13 ms·

Be a thermostat, not a thermometer (2023)

313 points by dillonshook 2y ago

gleenn 2y ago
This metaphor immediately rang true to me but the article is definitely worth the whole read. There are a bunch of linked articles too which also have some very sound advice. I really like a tactic in hard situations which was saying "What I learned..." followed by "What I'll do is...". It makes someone feel heard and that you'll follow through with some action to make someone feel like you have akin in the game with their concern. I really liked a lot of other somewhat generic but still oft-ignored advice like lean in a bit, make eye-contact, and the title which is just that if someone is making you feel off, instead of just reacting like a thermometer and also potentially aggravating the weirdness, do things that help regulate and relieve those human tendencies based on feelings of fear etc. Excellent read.
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 2y ago
  You'd better follow through and do the thing you said though. If you start saying things when people are riled up and then don't do it... They're going to notice.
  - gleenn 2y ago
    I agree, when you say you're going to do something then obviously you should also do what you say and say what you do. But my guess is even just saying I learned you don't feel heard about xyz and I will try to pay more attention to you your concerns when you're talking about xyz shouldn't be hard to commit to if you care at all about whomever you're talking to. Hopefully they are a bit disarmed and realize you're trying. I don't think this is a silver bullet, and I think the article makes that point at least a few times. The point is to try and stabilize and correct the vibe if it isn't really justified. If you are going into a warzone then you probably need different advice, hopefully this isn't the norm though and you aren't a hostage negotiator or something.
    - detourdog 2y ago
      There is also a class of people that will always provide reason or task that is the issue. The list of problems will never end and they will never be satisfied. Some people would rather complain then reflect on their inner workings.
klabb3 2y ago
Definitely gonna borrow this language, it’s a really important aspect of social life. I’ve always been very, very thermometer-like, with a strong tendency to mirror which allows me to connect with people 1 on 1 easy, but on the flip side I absorb vibes I don’t want. My coping mechanism is to avoid bad vibes, confrontational situations, etc. Even being in a social group for long can affect me negatively if the people there have values I don’t agree with, even if I have no desire to change them. Any tips for how to manage that better?
- Trasmatta 2y ago
  Therapy helps. Building a stronger sense of self and with it, more internal boundaries between your thoughts and beliefs and those of others. I'm this way as well, and it's like your emotions are totally porous, absorbing everything from those around you. It's a blessing and a curse. Generally stems from a childhood where you had to be very in tune with the emotions of your caregiver in order to stay safe.
  - sethammons 2y ago
    Oof. Being in tune with your caregiver hits hard. My mom was a manic, bi-polar, depressive person also suffering from schizophrenia. I learned to read some situations like you mention but toss in some randomness so it gets real dicey.
  - hi_hi 2y ago
    Thank you. This lines up with my experiences, which I never knew were connected. Prefer 1:1, alcoholic mum growing up who had good days and bad days. I could tell which it would be from the "vibe" when I walked through the door after school before seeing anyone.
- jjj123 2y ago
  Wow I’ve always felt much more comfortable in 1:1 situations than group situations, but I never framed it the way you have here. Your comment really resonates, thank you!
dmoy 2y ago
> Make sure you’re squarely facing the person Awww shit that's gonna be hard for my inner Minnesotan. All that deep listening stuff needs to be done at a 135-165 degree angle, so you're both vaguely looking in the same-ish direction but can make occasional side glance eye contact
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
  Right? The only way some of us can discuss emotion is if we're pretending we're manning the Wall against ice zombies
- vvanders 2y ago
  This is giving me strong How to Talk Minnesotan vibes[1] (in a good way :D). [edit] 10:50! https://www.tptoriginals.org/how-to-talk-minnesotan/ https://www.tptoriginals.org/how-to-talk-minnesotan/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Talk_Minnesotan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Talk_Minnesotan
from-nibly 2y ago
> Noticing a change in someone’s behavior Well I guess I'll just excuse my ADHD having self outa this one.
- jawon 2y ago
  Interesting. I have the exact opposite issue. Hypervigilance and all that.
deisteve 2y ago
While the article has some good points about the importance of emotional intelligence and awareness, I'm skeptical about the idea that we can simply "choose" to be thermostats. Humans are complex and emotional creatures, and our emotions can be triggered by a multitude of factors beyond our control. The article's suggestions, while well-intentioned, feel like a form of emotional labor that can be exhausting and unsustainable. Can we really expect people to be constantly "on" and aware of their emotional impact on others?
- theultdev 2y ago
  It's less emotional labor and less exhausting the more you are aware of your emotions. You can recognize the stimuli and rationalize it before becoming upset. The more you do it, the easier it becomes and the less stressed you become.
  - deisteve 2y ago
    totally understand where you're coming from, but I think there's a difference between being aware of your emotions and trying to suppress or fake them. The article isn't suggesting that we should be constantly 'on' and pretending to be someone we're not. Rather, it's about developing self-awareness and learning to manage our emotions in a way that's authentic and sustainable. Recognizing the stimuli that trigger our emotions is a great first step, but it's not just about rationalizing it away. It's about understanding what's driving our emotions and learning to respond in a way that's healthy and constructive. This takes practice, patience tho
