dive back in.
Is there a term for it that resonates more with you?
Yeah metalanguages sounds good. I was also thinking of tongue or jargon, but metalanguages seems less ambiguous/more polished (not a native speaker anyway) Ah cool, that's definitely a useful job. In my last adventure in the corporate space as engineer that was definitely a topic.
(To answer the edit: I think this emotional communication reminds me so much of EQ and all this. Dealing directly on the language layer with this seems more next level I would say)
Ahh thank you! Emotional metalanguage? Haha probably too much. EDIT: "emotional" is probably too taboo for most workplaces currently. However I hope in the future we realize just how integral emotion is to communication—it's there whether we want to admit it or not.
Yes, that's how I'm hoping to act more these days. I've been locked into trying to project a certainty in business and I want to project more uncertainty, more experimental energy instead of "I know the answer" energy.
> At least it sounds less technical
Haha, true. But maybe the more technical works for the engineering places? Maybe I'll use both. "Emotional communication from a metalinguistic perspective." :-D
Or, "I teach people how to say how they feel." Which is pretty close to how one might say it using Natural Semantic Metalanguage[0].
The website could come in handy if I ever need to translate some of these theatrics back to human speech. The ability to switch the variants around would be a nice to have ;)
Edit: removed unintentional rudeness, throwing OP a bone
Ah, yes, the same kind of guide that brought us "how to professionally respond to outages"... With classics like "We recognize the incident", "a small subset of customers", "degraded performance" and "the next update (which will be the exact same meaningless drivel as the current 'update') will be in 60 minutes". Don't we just love those? So let's add more of that to the shared vocabulary of IT professionals!
Or... let's just not? In writing, always avoid clichés. Whether it's "do the needful", "by utilizing" or "we did not live up to our customer's expectations", there is one simple rule: if you've seen the exact same sentence or expression before in the exact same context in the last week or so, you should probably avoid it.
And if that makes you unsure what exactly to say, just type what you mean, then get an editor before posting it to your blog or incident report. And if it's time-sensitive, then just ask for forgiveness later, not permission upfront (which is also a cliché but reworded, see what I did there?)
I’m so glad I work in a place that emphasizes benevolent directness.
In fact, I’m so far removed from this kind of lingo that I have to ask: is this website an accurate depiction of how people communicate in other organizations? Or is this a caricature?
This is held up as a great example of transparent communication. For me, this is true, but only for the meaning of 'transparent' which equates to 'you can see right through it, to the extent there is effectively nothing there'.
But as per the article this comment thread is about, this kind of response apparently the 'professional' state-of-the-art.
I think I was unclear. I always assumed (perhaps foolishly) that this kind of communication was the result of some sort of PR committee, and was mostly found in outward-facing communications. Are you saying that colleagues interact this was amongst themselves too? Because _that_ would indeed be despairing.
Oh that stuff is funny, but after getting my first "real" job after leaving the military, I actually found it difficult to determine if my boss was happy with the work I was doing. In the military, you usually have several people let you know immediately and in very direct language when you screw up :)
I once had to bring the news that about half a team would lose their jobs. So, in Brazil we have what is called "aviso prévio"; by our rules, your employer must put you under "aviso prévio" (advance notice) for a time before deciding to fire you. Because of some bureaucracy, the whole team was under advance notice but now I just got the news of who was to be fired and I had to give the team such news. It was a very cohesive, young, talented team and everybody behaved like a family. Definitely not an easy task.
I wanted to say:
- I'm not guilty of this, I didn't chose who.
- Half of the team will be fired.
- It is all right if you want to point a finger.
- They're doing a bad thing because they don't know how talented you are.
Since I had to do it in a meeting which also included the bosses, this is how I said it:
- I don't know the criteria used, but it is not my job to contest or specify it. Whoever did it, I'm sure had a though task doing so.
- About 50% of the team was chosen to continue under "advance notice".
- Last meeting, everybody got together to comment on the situation and I'm sure it will happen again because it is just unavoidable.
- Talking for myself, independent of who was chosen, I can say that there is absolutely no doubt about your skills.
“This falls out of my job description but if the opportunity for a role expansion becomes available I would be happy to discuss reworking my contract to better align with these new responsibilities”
These tend to be better than the alternative but let me warn you: people know what you actually mean and it'll be treated almost as negatively over time.
I didn't look at all of these but this one stuck out:
> I told you so
> As per my prediction, this outcome does not come as a surprise.
Don't say this. It's just as bad and really negative. It's not even passive aggressive. It's just aggressive.
Agreed. On the other hand its very possible to rephrase these much better than the site lists, and doing so earns you respect. In a meeting full of people where 1 person overcomplicates an issue, everyone on the call will know 1 person is overcomplicating it.
If you say "Being mindful of timelines. Let’s concentrate on the initial scope." you move the meeting forward but come off as a jerk.
If you say "Those are good thoughts - lets make note of them and circle back at the end of the call" you've moved the meeting forward, the 1 person feels heard and doesn't hate you, and everyone else silently thanks you for skipping the overcomplicated person.
I enjoyed this, mostly because I refuse to play the corporate-speak games. I have grown weary of the overuse of diluted buzzwords, undefined acronyms, and email posturing to signal importance. As a sysadmin, I don't care about how important you SAY your application is. If your team didn't pay for the corresponding SLA, too bad. If your team didn't follow the lead time policy for changes to production hosts, too bad. If your team doesn't know who else to reach out to, that doesn't make me your "yellow pages".
