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
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"?)
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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?
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 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!
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
Readit News
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).
(Is there even a clear distinction between "cultural" and "linguistic"?)
Even my C-Level guys are saying this (banking)
Do not understan til today, why for an american this word is that problematic....
Reminds me of a slide[1] DHH did at a Rails conference presentation.
[1]: https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/dhh-says-f-you/57797
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Even I as a New Yorker had to acclimate to that level of bluntness.
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.
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! :)
It really adds little to the conversation. It's just an IDF inheritance that should be eradicated.
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.
How you would describe the communication style within the IDF?
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.
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I'm now furiously Googling this and apparently it's part of a broader framework called cultural dimensions theory. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstede%27s_cultural_dimens...
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
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.
[1] Gossip as Revenge of the Powerless - https://aeon.co/ideas/gossip-was-a-powerful-tool-for-the-pow... [2] Humor as a Serious Strategy of Nonviolent Resistance to Oppression - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1468-0130... [3] Follower sarcasm reduces leader overpay by increasing accountability - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002210312... [4] Powerlessness Corrupts - leads to sabotage - https://hbr.org/2010/07/column-powerlessness-corrupts [5] Ask & Guess Culture - https://ask.metafilter.com/55153/Whats-the-middle-ground-bet...
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.
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.
http://ask.metafilter.com/55153/Whats-the-middle-ground-betw...
because its the same people right? like its just a branch from the same culture due to very recent immigration trends
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Israel#Ethnic_... Chart only includes Jews, unfortunately, but that is 75% of the population.
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.
Would love to hear your take on this.
There is also the difference from types of communication, i.e. face-to-face or email or slack.
There is also the difference from the audience, i.e. who are you talking to, coworkers or clients.
There is even individual differences, i.e. different people will perceive differently, simply because their personalities.
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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.
EDIT: another comment mentions Power-Distance Index, which is part of a broader cultural dimensions theory. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstede%27s_cultural_dimens...
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.
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).
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).
Alternatively, "I think this can be simpler. Your thoughts?"
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 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 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.
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".
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?”
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 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)
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.
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.
“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.”
Instead of “Google that yourself”
"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.
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)
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.
“Do you think this is too complicated?”
“Is there any way we can simplify this?”
Yes it’s complicated because it’s complicated. If it could have been simplied I would have done it already.
I would approach this like
I think this is overly complicated. Let’s see if we can simplify.
It’s direct. It says what I truly believe and it puts me on the side of having to do work to simply fit as a collective “we”.
Thoughts?
(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))
"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.
Just say: “I think we might be able to simplify this a bit…<say idea>. What do you think? Do you think that would work?”
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.
You can share it via opening an issue here (https://github.com/AkashRajpurohit/howtoprofessionallysay/is...), so it becomes a bit easier to track
Reserving opinion on how much I agree with the sentiment :)
There are some here that are okay, but a lot just shouldn't be said (like "I told you so").
If I told someone something and they ignore it, potentially even multiple times why should I not say it?
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".
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.
OP's site adjusts the register to something more polite.
The confrontational statements are still confrontational when phrased more politely.
LATIN: Stercorem pro cerebro habes.
WHAT YOU SAY IT MEANS: That's certainly food for thought.
WHAT IT REALLY MEANS: You have shit for brains.
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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.