    - theultdev 2y ago
      I didn't say suppress or fake your emotions, I said to rationalize them. If they are irrational you prevent the emotional knee-jerk response in the first place. If they are rational then you know the root cause to work through so you can fix the issue. For those rational emotional responses, recognizing the stimuli can still be helpful. It's still stressing, but you know the exact problem and can work to resolve it, the opposite of suppressing it.
deleted 2y ago
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fnord77 2y ago
things you can't really do on zoom meetings...
sethammons 2y ago
If this resonated with you, consider reading Nonviolent Communication by Rosenberg, the ultimate guide in thermostat-speak. You focus on stating unmet needs. Good stuff.
- FollowingTheDao 2y ago
  When I hear people trying to use "Nonviolent Communication" it only makes me more angry. It is manipulation and so transparent and condescending. Sometimes communication needs to be violent.
  - callmeal 2y ago
    I'm reminded of this supposedly ancient proverb I was taught in school: He who raises his voice first, loses.
    - CRConrad 2y ago
      Yeah, we've all been taught a lot of BS in school.
  - radlad 2y ago
    What makes you believe that nonviolent communication is manipulation? It focuses on ways to hear unmet needs in others and to express unmet needs in a way that can be heard by others. Have you read the book by chance?
    - FollowingTheDao 2y ago
      Yes, read the book and my nephew teaches a form of it. It balmes the victim for the most part. It reminds of of"you are acting hysterical" and gaslighting. Maybe read some critiques about it. https://realsocialskills.org/2014/07/17/nonviolent-communication-can-be-emotionally-violent/ https://realsocialskills.org/2014/07/17/nonviolent-communica... https://www.collectivelyfree.org/nonviolent-communication-privileged/ https://www.collectivelyfree.org/nonviolent-communication-pr...
sethammons 2y ago
> You’re being a thermometer. When they’re subtly giving off weird vibes—they’re frowning, answering your questions with fewer words than normal, etc.—you’ve noticed that their temperature is different. And if you are doing this as a coping mechanism from having an unstable parent and you are like me (also maybe a bit of adhd): you internalize the person's chilled behavior and often assume it is your fault. In case you need to hear it: You are not responsible for other's emotions (though you are responsible for your actions)
- dailykoder 2y ago
  I know this and I have learned more than enough about it to internalize it, but it just doesn't work. I can't find a way to stop the automatic jumping to conclusion and self blame. It takes hours to get over it and that's exhausting. I am trying for years to find a way out, but it just hasn't internalized yet
  - andruby 2y ago
    Any tips for the person on the other side? I often mention something without implying blame (or even assuming blame), but it’s still processed that way. I’m trying to be conscious of this though.
    - detourdog 2y ago
      If this is a consistent person in your life or a partner. The communication has to improve. Improving communication maybe impossible but I think it’s the only way.
    - dailykoder 2y ago
      I don't think there is much you can do. Everyone has different trigger points and a different past. Personally I often feel misunderstood or not taken seriously. So from my point of view just be genuine, maybe paraphrase what you heard (just a tiny bit) and the usual "start with something positive first". The latter can be hard for me too though because then I might think "no they can't have such a positive view of me" - it's complicated and I even have a hard time explaining it. So no real tips, sorry. "we" just have to learn how to live with it ourselves
AStonesThrow 2y ago
[flagged]
- ulf-77723 2y ago
  When I read the article, I assumed that it was written by a guy first - when I saved it to my favorites I noticed that Lara is a woman. I do work most of my time in my home office, yet I do spend also some time in virtual meetings. The things Lara describes are even more important if you are not present in person, from my point of view. Harder to sense some of those feelings and emotions if you are not in the same room, but possible.
- voiper1 2y ago
  Wow, I read your comment, and the response, then read it again, and I still thought you were intending to be offensive that the author was so bad they couldn't possibly collaborate with people. Somehow I missed the simpler idea of "Hah, in 2024 I have no face to face with colleagues in anymore!"
osigurdson 2y ago
I just hate this kind of stuff. Good for you if you can create a consulting business out of stating the obvious I suppose. It is a drain on the economy however.
- kettleballroll 2y ago
  > Good for you if you can create a consulting business out of stating the obvious I suppose. In my experience, tech problems are a lot easier to solve than people problems, and a lot of things that don't go well in a project turn out to be people problems. E.g. here are a few issues I encountered in my current project at work in the last month: "their framework makes assumptions that don't apply to our code, so we reimplemented the metrics instead of trying to integrate their version" or "the data was labelled wrongly, so we had to work around that", or "this coding convention is slowing us down". Once I tried digging down, it turns out they were all people problems in disguise, and they could all be solved by "stating the obvious". Do you never encounter issues on team / across teams, where in the end it turns out a lot of issues are just people not talking to each other or misunderstanding each other? If things are too hairy, I can definitely see the value in an external consultant helping disentangle these sort of problems.
  - hackit2 2y ago