This is just trying to shove planning/work that isn't mine down my throat with corporate action words. I've taken to using a "blunt-ish" approach. It may not be the best for my career, but at least I don't feel like a passive drone being railroaded.
Example:
THEM: We really need this config changed on our prod servers for our app deployment to be successful. We have raised CHG1234 for this to be done this afternoon. Please do the needful on priority.
ME: Production changes require a 2 week lead time, you need to resubmit this change in accordance with this policy. <link-to-policy>
THEM: How can we escalate? We cannot wait 2 weeks.
ME: ...
I just don't respond any further. I give them the exact reason for the "no" and don't engage with the rest of their badgering. EVERYTHING else they will respond with is an attempt to manipulate me into violating policy for their benefit, with no credit for me saving the day, yet all of the risk if I don't.
> I just don't respond any further. I give them the exact reason for the "no" and don't engage with the rest of their badgering. EVERYTHING else they will respond with is an attempt to manipulate me into violating policy for their benefit, with no credit for me saving the day, yet all of the risk if I don't.
I don't think this is really any better. Going unresponsive doesn't wind up improving anything. Not to say that you should cave, but a "if there are any questions or issues with the policy, please take it up with <manager>" let's the other person know that you're disengaging. Otherwise they're in a situation along the lines of "I asked how we could escalate, but I haven't heard back. I don't know if they haven't read my message yet or just aren't responding for some reason"
If you're in this situation, there's a disconnect between policy and process that needs to be resolved. Let the management demonstrate their "leadership" skills.
I found myself laughing for having used a majority of these phrases in meetings or emails. To each his own, I guess.
The initial phrase is what you use in verbal communication, if you have a close working relationship. The 'professional' version goes in the email, which you assume is publicly distributed.
Like it or not, this is what a lot of enterprise communication sounds like.
Half the reason for mastering it is to avoid coming off as a huge back of dicks by inadvertently sending the wrong message through some polite-seeming offer to help or whatever.
On the contrary I feel like that's pretty close to what my PO and PMs do all day.
I used to work at a former Nokia company and my PO was Finnish. He would get people upset all the time by simply being too direct, especially with American colleagues.
I get mildly upset when people send me messages like this, because I know that wasn't what was in their head and that's not what they wanted to tell me.
It feels really... I don't know, like you can't even bother to speak to me like we're human beings.
I'd rather someone just talk to me like a normal person than use this corporate buzzword speak. But I was also raised in a family where you'd be told to "stop being an idiot" and then an explanation of why what you're doing was stupid. My mum wasn't one to mince words.
The suggestions here seem like they're taking a sentiment with negative framing and just recasting it in a positive light. A lot of the corrected phrases assign blame, are hostile, overly confrontational, flippant, accusatory, curt, and impolite. Are you saying this kind of communication is how you think normal humans should speak with one another? What kind of environment do you think is created when everyone speaks that way to one another? Is that a place you'd like to work?
In a high-trust environment, candor is not perceived as hostile.
When you encourage people to interpret candor as hostility, you make everyone constantly afraid of offending others. It's hard to build trust and rapport with your coworkers in that environment.
I don't think calling someone an idiot, for example, is candor. I have plenty of trust and rapport with my coworkers, and I can't imagine them saying anything of the sort on this list to me. That's actually how we've built the trust we enjoy, by not engaging in the kind of language exhibited in TFA.
If you can casually tell someone they're acting like an idiot, it's (to me) a sign that you have a level of trust with that person and the ability to empathize/communicate with each other.
If someone comes to you in private and says, "Look man, you're really fucking up.", it hits different than "You might reconsider some of your recent behaviors."
It shows that you are emotionally invested enough to use empathic language, rather than make blasé/meek innuendos to avoid any chance of offending them. The point is "You need to hear this" and not "I want to avoid offending you", which feels more productive to me.
People do in fact speak this way in corporate situations.
I once sat in a meeting of reps from about a dozen big companies in the agchem industry. They were proposing some kind of cooperative data thing. One guy spent five minutes spouting exactly this sort of enterprise speak, and it all could have been boiled down "what's in it for us?"
I wonder if the people speaking this way in corporate settings just don’t know how to do better?
A good deal of corporate culture is people just following the patterns they see around them to conform. A good deal of culture change is just proudly, kindly, and confidently demonstrating how to do better - and having epic patience to wait for people to take notice and start following you (which might never happen.)
you'd be surprised... I've had "it has come to my attention that you ran 'rm /var/log/some_random_log' when you should have enquired regarding the importance of said 'some_random_log'" instead of "wtf did you just remove some_random_log, you nut" in the past.
Yes! Exactly what I was thinking. Also to take it even further, shifting into the 1st-person emotional.
1) you're not delivering on time 2) I see a delay in progress...3) I feel frustrated that the project is not yet done.
or go even further and include the 2nd-person (imagined and uncertain) emotional...
4) I feel frustrated that the project is not yet done and I imagine maybe you're feeling frustrated as well or maybe overwhelmed, I don't know.
I find 4 works SO well. especially if I add a 5th version in there, including a phrase to express love/care/unity...
5) I feel frustrated that the project is not yet done and I imagine maybe you're feeling frustrated as well or maybe overwhelmed, I don't know. I just want to let you know that I'm here for you.
