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You can gracefully accept input and not act on it. People often have a need to be heard, to expose to the world what's going on inside their mind, to be apprec
by intellectronica 4y ago
You can gracefully accept input and not act on it.
People often have a need to be heard, to expose to the world what's going on inside their mind, to be appreciated for their ideas. You can serve that need in a friendly way by listening attentively and being genuinely curious. You can also suppress that need inside yourself and avoid responding with your own critique and argumentation.
You just listen, ask some questions, show that you are interested, thank them for their idea, and then decide for yourself if you want to act on it, and if you don't, then don't.
In most cases the topic will never come up again. If they nag, just be very positive, remind them that you really liked their idea, that you identify what's valuable about it, but don't make any commitment to acting on it.
- tankenmate 4y agoI can understand the approach; avoiding any confrontation, but from the other side it will seem like gaslighting. I suspect you need some balance in the time it takes to debate these ideas, so it might be better to ask them to put their proposals on paper with a word limit and a time limit to debate the ideas; they are heard, and not only that but the ideas are debated. If you time limit not only the time available to debate ideas for each individual idea but also limit the time for debate overall it will require your reports to think selectively about what ideas are really good and which ones are worth the time to pursue.