    > where in the end it turns out a lot of issues are just people not talking to each other or misunderstanding each other? What makes a huge difference is how you frame your interactions. If you extrinsic your interactions you're all-ways going to come away with a lack of agency, stress and/or frustration. if you intrinsic your interactions, you're going to be more in control, accountable, and over-all indifferent to other people. For example well at work, I'm being compensated to participate in the organization to work towards its goals, wants, needs and/or desires. Those have nothing to do with me, nor do i really care about it. I will engage with people at work, colleagues and managers, how-ever if later they don't volunteer engage back - such as being cordial, I don't re-engage because I consider it to be intrusive. Now let say you have co-workers who have a glaring communication problem. It it pretty obviously that you can do anything about it. So you engage their manager of lack of communication, and lack of professionalism. If their manager doesn't want to rectify the problem then you communicate it with your manager but at the same time be professional about it that you do not have the capacity to deliver on the deliverables within your current roles. This opens the door to opening a dialog to reviewing your remuneration or compensation package that includes the new responsibilities.
rocqua 2y ago
I loved the article, but something about it felt off. The content (good) didn't match what I would expect from the style. The writing style reminde me of a mix off business advice and aggrandizing self-help. My expectation with that is sweeping generalizations, just-so annecdotes, and not saying very much, whilst not backing up what you are saying with sound reasoning either. Somehow this article had that writing style, without those problems. It made it a rather dissonant experience, because I was looking for the catch, what I was being sold, the anecdote that is almost certainly a lie, and the overly strong conclusion. But that never came, and instead I find myself believing. And yet, the dissonance remains. I have a little worry that the swindle was just better this time. It's a weird feeling, and not one I had before.
deleted 2y ago
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trabant00 2y ago
There's an unspoken premise here and I'm going to question it. Avoiding tension, conflict, hard words and other things of the sort is not always the right choice. Sometimes letting conflicts play out gets you the best outcome with the least amount of suffering. Just like ripping off a band-aid. There's plenty of times when wining a conflict is far better than avoiding it. And I see articles like this, books like Nonviolent Communication, ideas like "emotional intelligence" (check it out, no such thing exists) - as misguided as it always puts you in the defensive/de-escalating role even when you might be better served by letting things play out or even attacking, baiting your opponent into attacking, etc. Violence is sometimes the right answer. When to apply it and when to avoid it is the hard question. But we didn't evolve an amygdala for nothing, and especially not for a "coach for leaders" (what the hell is that?) to tell us to always ignore it as an unquestioned premise for a promotional blog post. Because leaders should not always shy away from conflict, that much should be pretty crystal clear.
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- FollowingTheDao 2y ago
  Yes, agree. This is all a continuation of the Positivity Cult. Anger is a method of communication that is greater than words, and it puts the explanation point at the end of some of the most important statements. Just read this: I need help. I need help!
  - b3lvedere 2y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vivEzQUGHOQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vivEzQUGHOQ
wruza 2y ago
What I learned is that that last email didn’t do a good job explaining the changes, so what I plan to do is start a forum for folks to post their questions and our CEO will answer them every Tuesday. I know it’s only an example, but hahahahahahahaha, ha. Start with something realistic if you do that. The worst thing you can do is to teach them you’re a bag of funny promises.
- xnorswap 2y ago
  At a former company we once had an away day workshop where they allowed anonymous questions for the company director which would show up on a screen for everyone (it was a ~40-50 person company). We were a management consultancy and trialling what they thought was cool new tech to use with other companies. ( This was a while ago, smart phones were newer and apps were still "cool" ) Well, they very quickly learned to never do that again. Even in a small company there were a lot of tensions unresolved between the lowest and highest rungs. It was a fairly formal hierarchical structure where the common worker didn't tend to ever interact with the big boss. "Where's the pay rise we were promised last year?" was perhaps the mildest of the embarrassment, and it quickly devolved from there.
  - b3lvedere 2y ago
    Ooh, some lifetimes ago at a company we had a CEO that did a company wide presentation where he kept mentioning that the shareholders are the most important thing of the entire company and we all should do everything to please the shareholders. The instant hate towards him could almost be touched and tasted.
    - pistoleer 2y ago
      It is both inspiring and depressing that intelligence is not a prerequisite for high up roles.
      - b3lvedere 2y ago
        Yup https://www.savagechickens.com/2024/09/decisive.html https://www.savagechickens.com/2024/09/decisive.html
lynx23 2y ago
I am going to be downvoted to hell for this, but... After reading halfway through the article, I had to check the gender of the author. Because, I feel, this is a rather female POV. A lot of what she says feels touchy-feely to me and doesnt resonate with me at all. Maybe because I am way more inerested in the topic of the meeting then the personal feelings and emotions of the participants. To the point where I might noticed them, but I they mostly dont concern me at all.
- jdthedisciple 2y ago