>As per my prediction, this outcome does not come as a surprise.
Whew ... that sounds quite arrogant and egoistical.
I'd probably just say "you see, I told you so" with a very friendly attitude, almost as a joke, followed by "but it's fine, let's focus on how are we going to proceed now that ...".
I agree that anyone uttering the entire phrase in isolation comes across as a pretentious douchebag.
But "as per my prediction, revenues were below target again" or "x is not functioning correctly. This does not come as a surprise" is normal enough corporatespeak, and more polite than "I told you so" because it could mean other things.
Many of these statements come off as being passive aggressive, but to the authors credit, sometimes you don’t have much else to respond back with, or just don’t engage at all, which can cause its own issues.
What made me chuckle a bit is how real these situations were on a daily basis at Amazon, and how I’d write an email or Chime message only to rewrite it and discard it… “hmm, how do I respond without being passive aggressive? How do I keep my mental sanity?”
I disagree - I think it’s possible to respond to each of these situations with a clear, kind, and direct response.
I think the underlying issue is more that, yes, if you’re already feeling like saying any of the original messages, communication and understanding is probably already damaged. Which makes it a higher degree of difficulty challenge to put things back on better footing.
Good communication definitely takes practice. Maintaining positive intent and respecting the other person’s humanity and feelings is vital.
Wrapping everything in a euphemism does not make it more professional.
Finding a way to speak clearly and truthfully without being outright rude, as appropriate for the culture and situation, is important. Speaking up when necessary is important. But it's a lot more nuanced than phrase substitution.
Some of these are pretty good. Some would make you sound extremely passive-aggressive. Some of them imply your own attitude problem ("I told you so...").
A lot are most professionally handled by saying nothing at all. While it is important to speak up truthfully when there would be some positive outcome for you or me or your team, some of these fall into a category where the best outcome is to leave it. It's either irrelevant, unhelpful, or a self-solving dilemma ;-)
Pretend Nice ! => Professional - you're fooling no one
> Wrapping everything in a euphemism does not make it more professional.
We may have very different definitions of "euphemism", but I do not see saying "I’m unable to add value to this meeting but I would be happy to review the minutes." instead of "That meeting sounds like a waste of my time" as a euphemism.
The benefit of the former is that you are signaling an openness to being wrong. The latter doesn't imply you're right, but nor is it signaling an invitation to disagree. In my experience, when people (including me) say the latter, they are wrong about 50% of the times - there often is something in the meeting that made it useful. Stating it is a waste of my time will come across as arrogant (justified or otherwise).
Even saying "I'm not sure there's value in meeting. What are you hoping to gain from this meeting?" is better than "I think it's a waste of my time".
Agree. That was one of the better examples. Saying "That meeting sounds like a waste of my time" is pretty rude.
To me the euphemism part is "I’m unable to add value to this meeting" which means "I don't see the need for me to attend this meeting".
Your examples are better too. Adding a question to ensure you've not misread the situation is absolutely the right thing: "I don't see the need for me to attend this meeting, is there something you needed me for?"
George Carlin had a great bit[1] about our continuous need to soften our language with euphemisms. That, combined with a kind of forced optimism: needing to hide all negativity inside robotic passive aggression, is what communication has become in a lot of corporations. I don't imagine anyone actually likes having to do it, but we all seem to adopt these speech patterns eventually.
Every time your boss tells you, "Hey, can you tone it down next time? Fred told me he was very offended by your asking him to do his job!"-- you're being asked to participate in the game.
The euphemism treadmill is real but I disagree with Carlin's point that calling it shell shock rather than PTSD would have helped Vietnam veterans - when we called it shell shock in WW1 it was associated with cowardice and weakness, I think calling it PTSD was an attempt to break from that and frame it as a legitimate medical condition that merits being discharged/treated.
I figure this "corp-speak" is supposed to help to deliver the message clearly while milding the confrontation down insensibly. Some of the proposed lines, merely repharsed into a colder, official tone, aren't too great at that. But this one is quite clever!
Background: I am a software engineer and engineering manager born in Russia. I am 46, so my reports are usually 10-20 years younger. To keep their initiative and creativity high I am keeping my tone a tad softer, for my age and authority often switch people to "yes, boss" mode.
I am on a new job and out of Russia now, so most of communication is in English. My manager pointed out to me, that my softness may sometimes be interpreted as a passive aggression. Construction like "let's think this through again together" means proposing help in Russian, but can be perceived as " you didn't think it through by yourself, so I will spend my time to show you how it should be done properly".
The problem deepens when we use same words with Americans, Brits and non-native speakers. Non-natives take words at face value most of the time, so it is easiest part. Americans has hundreds of nuance because they speak the language all their life and their cultural background chips in all the time. Brits has passive aggression built in their culture, thus "English humor" and branded sarcasm.
There are two easy solutions for the problem. First - more face time even in remote-first team. People just getting to know each other and interpolate personal traits to written communication. Second - be more specific, clearly communicate intentions and speak as myself: "I feel that there can be better solution, so let's combine our expertise and brainstorm the problem once again".
I used to get annoyed at that, then I caught myself doing it to someone else (accidentally). It's surprisingly easy to do, especially if you get distracted midway through reading an email.
I've had much better success numbering all my asks, that reminds people that there's more than one question to answer. It also helps to cluster all the questions at the end of the email, when possible.
