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Everything in the paragraph "Open with innocuous preamble" strikes me as false and condescending. He uses the language of respectfulness to advocate not being f

by gruseom 14y ago

Everything in the paragraph "Open with innocuous preamble" strikes me as false and condescending. He uses the language of respectfulness to advocate not being forthright. I find that incongruent. In fact, the more I look at the article, the more incongruent I find it. I say this as someone who cares a lot about respect for others, and I have the general impression that you do, too. So I'm surprised our perceptions are at such variance.

wpietri 14y ago
Sorry. I agree with your desire for respect; I'm just not seeing the falseness. I read him as advocating patience and setting aside one's immediate personal desires to satisfy the needs of the person you're talking with. That is not perfectly forthright, but I don't think holding off saying the most difficult thing for a few minutes of warm-up is in any way false. I think the alternative, which is to ask your urgent thing and then come around to asking how they are, can also work for some people. In particular, I can make that work with people who don't like small talk and with whom I have a solid relationship. With most people, though, I definitely follow an escalation-of-intensity pattern, which lets me establish some rapport before getting to the heavy stuff. Key to me is being relatively chill about my own agenda. If I am too agitated about it, then asking how they're doing would indeed be false. Then I agree it's best to come out and say the big thing.
- gruseom 14y ago
  What you've written here seems far more humane and resonant than the OP, which seems gimmicky even as he decries gimmickry. My emotional receptors just don't believe him. I believe it's important for people to treat each other as equals first, roles second. Any trace of personal identification with an authority role (or a subordinate role, for that matter) acts like a grain of sand in a place where a grain of sand shouldn't be. The trouble with management comes when a person's sense of self inflates to fill the role, something they don't deserve because no one does. This is marvelously illustrated by the experiment that showed that people designated "leader" for no reason whatsoever are significantly more likely to take an extra cookie for themselves. When one is captured by this self-inflation bias, it doesn't make things better to apply trust-building tricks to get people to "say shit"; that is condescension, and it confuses matters. I'd be interested in reading an article by you on this topic, if you ever write one.
  - wpietri 14y ago
    Thanks! That's very kind. Perhaps this stuff is easier for me to write about in that I took the summer off, so I'm not in charge of anyone right now.

by gruseom 14y ago

wpietri 14y ago

Sorry. I agree with your desire for respect; I'm just not seeing the falseness. I read him as advocating patience and setting aside one's immediate personal desires to satisfy the needs of the person you're talking with. That is not perfectly forthright, but I don't think holding off saying the most difficult thing for a few minutes of warm-up is in any way false. I think the alternative, which is to ask your urgent thing and then come around to asking how they are, can also work for some people. In particular, I can make that work with people who don't like small talk and with whom I have a solid relationship. With most people, though, I definitely follow an escalation-of-intensity pattern, which lets me establish some rapport before getting to the heavy stuff. Key to me is being relatively chill about my own agenda. If I am too agitated about it, then asking how they're doing would indeed be false. Then I agree it's best to come out and say the big thing.

gruseom 14y ago
What you've written here seems far more humane and resonant than the OP, which seems gimmicky even as he decries gimmickry. My emotional receptors just don't believe him. I believe it's important for people to treat each other as equals first, roles second. Any trace of personal identification with an authority role (or a subordinate role, for that matter) acts like a grain of sand in a place where a grain of sand shouldn't be. The trouble with management comes when a person's sense of self inflates to fill the role, something they don't deserve because no one does. This is marvelously illustrated by the experiment that showed that people designated "leader" for no reason whatsoever are significantly more likely to take an extra cookie for themselves. When one is captured by this self-inflation bias, it doesn't make things better to apply trust-building tricks to get people to "say shit"; that is condescension, and it confuses matters. I'd be interested in reading an article by you on this topic, if you ever write one.
- wpietri 14y ago
  Thanks! That's very kind. Perhaps this stuff is easier for me to write about in that I took the summer off, so I'm not in charge of anyone right now.