  Nope, you are spot on. I too noticed pretty quickly that this must be female POV. You can generally tell even just by the word choices ("spidey senses" American women seem to love that phrase for some reason, "super <adjective>", "awry", "weird vibes", ...) Another instant give-away was "now we've got a compounding situation" - quite a feminine phrasing. Not judging, I mean it sounds almost cute even. Finally, her idea of "facing each other squarely": a total no-no for men (way too much potenial energy, like two massive electron beams opposing each other), but OK for women.
  - detourdog 2y ago
    Your comment makes me question my masculinity. I would say the desire to communicate and the feelings expressed were feminine. Noee of the phrases you mentioned did I see as clues to gender.
    - jdthedisciple 2y ago
      To be clear I didn't say men never use any of these words individually (except for "spidey senses" I suppose). Just that their frequent and combined usage in this particular article made me almost hear her voice in my head, including the female cadence and intonation...
  - lynx23 2y ago
    "Weird vibes" is what finally made me check the author name ... I don't even know what "spidey sense" should mean.
Manfred 2y ago
I support the goals of the article and I understand that social interaction doesn't come natural to all people, but if someone would lean in an nod to me like described in the second part I would freak out because that feels like sociopathic behavior.
roshankhan28 2y ago
i prefer to be a cat. if that makes sense.
- FollowingTheDao 2y ago
  HA! Makes sense to me!
- Night_Thastus 2y ago
  Find a warm sunny spot or cozy nook and go there. If the location gets uncomfortable, leave. Not terrible advice, all considered. Of course you can't always do that in say, a work setting.
  - roshankhan28 2y ago
    warm cat, happy cat
patch_collector 2y ago
If the author reads this, I'd like to suggest a change in font. At certain scales, the website's font puts emphasis on the cross-bar in the letter 'e', and the letter 'g'. It's incredibly distracting, and only seems to happen at certain scales, as I could 'fix' it by increasing/decreasing the font size. I'd message this directly, but she doesn't provide a method of contact on the site (reasonable).
tgtweak 2y ago
Generally speaking terrible advice for anyone in such a situation in a professional group setting. If you can sense that someone is tense or "off vibe" in a group meeting, you should be able to reasonably determine why. If it's not immediately evident and they are not alluding to it in the meeting - then you should table the discussion until you are able to chat 1:1 with the person. Not downplaying any of the strategies for being chipper and staying positive and being a good vibe... which seems obvious... but to push it back on the "bad viber" and dice roll on whether you'll be charismatic enough to do it without causing even more bad/awkward vibes, I think is unnecessarily risky. I've been in many meetings where someone seemed "off" but after conferring with others more familiar with the situation found it it's quite usual and not a sign of anything wrong. Had someone intervened there and tried to "discover" the case of the bad vibes, it would have amounted to "why are you like this" which is not the kind of thermometer input required. Likewise if someone is being openly confrontational in the meeting because they feel strongly about something, the right course is for someone else to step up and discuss it without any ambiguity or levity - ruling out irrelevant emotions not related to the discussion - if the stakes were high enough to merit losing face in a meeting, they should generally be high enough to discuss and resolve. My experience has been, in many board meetings and conference rooms with C-levels, that the norm for these discussions is someone "off vibe" and it's rarely koombayah when there is something at stake being discussed. Bringing unnecessary levity to a serious and often uncomfortable meeting is taken as a bit of an insult to the topic or the opinions being tabled. You can read accounts of an Jeff Besoz or Steve Jobs executive meeting and glare into this first hand.
red_admiral 2y ago
Back in the days of slatestarcodex, the comment policy [1] was you can comment if your post is at least two of these three things: true, necessary, or kind. This post is all three: what they're describing is true (these dynamics in meetings do exist, very often), it is kind (in the sense they're giving you a skill to help both yourself and others), and I'll give it necessary in the sense it's used in the original definition (if you want to get ahead in an organization with a nontrivial amount of internal politics - which is most places - you need to have at least some of this skill). And yet, something about this post gives me "weird vibes". Basically, with a bit of sarcasm you could sum it up as "DON'T BE AUTISTIC", and if you are then at least get therapy until you can act normal. When the author says "We [humans] are wired to spidey sense this [vibes] stuff", it turns out some humans are above and some below the mean in this skill distribution. [2] And sometimes, in a meeting to decide about how you're going to set up your database sharding, it helps the business' bottom line if you pay more attention to the database specialist than the soft-eye-contact specialist. (Don't you want to hire people who are good at both? Yes, but unless you're really, really lucky, you're going to hit Berkson's paradox [3]. And then if you want your databases to run smoothly, you're going to have to compromise.) [1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/02/the-comment-policy-is-victorian-sufi-buddha-lite/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/02/the-comment-policy-is-... [2] However, the latest research suggest that autistic people are perfectly wired to read the room and sense vibes if the room is full of other autistic people. It's just one autist in a room of neurotypicals, or vice versa, that doesn't go too well. [3] https://www.allendowney.com/blog/2021/04/07/berkson-goes-to-college/ https://www.allendowney.com/blog/2021/04/07/berkson-goes-to-...
MaxDorkroom 2y ago
[flagged]
eimrine 2y ago
Actually the article tells be an air conditioner/heater. Because being a thermostat means just leave the awkward meeting.
mightyhacker658 2y ago
[dead]