Hello everyone.
Firstly I want to thank everyone for sharing their thoughts and suggestions here.
The intent of the project is not to make you respond with passive aggressive tone but to show you some alternatives of "how you might feel like saying sometimes" over "how you can reframe it a bit better (in some cases atleast)"
I have gathered the data from a content creator on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/loewhaley/) and yes of course the credits are mentioned everywhere about this.
Based on the responses here it seems like what I started as fun activity can be something more than I thought.
I'll be looking into the possibilities of improving the content to make it less satire and more appropriate for most of the people out there.
At ending note, I would just like to say to anyone who feels this is really good and I'm going to use this word by word, please don't, take this as a grain of salt and not seriously (atleast at this point of time till I better structure the content) and anyone who feels negative about this, I'm sorry you feel that way but don't take this very seriously.
Y'all are getting worked up over nothing. All these sayings were taken directly off of a TikToker's/Instagrammer's posts. They're all basically just light humor.
It's just how humans interact, I am happy to see both positive and negative feedbacks here, maybe it shows that there is scope of having such a project, and it could be taken seriously.
I started this as just a fun weekend activity, but I might proofread the data and take some help to make it better and convenient for others.
The essence of these is how you set boundaries for yourself, while a) not threatening the percieved power of the person you are speaking to, and b) expressing needs in terms of appealing to some shared principle of professionalism.
The challenge with flat organizations is they reward bullying because they lack recourse to principle and positional authority. This communication style is necessary for navigating them, and it's how most educated people in orgs communicate these days, as they higher you go up the org chart, the higher the percentage of your time is spent essentially just navigating power.
While I see people reacting to the passive aggression in these phrases, that's literally how managers communicate. Bureaucracy is passive aggressive warfare and a power struggle where people try to subordinate and make others accountable to them.
Sometimes someone is only asking you for something because they want to set you up as a blocker for their project to both get more time and blame it on you, or you are being added to something because the person who failed at it needs to add stakeholders to diffuse accountability for the failure - bureaucracies are systems of alien incentives, and the people in them must often operate according to objectively insane rules. If you want to stop this stuff, learn to lead and make sure your org doesn't default to this, or start your own company, and make a place that doesn't run like this.
When I've seen leaders mystified at how their orgs got like this, it was because when they asked everyone to find ways to work together without the toxic culture, they didn't take ownership and set the example, and everyone just interpreted it as, "hide how you are doing this."
Or just say what you mean within cultural norms. People know when they're being bullshitted with nice sounding boiler plate in my experience.
A good rule to follow is to prefer being Kind rather than Nice. Kind is being blunt and honest. Nice is saying things nicely but not being clear on commitments (see: ruinous empathy).
I'm sorry but all these are pointless waffle that don't serve any purpose or achieve the goal.
For example...
A whole bunch of them are just a longer version of making yourself sound like an utter twat, e.g. "I told you so" vs "As per my prediction, this outcome does not come as a surprise." .... to the listener both equal "you're a twat".
Then a whole bunch of others just open scope for further problems, e.g. "that meeting sounds like a waste of time" -> "waffle...I would be happy to read the minutes" ..... cue colleague coming back to you asking why you have not read the minutes / for your opinion on the minutes.
Finally, as others have commented, it's all very Americanised and would likely not work in "no BS" cultures elsewhere in the world.
I've been working on removing blame or attribution from phrases both in work and in social settings.
Some examples are:
"Oh you did this incorrectly" --> "This was incorrectly done"
"Why did you make this decision" --> "How was this decision made"
My thinking is, once you remove the attribution or the linking of identity to action, the other person doesn't hear this as a criticism of them or their skill, but rather on the issue or end result.
My hope is this makes them less prone to be defensive in the discussion and hopefully achieve a more productive end result while minimizing negative reactions.
As other comments point out, a lot of the replacements in the article are corporate ways to say fuck off. I think these responses are generally rude and make me less interested in having a working relationship with the sender.
I realize there’s a lot of cultural differences at play here. Still, some of these professionalisms are blatant lying in my opinion and should be discouraged. E.g. ”I totally forgot your email” vs ”thank you for your patience”.
Owning your mistakes is what pros do and deflecting blame is not.
Contrary to other comments I think you’re actually trying to provide a meaningful “blunt” to “not likely to become a problem” lookup table of sorts. Hope it works.
I think that if you expanded the scope a bit to include advice on when to avoid saying something, it would be more helpful. For example, "I told you so" shouldn't really be said in most contexts. It comes off as unprofessional no matter how you say it, so there's no entry you could create that would not seem wrong. If in those cases you suggest alternatives to saying anything, it would come off better.
When I start reading the phrases and their corresponding responses. It gives me jitters because I have been in an org that used very similar language and I often connect that language to a toxic work environment and office politics.
I have worked in netherlands for dutch orgs, I love the fact that communication is direct, people communicate directly. You don't have read between the lines, if something has to be done, it said as it. There is BS in an org. There is toxic politics per say.
It could be just be me but I think an org could work efficiently if there was no reading between the lines and communication was to the point.
I've gotten into a habit over the years of exclusively using "We" in reference to anything code related, even if it's something I wrote entirely myself. The diffusion of "we" versus "I" allows you talk about things much more objectively and openly. And it really helps to maintain a blameless culture. This also extends to "You", so I'd never tell a junior "You did this poorly, you should fix this". It's always "We should find a better solution, what are your suggestions?".
This is the way. People notice (and it just feels better) when you absorb blame but share credit. Then again, maybe I've just been lucky to work in reasonably OK environments so far.
Most of these are just passive aggressive versions of the original, maybe more blunt, comment. The effect on me would be the opposite of what the author expects.
Totally unprofessional, remember that you are usually among adults, not kids. Don't be blunt but don't even use this alternative style. Both will get you fired eventually.
My simple suggestion, when something is wrong, make it about us, don't target the individual and try to propose a plan to fix the issue/situation. That's the way to handle conflict, we work together, let's fix issues.
Also, there is a long form of this called "Difficult Conversations", which is a really good book for handling all sorts of complicated issues, both at work and at home. Strongly recommended.
One that I don't see on the list, which I am constantly looking for a way to politely say, is: "I don't think you were paying attention to what I said just now. It's possible that I wasn't clear enough, but if that's so, you should ask me questions rather than ignoring me. What I'm hearing from you now is exactly what someone would say if they had spent all of my previous statement waiting to talk instead of listening."
Some strategies for rephrasing I like are (1) converting "you" to "us/we", (2) removing emotion/blame, (3) occams razor - assume incompetence over malice, (4) false timidness/fake blaming yourself. The person likely was listening but is not able to connect their statement with yours. Telling someone you think they aren't listening won't make them listen unless you hold power over them or are publicly embarrassing them. Assume your solution is x, but immediately after the person asks about y, which is solved by x. Some starters:
"One concern we have is y, I think it makes sense that x will resolve it. What are your thoughts?"
"I was thinking about y when coming up with x and thought the issue would be resolved, but maybe I misunderstood a piece of y?"
"Sorry I may not have communicated that clearly - I think x will resolve y but perhaps I misunderstood your question. Can you expand on why x might not solve y?"
Very dependent on culture/etc though. These work great for Americans, but for other cultures they are way too indirect. Unless you and everyone on the call is highly technical, fake taking blame doesn't have the negative impact people think it does. If you have a feeling someone wasn't listening, everyone else on the call has the same feeling. Calling them out likely won't help, but you earn respect if you progress the meeting forward without being a dick.
>"Stop assigning me so many tasks if you want any of them to get done"
>"As my workload is quite heavy, can you help me understand what I should reprioritize to accommodate this new task?"
I've used this one a lot and it helped quite a bit. Eventually the boss saw it as obstructive to his demands and started saying "it's all top priority". So I just arranged my priorities as I saw fit based on what I observed his own priorities to be, and it mostly worked out fine. When he'd ask me about all the other tasks he'd assigned, after I reported on what I'd accomplished at the weekly meeting, I'd say "I haven't had time to work on that". It's what he always said to everyone, that he was "so strapped for time, had so many meetings on his schedule" so how could he not accept it? Or he'd say "this other stuff is important, you need to work on it", I'd say "ok, I'll put off THE IMPORTANT THING for a day to do that", and he'd back off. In essence there is only so much time, and when you get to the details of scheduling what you are going to work on, it becomes extremely obvious how long things take to do. Maybe someone more brilliant could do it faster than you, but it will take a year to bring them in and get them up to speed, and they will cost more. If your boss refuses to recognize that and demands more, just do what you can, and reserve some inviolable time for yourself. It's basically a management failure and has nothing to do with you, let them fail. You know your value, you are accomplishing the most important of the work.
Oh, and when the boss stops wanting to prioritize, start looking for a better place to work.
Agree with that, it depends on person to person, but hey, since the repo is open sourced, please feel free to make any changes and send a PR, I'll be happy to take a look at it :)
I would think of this as kind of a translation table between one communication culture and another, which might come in handy. I'm used to work with people from different cultures in a team and in my head just transpose whatever they say based on their culture.
If an American tells me "Are we confident that this is the best solution or are we still exploring alternatives?" then I'm automatically translating it to "this is complete shit". When someone from Eastern Europe tells me "this is complete shit", I translate it into "hm this looks weird, care to explain?". Plus minus individual adjustments based on my experience with that person.
But there's one thing I never do, and that is taking this kind of communication literally, and therefore I don't really care about flowery language, passive-aggressive clichees, or maybe a little negativity on the other side of the spectrum.
These remind me of Orwell's "Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account."
This is disgusting. I wouldn't want to work with people offended by simple and direct speech, and even less if they'd be fine with a sugarcoated version like this instead. I feel sorry for anyone who has to talk like this, if I were to create a company, it'd never reach this point.
I don’t think it’s all sugarcoating, some of the suggestions are just better ways to say something.
For example, the first item is you are overcomplicating this. Saying it that way sounds like you are expressing an objective fact rather than an opinion. Instead, saying let’s concentrate on initial scope is not only more diplomatic, it suggests a path to fix the problem.
Not only are these very passive aggressive, some of them leave you with action items that I have no desire to carry out.
If I say something isn’t my job, that’s the end of it, you hear me? I will certainly NOT be happy to waste my time helping you find someone else who can do it. Do your job.
Depending on your career goals, being the person that everyone approaches for help on finding the right path is a very valuable thing. It means they see you as a leader who can work with other people to help them get things done.
Having an attitude of “I don’t know and won’t make any effort to help you. Leave me alone” is going to negatively impact how people see you, and limit your growth potential in any company.