313 points by dillonshook 2y ago

This metaphor immediately rang true to me but the article is definitely worth the whole read. There are a bunch of linked articles too which also have some very sound advice. I really like a tactic in hard situations which was saying "What I learned..." followed by "What I'll do is...". It makes someone feel heard and that you'll follow through with some action to make someone feel like you have akin in the game with their concern. I really liked a lot of other somewhat generic but still oft-ignored advice like lean in a bit, make eye-contact, and the title which is just that if someone is making you feel off, instead of just reacting like a thermometer and also potentially aggravating the weirdness, do things that help regulate and relieve those human tendencies based on feelings of fear etc. Excellent read.

8n4vidtmkvmk 2y ago
You'd better follow through and do the thing you said though. If you start saying things when people are riled up and then don't do it... They're going to notice.
- gleenn 2y ago
  I agree, when you say you're going to do something then obviously you should also do what you say and say what you do. But my guess is even just saying I learned you don't feel heard about xyz and I will try to pay more attention to you your concerns when you're talking about xyz shouldn't be hard to commit to if you care at all about whomever you're talking to. Hopefully they are a bit disarmed and realize you're trying. I don't think this is a silver bullet, and I think the article makes that point at least a few times. The point is to try and stabilize and correct the vibe if it isn't really justified. If you are going into a warzone then you probably need different advice, hopefully this isn't the norm though and you aren't a hostage negotiator or something.
  - detourdog 2y ago
    There is also a class of people that will always provide reason or task that is the issue. The list of problems will never end and they will never be satisfied. Some people would rather complain then reflect on their inner workings.

klabb3 2y ago

Definitely gonna borrow this language, it’s a really important aspect of social life. I’ve always been very, very thermometer-like, with a strong tendency to mirror which allows me to connect with people 1 on 1 easy, but on the flip side I absorb vibes I don’t want. My coping mechanism is to avoid bad vibes, confrontational situations, etc. Even being in a social group for long can affect me negatively if the people there have values I don’t agree with, even if I have no desire to change them. Any tips for how to manage that better?

Trasmatta 2y ago
Therapy helps. Building a stronger sense of self and with it, more internal boundaries between your thoughts and beliefs and those of others. I'm this way as well, and it's like your emotions are totally porous, absorbing everything from those around you. It's a blessing and a curse. Generally stems from a childhood where you had to be very in tune with the emotions of your caregiver in order to stay safe.
- sethammons 2y ago
  Oof. Being in tune with your caregiver hits hard. My mom was a manic, bi-polar, depressive person also suffering from schizophrenia. I learned to read some situations like you mention but toss in some randomness so it gets real dicey.
- hi_hi 2y ago
  Thank you. This lines up with my experiences, which I never knew were connected. Prefer 1:1, alcoholic mum growing up who had good days and bad days. I could tell which it would be from the "vibe" when I walked through the door after school before seeing anyone.
jjj123 2y ago
Wow I’ve always felt much more comfortable in 1:1 situations than group situations, but I never framed it the way you have here. Your comment really resonates, thank you!

dmoy 2y ago

> Make sure you’re squarely facing the person Awww shit that's gonna be hard for my inner Minnesotan. All that deep listening stuff needs to be done at a 135-165 degree angle, so you're both vaguely looking in the same-ish direction but can make occasional side glance eye contact

01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
Right? The only way some of us can discuss emotion is if we're pretending we're manning the Wall against ice zombies
vvanders 2y ago
This is giving me strong How to Talk Minnesotan vibes[1] (in a good way :D). [edit] 10:50! https://www.tptoriginals.org/how-to-talk-minnesotan/ https://www.tptoriginals.org/how-to-talk-minnesotan/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Talk_Minnesotan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Talk_Minnesotan

from-nibly 2y ago

> Noticing a change in someone’s behavior Well I guess I'll just excuse my ADHD having self outa this one.

jawon 2y ago
Interesting. I have the exact opposite issue. Hypervigilance and all that.

deisteve 2y ago

While the article has some good points about the importance of emotional intelligence and awareness, I'm skeptical about the idea that we can simply "choose" to be thermostats. Humans are complex and emotional creatures, and our emotions can be triggered by a multitude of factors beyond our control. The article's suggestions, while well-intentioned, feel like a form of emotional labor that can be exhausting and unsustainable. Can we really expect people to be constantly "on" and aware of their emotional impact on others?

theultdev 2y ago
It's less emotional labor and less exhausting the more you are aware of your emotions. You can recognize the stimuli and rationalize it before becoming upset. The more you do it, the easier it becomes and the less stressed you become.
- deisteve 2y ago
  totally understand where you're coming from, but I think there's a difference between being aware of your emotions and trying to suppress or fake them. The article isn't suggesting that we should be constantly 'on' and pretending to be someone we're not. Rather, it's about developing self-awareness and learning to manage our emotions in a way that's authentic and sustainable. Recognizing the stimuli that trigger our emotions is a great first step, but it's not just about rationalizing it away. It's about understanding what's driving our emotions and learning to respond in a way that's healthy and constructive. This takes practice, patience tho
  - theultdev 2y ago
    I didn't say suppress or fake your emotions, I said to rationalize them. If they are irrational you prevent the emotional knee-jerk response in the first place. If they are rational then you know the root cause to work through so you can fix the issue. For those rational emotional responses, recognizing the stimuli can still be helpful. It's still stressing, but you know the exact problem and can work to resolve it, the opposite of suppressing it.