Maybe that’s fine for you if you just want to write code, but it will stop you from obtaining even team lead type roles where you need to collaborate with others.
The tradeoff here being how much of your time are you willing to dedicate towards helping others, and for what level of task.
As a general rule of thumb, I try to ask "Have you X, Y, or Z'd?" as a quick filter for if the person has engaged with the problem at all. A common example being "Do you know why I'm getting error message X?" "Have you checked the Y logs?"
Ideally, people do some amount of leg work first and proactively state what they've done. Sometimes people will do the leg work, but need to be asked to share the context they've gathered. Sometimes people ask immediately, without any investigation of their own, because you might know and be able to save them time.
Of course, having the full blown belligerent attitude of "I wont make any effort to help you" isn't very welcome, but "You should take a few hours to dive in, if you're still stuck, I'll set aside some time to take a look with you" is pretty reasonable.
But I don't think most of the rewordings suggested here are going to make people want to interact with you. They make you sound like you run your every utterance by HR, legal, and three teams of consultants but they won't keep you from seeming like an asshole.
For this reason whenever someone speaks professionally instead of just saying the thing directly not only they're saying the original thing it's meant to be (ie. I don't have time for you, I told you so, that's a horrible idea...), but they're also adding an element of plausible deniability, which makes it pretty cowardly.
When I see managers speak like this I know the rot of bureaucracy has plagued the company culture and is time to find a smaller/less bs-type company.
It'd be a fun project to create a tool to "auto-correct" these phrases back to their original meaning so everyone knows what's being communicated. Maybe a Gmail Chrome extension?
I think the two versions here should say rude vs. passive aggressive. I don't see any professional or collegial in most of the answers. The only difference is that passive aggressive versions are harder to understand and see through
I think the suggestions are good, but the premises aren't. All of the statements that you click are an aggressive voice, but the revealed suggestion is passive.
That being said, so long as you don't feel as aggressive as the premises, you'll be okay.
Oh cmon seriously? Did we really need a guide? I’m not arguing you shouldnt be professional, rather scared of a future where we all talk like bots with no emotions. Are we so fu**d up?
I don't think you make it sufficiently clear that you've essentially plagiarized this from the Instagramer you link to: https://www.instagram.com/loewhaley
There is no "special thanks". You've copied it word-for-word. I think the only reason you've posted this here is to crowd source more content, rather than do the work yourself.
Very practically useful (if you insist on saying these things, at all) but should come with some indication of which culture or (global) industry this advice is tuned to. I think these seem like what I would expect as an American (slightly passive aggressive, offering to “help” just as way to put things in someone else’s court), but for example (as per countless memes) if you were Dutch you might be expected to be more direct, if British even less direct.
I told you so. ->
As per my prediction, this outcome does not come as a surprise.
Is "Being mindful of timelines. Let’s concentrate on the initial scope." better than "You're overcomplicating this" to describe the above transformation?
Seriously though, I think these soft phrasings might be useful for talking to non-technical types or more junior devs. For senior+ devs, I prefer plain-speak.
Definitely you would ignore it at that time, but you can basically send a message (like that or something else) once you are back to notify about why you were not able to respond at that given time.
The thing is, "stop calling me" implies a pattern of behaviour you want them to break, not a one-off.
If it's the first call from someone who doesn't know your working pattern, then you're not really saying "stop calling me", but genuinely telling them when you are available. Putting the details in your email signature works well if you have unconventional hours for your workplace.
If it's someone close to you - e.g. line manager or team mate - then they know your hours, so responding by telling them what your hours are strikes me as less polite than simply saying "I wasn't working when you called, but here I am now."
Having been on the receiving end of "I'm not sure we really understand what is going on here" more than a few times, from specific people, I was able to decode this eventually. I'm still not sure how I feel about it, but it definitely was less jarring to hear those words instead of "you don't know what you are talking about."
"Professionally" might be rephrased as "approved use of corporate speak." Anytime anyone uses the words "unable", "reach out", "elaborate", "expertise" or "input" you know they're bucking for promotion, as they say in the military.
You need to translate another phrase: "You are sucking up."
I think there's no need to overcomplicate those answers. You can be direct with your message without coming as aggressive. This is basic conflict management: don't focus on the person, focus on the problem.
Examples:
You are overcomplicating this
this is unnecessarily complex.
That meeting sounds like a waste of my time
if I'm not necessary for this meeting, I would rather do X
I told you so
this is what we talked that could happen, remember?
I've been thinking to start a podcast about how to improve the quality of our communication, especially in different cultural contexts.
I'm wondering, would any of you want to listen to a podcast where someone helps people change how they speak, almost like a Dr. Phil meets Marshall Rosenberg (nonviolent communication guy)?
A couple of the suggested answers are in passive voice. IMO in addition to being poor stylistically in business communications, passive voice conveys apathy and disclaims responsibility. In some of these cases that may be the intent but as other examples show there are ways to do that without passive voice.
Internally I don’t want message to be sugar coated. Criticize my performance with whatever language, be direct and make sure personal boundaries are not crossed. In other words, make it clear that everybody focus on performance not the person. A question is whether this is scalable anybody with some experience?
Some of the suggested phrasing changes the meaning of the original.
Also, besides the alternatives requiring cultural sensitivity (as some commentators have argued), I think, there is just a little bit more sensitivity required to your receiver’s personality and appetite for bluntness and their role relative to you.
All the 'translations' seem to hinge on the assumption that the recipient does not have malicious motives, but rather, they seem to be doing something bad that you'd like them to stop doing, and are trying to find the best language for it.
The way I'm using it is that I'm putting some words from a sentence I want to say, and it will show me how others have used those words. then I'm looking for the common use of those words and building my own sentence.
IMO A lot of the fixed professional ones would still be way too spicy to use in the UK.
Many seem to imply a bad relationship or dissatisfaction with a coworker. I would never [again] talk to a coworker about this. I would either ignore it or talk to my manager.
I hope that junior engineers/employees take all of these with a grain of salt. You can't skip meetings because you won't add to them. Part of your job is to observe and learn.
Huh? I thought this was a satire/joke website. The amount of people who thank the author for help is.. worrying. This is how we jokingly communicate at work, or in commit messages.
A great way to improve mental health and productivity is for someone to optimize a NLP model that can convert our emails and messages from what we actually feel to professional speech.
I think this dictionary works backwards, but shouldn't be used forwards. If you had trouble understanding the passive aggressive BS of a coworker, this should come in handy.
At the risk of sounding naive, do people really use this kind of language with one another? To my ears, it doesn’t sound professional, it sounds openly passive-aggressive.
I am afraid to hurt your feelings with incautious wording, so you might want to make your educated guess as to what I really meant to communicate to you.
Hahah I like how many of these phrases unlike their direct counterparts appear even more passive aggressive and insulting if you are used to corpspeak.
Polite: Being mindful of timelines. Let’s concentrate on the initial scope.
Blunt: That meeting sounds like a waste of my time
Polite: I’m unable to add value to this meeting but I would be happy to review the minutes.
Blunt: I told you so
Polite: As per my prediction, this outcome does not come as a surprise.
Blunt: That sounds like a horrible idea
Polite: Are we confident that this is the best solution or are we still exploring alternatives?
Blunt: I already told you this
Polite: As Indicated prior
Blunt: Can you answer all of the questions I asked and not just pick and choose one
Polite: Are you able to provide some clarity around the other questions previously asked?
Blunt: Did you even read my email?
Polite: Reattaching my email to provide further clarity
I’ll provide an update when I have one
Blunt: Stop bothering me
Polite: You have not heard from me because further information is not available at this time, Once I have an update I’ll be sure to loop you in.
Blunt: I don’t want to talk to you right now!
Polite: I am currently tied up with something but I will connect with you once I am free.
Blunt: Do your job!
Polite: It is my understanding that you are the appropriate person to contact in regards to this. But If there’s is someone better equipped for this let me know.
Blunt: That's not my job
Polite: This falls outside of my responsibilities but I would be happy to connect you with someone who can help.
Blunt: Stop assigning me so many tasks if you want any of them to get done
Polite: As my workload is quite heavy, can you help me understand what I should reprioritize to accommodate this new task?
Blunt: answer my emails
Polite: If there’s a better way to get in contact with you please let me know as I am hoping to have this resolved as soon as possible
Blunt: This is not my problem
Polite: I recommend directing this issue to [Name] as they have the proper expertise to best assist you
Blunt: If you would have read the whole email you’d know the answer to this
Polite: I have included my initial email below which contains all of the details you are looking for.
Blunt: I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about
Polite: Can you help me better understand what exactly is it that you require on my end?
Blunt: Stop micromanaging
Polite: I am confident in my ability to complete this project and will be sure to reach out, If or when I require your input.
Blunt: Please hurry and get this done!
Polite: It is important that we have this completed in order to meet our targeted deadlines which are quickly approaching.
Blunt: Stay in your own lane
Polite: Thank you for your input. I’ll keep that in mind as I move forward with decisions that fall within my responsibilities
Blunt: I’ve told you this multiple times
Polite: There seems to be a disconnect here as this information has already been provided
Blunt: I’m not doing your job for you
Polite: I do not have the capacity to take this on in addition to my own workload but I’m happy to support where it makes sense.
Blunt: We do not need to have a meeting about this.
Polite: Being respectful of everyone's time let's discuss this through email until we have a more defined agenda
Blunt: Did you just take credit for my work?
Polite: It is great to see my ideas being exposed to a wider audience and I would have appreciated the opportunity to have been included in the delivery.
Blunt: Google that your self
Polite: The internet is a great resource for these types of questions and I am available to clarify elements that you are not able to find online.
Blunt: What you are saying does not make sense
Polite: We seem to have a different understanding on this. Can you elaborate further on your thought process here?
Blunt: I am not paid enough to do this
Polite: This falls out of my job description but if the opportunity for a role expansion becomes available I would be happy to discuss reworking my contract to better align with these new responsibilities
Blunt: I totally forgot about your email
Polite: Thank you for your patience
Blunt: I'm going to need a whole lot of more information if you want me to do this
Polite: Please let me know when further details become available as I require more information to successfully complete this task
Blunt: Stop calling me before my workday even starts
Polite: If you need to contact me, please note that my working hours being at 8 am and 6 pm. Communications received prior to this won't be seen.
Blunt: Check your inbox, I already sent this to you!
Polite: I previously sent you an email regarding that but please let me know if something went wrong in transit
Blunt: I couldn't care less
Polite: I will defer to your judgment on this as I am not passionate either way and I trust your expertise.