deleted 2y ago

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fnord77 2y ago

things you can't really do on zoom meetings...

sethammons 2y ago

If this resonated with you, consider reading Nonviolent Communication by Rosenberg, the ultimate guide in thermostat-speak. You focus on stating unmet needs. Good stuff.

FollowingTheDao 2y ago
When I hear people trying to use "Nonviolent Communication" it only makes me more angry. It is manipulation and so transparent and condescending. Sometimes communication needs to be violent.
- callmeal 2y ago
  I'm reminded of this supposedly ancient proverb I was taught in school: He who raises his voice first, loses.
  - CRConrad 2y ago
    Yeah, we've all been taught a lot of BS in school.
- radlad 2y ago
  What makes you believe that nonviolent communication is manipulation? It focuses on ways to hear unmet needs in others and to express unmet needs in a way that can be heard by others. Have you read the book by chance?
  - FollowingTheDao 2y ago
    Yes, read the book and my nephew teaches a form of it. It balmes the victim for the most part. It reminds of of"you are acting hysterical" and gaslighting. Maybe read some critiques about it. https://realsocialskills.org/2014/07/17/nonviolent-communication-can-be-emotionally-violent/ https://realsocialskills.org/2014/07/17/nonviolent-communica... https://www.collectivelyfree.org/nonviolent-communication-privileged/ https://www.collectivelyfree.org/nonviolent-communication-pr...

sethammons 2y ago

> You’re being a thermometer. When they’re subtly giving off weird vibes—they’re frowning, answering your questions with fewer words than normal, etc.—you’ve noticed that their temperature is different. And if you are doing this as a coping mechanism from having an unstable parent and you are like me (also maybe a bit of adhd): you internalize the person's chilled behavior and often assume it is your fault. In case you need to hear it: You are not responsible for other's emotions (though you are responsible for your actions)

dailykoder 2y ago
I know this and I have learned more than enough about it to internalize it, but it just doesn't work. I can't find a way to stop the automatic jumping to conclusion and self blame. It takes hours to get over it and that's exhausting. I am trying for years to find a way out, but it just hasn't internalized yet
- andruby 2y ago
  Any tips for the person on the other side? I often mention something without implying blame (or even assuming blame), but it’s still processed that way. I’m trying to be conscious of this though.
  - detourdog 2y ago
    If this is a consistent person in your life or a partner. The communication has to improve. Improving communication maybe impossible but I think it’s the only way.
  - dailykoder 2y ago
    I don't think there is much you can do. Everyone has different trigger points and a different past. Personally I often feel misunderstood or not taken seriously. So from my point of view just be genuine, maybe paraphrase what you heard (just a tiny bit) and the usual "start with something positive first". The latter can be hard for me too though because then I might think "no they can't have such a positive view of me" - it's complicated and I even have a hard time explaining it. So no real tips, sorry. "we" just have to learn how to live with it ourselves

AStonesThrow 2y ago

[flagged]

ulf-77723 2y ago
When I read the article, I assumed that it was written by a guy first - when I saved it to my favorites I noticed that Lara is a woman. I do work most of my time in my home office, yet I do spend also some time in virtual meetings. The things Lara describes are even more important if you are not present in person, from my point of view. Harder to sense some of those feelings and emotions if you are not in the same room, but possible.
voiper1 2y ago
Wow, I read your comment, and the response, then read it again, and I still thought you were intending to be offensive that the author was so bad they couldn't possibly collaborate with people. Somehow I missed the simpler idea of "Hah, in 2024 I have no face to face with colleagues in anymore!"

osigurdson 2y ago

I just hate this kind of stuff. Good for you if you can create a consulting business out of stating the obvious I suppose. It is a drain on the economy however.