Blunt: I told you so and now this is your problem
Polite: I did previously note that this was a likely outcome. How do you plan to resolve this?
Blunt: Stop trying to make me do your work!
Polite: I am not able to offer you additional support in completing your workload
> As per my prediction, this outcome does not come as a surprise.
Just don't say this -- maybe an "I can't say I'm surprised" if it's an informal setting within peers.
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> As Indicated prior
Also just skip this, maybe a "Yeah, [copy/paste the relevant line from the initial email]"
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> You have not heard from me because further information is not available at this time, Once I have an update I’ll be sure to loop you in.
"Unfortunately, I don't have any more updates, but once I do I’ll be sure to loop you in."
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> It is my understanding that you are the appropriate person to contact in regards to this. But If there’s is someone better equipped for this let me know.
I have to do things like this a lot - my go-to is "According to XYZ you're the best person to talk to about this, but if there's someone else I should reach out to please let me know"
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> I have included my initial email below which contains all of the details you are looking for.
Just copy/paste the relevant portions from the initial email.
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> I am confident in my ability to complete this project and will be sure to reach out, If or when I require your input.
"Got it - I'll reach out if I have any more questions and I'll keep you in the loop."
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> Thank you for your input. I’ll keep that in mind as I move forward with decisions that fall within my responsibilities
"Thanks for your feedback, I'll keep it in mind. [Add a question about what they wrote so you seem actually invested in their ideas]"
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> There seems to be a disconnect here as this information has already been provided
Just copy/paste the relevant portions from the initial email.
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> Being respectful of everyone's time let's discuss this through email until we have a more defined agenda
This one is more benign but I think it implies the other person isn't being respectful of everyone's time. "I think it'd be beneficial to keep this to email until we have a more defined agenda"
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> It is great to see my ideas being exposed to a wider audience and I would have appreciated the opportunity to have been included in the delivery.
I've never had to deal with a problem like this, but I don't think this solves much. I don't have an alternative for it but this seems like an issue that wouldn't benefit from minor passive-aggression.
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> The internet is a great resource for these types of questions and I am available to clarify elements that you are not able to find online.
"I'd be happy to hop on a Zoom call to help you out." -- Don't be the LMGTFY guy.
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> This falls out of my job description but if the opportunity for a role expansion becomes available I would be happy to discuss reworking my contract to better align with these new responsibilities
These seem to be getting more passive aggressive as I scroll, heh. "I don't have the bandwidth or ability to do something like that, but XYZ may be of better service in this department"
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> Please let me know when further details become available as I require more information to successfully complete this task
Specify what things you need to complete the task.
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> If you need to contact me, please note that my working hours being at 8 am and 6 pm. Communications received prior to this won't be seen.
Just don't reply. Mute your phone?
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> I did previously note that this was a likely outcome. How do you plan to resolve this?
"What's the plan to resolve this?"
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> I am not able to offer you additional support in completing your workload
"Unfortunately I don't have the bandwidth to help out on that. I'd reach out to [my manager] to see if we can adjust our goals to support you with it"
Some of these are quite confrontational and still come across as unprofessional. This has a very boomer feel to it. I think Gen Z will just say the what they want instead of applying a professional filter.
This project is not just inspired by her work, but takes her jokes verbatim in written format. I you quote people, you're supposed to use quotation marks.
Of course if this is a collaboration, things are different, but it's not clear that it is.
I understand where you're coming from, this is not a collaboration but as you mentioned, the content is presented in written format which is a bit more easily searchable.
These are just some phrases and not "quoting people's thoughts", I did not consider adding quotation marks to each phrase.
I have added relevant credits every place possible (on web as well as code repo). I'll be happy to make the intent more clear if you have any ideas on how you would feel it can be best represented.
Agree with you, I have added the credits on the top section as well. As far as it goes about stating my intentions about making the content searchable, I feel that the input box for search pretty much conveys that, so I won't be explicitly mentioning this in writing (not at least on the website).
Thank you for your suggestions.
I like the idea of giving people some help expressing themselves at work. You might be interested to learn about the Power Distance Index, and the body of work on PDI and work culture.
You’ll see if you read the comments here that some people are like “the alternatives are bullshit corporate speak and infuriate me”, and some are like “yes, at last, a way to help people be more polite / better communicators”. There’s a smattering of “this is passive aggressive” thrown in.
One of the broad pitches PDI at work types make is that the lower the PDI, the more direct communications are preferred; the higher, the more ‘diplomatic’ the communications are preferred. My vibe on your list is that it’s just a tad more diplomatic than Silicon Valley wants to be, hence the slight negative ‘passive aggressive’ reactions.
Some of the lowest PDI countries in the world are Israel, and many Northern European countries, and it fits my experience that in those places additional respect is given for bluntness - as Jan Maas in Ted Lasso says “I’m not rude, I’m Dutch.” As a broad stereotype using the alternate wordings you give would be a sign you are not someone to be respected in that environment.
On the other hand, Saudi Arabia’s PDI is high, and I would bet that some of your alternate list there would still be much too rude; just a guess, I haven’t worked in Saudi.
Anyway, thanks again for this; if you stay interested, you might consider reworking this into different ‘cultural norms’ lists to help people acclimate / go both ways; at that point, I think it would be a very broadly useful resource.