kettleballroll 2y ago
> Good for you if you can create a consulting business out of stating the obvious I suppose. In my experience, tech problems are a lot easier to solve than people problems, and a lot of things that don't go well in a project turn out to be people problems. E.g. here are a few issues I encountered in my current project at work in the last month: "their framework makes assumptions that don't apply to our code, so we reimplemented the metrics instead of trying to integrate their version" or "the data was labelled wrongly, so we had to work around that", or "this coding convention is slowing us down". Once I tried digging down, it turns out they were all people problems in disguise, and they could all be solved by "stating the obvious". Do you never encounter issues on team / across teams, where in the end it turns out a lot of issues are just people not talking to each other or misunderstanding each other? If things are too hairy, I can definitely see the value in an external consultant helping disentangle these sort of problems.
- hackit2 2y ago
  > where in the end it turns out a lot of issues are just people not talking to each other or misunderstanding each other? What makes a huge difference is how you frame your interactions. If you extrinsic your interactions you're all-ways going to come away with a lack of agency, stress and/or frustration. if you intrinsic your interactions, you're going to be more in control, accountable, and over-all indifferent to other people. For example well at work, I'm being compensated to participate in the organization to work towards its goals, wants, needs and/or desires. Those have nothing to do with me, nor do i really care about it. I will engage with people at work, colleagues and managers, how-ever if later they don't volunteer engage back - such as being cordial, I don't re-engage because I consider it to be intrusive. Now let say you have co-workers who have a glaring communication problem. It it pretty obviously that you can do anything about it. So you engage their manager of lack of communication, and lack of professionalism. If their manager doesn't want to rectify the problem then you communicate it with your manager but at the same time be professional about it that you do not have the capacity to deliver on the deliverables within your current roles. This opens the door to opening a dialog to reviewing your remuneration or compensation package that includes the new responsibilities.

rocqua 2y ago

I loved the article, but something about it felt off. The content (good) didn't match what I would expect from the style. The writing style reminde me of a mix off business advice and aggrandizing self-help. My expectation with that is sweeping generalizations, just-so annecdotes, and not saying very much, whilst not backing up what you are saying with sound reasoning either. Somehow this article had that writing style, without those problems. It made it a rather dissonant experience, because I was looking for the catch, what I was being sold, the anecdote that is almost certainly a lie, and the overly strong conclusion. But that never came, and instead I find myself believing. And yet, the dissonance remains. I have a little worry that the swindle was just better this time. It's a weird feeling, and not one I had before.

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trabant00 2y ago

There's an unspoken premise here and I'm going to question it. Avoiding tension, conflict, hard words and other things of the sort is not always the right choice. Sometimes letting conflicts play out gets you the best outcome with the least amount of suffering. Just like ripping off a band-aid. There's plenty of times when wining a conflict is far better than avoiding it. And I see articles like this, books like Nonviolent Communication, ideas like "emotional intelligence" (check it out, no such thing exists) - as misguided as it always puts you in the defensive/de-escalating role even when you might be better served by letting things play out or even attacking, baiting your opponent into attacking, etc. Violence is sometimes the right answer. When to apply it and when to avoid it is the hard question. But we didn't evolve an amygdala for nothing, and especially not for a "coach for leaders" (what the hell is that?) to tell us to always ignore it as an unquestioned premise for a promotional blog post. Because leaders should not always shy away from conflict, that much should be pretty crystal clear.

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FollowingTheDao 2y ago
Yes, agree. This is all a continuation of the Positivity Cult. Anger is a method of communication that is greater than words, and it puts the explanation point at the end of some of the most important statements. Just read this: I need help. I need help!
- b3lvedere 2y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vivEzQUGHOQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vivEzQUGHOQ

wruza 2y ago

What I learned is that that last email didn’t do a good job explaining the changes, so what I plan to do is start a forum for folks to post their questions and our CEO will answer them every Tuesday. I know it’s only an example, but hahahahahahahaha, ha. Start with something realistic if you do that. The worst thing you can do is to teach them you’re a bag of funny promises.

xnorswap 2y ago
At a former company we once had an away day workshop where they allowed anonymous questions for the company director which would show up on a screen for everyone (it was a ~40-50 person company). We were a management consultancy and trialling what they thought was cool new tech to use with other companies. ( This was a while ago, smart phones were newer and apps were still "cool" ) Well, they very quickly learned to never do that again. Even in a small company there were a lot of tensions unresolved between the lowest and highest rungs. It was a fairly formal hierarchical structure where the common worker didn't tend to ever interact with the big boss. "Where's the pay rise we were promised last year?" was perhaps the mildest of the embarrassment, and it quickly devolved from there.
- b3lvedere 2y ago
  Ooh, some lifetimes ago at a company we had a CEO that did a company wide presentation where he kept mentioning that the shareholders are the most important thing of the entire company and we all should do everything to please the shareholders. The instant hate towards him could almost be touched and tasted.
  - pistoleer 2y ago
    It is both inspiring and depressing that intelligence is not a prerequisite for high up roles.
    - b3lvedere 2y ago
      Yup https://www.savagechickens.com/2024/09/decisive.html https://www.savagechickens.com/2024/09/decisive.html

lynx23 2y ago

I am going to be downvoted to hell for this, but... After reading halfway through the article, I had to check the gender of the author. Because, I feel, this is a rather female POV. A lot of what she says feels touchy-feely to me and doesnt resonate with me at all. Maybe because I am way more inerested in the topic of the meeting then the personal feelings and emotions of the participants. To the point where I might noticed them, but I they mostly dont concern me at all.

jdthedisciple 2y ago
Nope, you are spot on. I too noticed pretty quickly that this must be female POV. You can generally tell even just by the word choices ("spidey senses" American women seem to love that phrase for some reason, "super <adjective>", "awry", "weird vibes", ...) Another instant give-away was "now we've got a compounding situation" - quite a feminine phrasing. Not judging, I mean it sounds almost cute even. Finally, her idea of "facing each other squarely": a total no-no for men (way too much potenial energy, like two massive electron beams opposing each other), but OK for women.
- detourdog 2y ago
  Your comment makes me question my masculinity. I would say the desire to communicate and the feelings expressed were feminine. Noee of the phrases you mentioned did I see as clues to gender.
  - jdthedisciple 2y ago
    To be clear I didn't say men never use any of these words individually (except for "spidey senses" I suppose). Just that their frequent and combined usage in this particular article made me almost hear her voice in my head, including the female cadence and intonation...
- lynx23 2y ago
  "Weird vibes" is what finally made me check the author name ... I don't even know what "spidey sense" should mean.

Manfred 2y ago

I support the goals of the article and I understand that social interaction doesn't come natural to all people, but if someone would lean in an nod to me like described in the second part I would freak out because that feels like sociopathic behavior.

roshankhan28 2y ago

i prefer to be a cat. if that makes sense.

FollowingTheDao 2y ago
HA! Makes sense to me!
Night_Thastus 2y ago
Find a warm sunny spot or cozy nook and go there. If the location gets uncomfortable, leave. Not terrible advice, all considered. Of course you can't always do that in say, a work setting.
- roshankhan28 2y ago
  warm cat, happy cat

patch_collector 2y ago

If the author reads this, I'd like to suggest a change in font. At certain scales, the website's font puts emphasis on the cross-bar in the letter 'e', and the letter 'g'. It's incredibly distracting, and only seems to happen at certain scales, as I could 'fix' it by increasing/decreasing the font size. I'd message this directly, but she doesn't provide a method of contact on the site (reasonable).

tgtweak 2y ago

Generally speaking terrible advice for anyone in such a situation in a professional group setting. If you can sense that someone is tense or "off vibe" in a group meeting, you should be able to reasonably determine why. If it's not immediately evident and they are not alluding to it in the meeting - then you should table the discussion until you are able to chat 1:1 with the person. Not downplaying any of the strategies for being chipper and staying positive and being a good vibe... which seems obvious... but to push it back on the "bad viber" and dice roll on whether you'll be charismatic enough to do it without causing even more bad/awkward vibes, I think is unnecessarily risky. I've been in many meetings where someone seemed "off" but after conferring with others more familiar with the situation found it it's quite usual and not a sign of anything wrong. Had someone intervened there and tried to "discover" the case of the bad vibes, it would have amounted to "why are you like this" which is not the kind of thermometer input required. Likewise if someone is being openly confrontational in the meeting because they feel strongly about something, the right course is for someone else to step up and discuss it without any ambiguity or levity - ruling out irrelevant emotions not related to the discussion - if the stakes were high enough to merit losing face in a meeting, they should generally be high enough to discuss and resolve. My experience has been, in many board meetings and conference rooms with C-levels, that the norm for these discussions is someone "off vibe" and it's rarely koombayah when there is something at stake being discussed. Bringing unnecessary levity to a serious and often uncomfortable meeting is taken as a bit of an insult to the topic or the opinions being tabled. You can read accounts of an Jeff Besoz or Steve Jobs executive meeting and glare into this first hand.

red_admiral 2y ago

Back in the days of slatestarcodex, the comment policy [1] was you can comment if your post is at least two of these three things: true, necessary, or kind. This post is all three: what they're describing is true (these dynamics in meetings do exist, very often), it is kind (in the sense they're giving you a skill to help both yourself and others), and I'll give it necessary in the sense it's used in the original definition (if you want to get ahead in an organization with a nontrivial amount of internal politics - which is most places - you need to have at least some of this skill). And yet, something about this post gives me "weird vibes". Basically, with a bit of sarcasm you could sum it up as "DON'T BE AUTISTIC", and if you are then at least get therapy until you can act normal. When the author says "We [humans] are wired to spidey sense this [vibes] stuff", it turns out some humans are above and some below the mean in this skill distribution. [2] And sometimes, in a meeting to decide about how you're going to set up your database sharding, it helps the business' bottom line if you pay more attention to the database specialist than the soft-eye-contact specialist. (Don't you want to hire people who are good at both? Yes, but unless you're really, really lucky, you're going to hit Berkson's paradox [3]. And then if you want your databases to run smoothly, you're going to have to compromise.) [1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/02/the-comment-policy-is-victorian-sufi-buddha-lite/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/02/the-comment-policy-is-... [2] However, the latest research suggest that autistic people are perfectly wired to read the room and sense vibes if the room is full of other autistic people. It's just one autist in a room of neurotypicals, or vice versa, that doesn't go too well. [3] https://www.allendowney.com/blog/2021/04/07/berkson-goes-to-college/ https://www.allendowney.com/blog/2021/04/07/berkson-goes-to-...

MaxDorkroom 2y ago

[flagged]

eimrine 2y ago

Actually the article tells be an air conditioner/heater. Because being a thermostat means just leave the awkward meeting.

mightyhacker658 2y ago

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