Dutch directness. We'll tell you that new suit you just purchased and are extremely excited about makes you look like a clown. We'll tell a higher-up why his new plan is stupid and that we're not very excited to waste our time on it, a complete stranger might walk up to you and tell you out in the open that your fly is down, you zip it up and no one will think anything of it.
It's accepted, it's respected, and it's even expected. Unfortunately, more often than not, it's also not at all appreciated by people from foreign cultures and we have to be really careful with our words.
I'm from the US and have a bunch of Dutch in-laws that also happen to be quite successful. The first time I met them was on a work trip to Apeldoorn. I brought my wife and youngster and we went to stay with them for a long weekend in Amsterdam.
I couldn't figure out what was going on, because this tendency you describe was on full display right from the beginning. They invited us into their home then started giving us shit as soon as we walked in the front door. I thought they were just snobs and wanted to say fuck your stupid staircases and stroopwafel ain't shit (lying of course), but held my tongue because it wasn't my family. My wife on the other hand wasn't as restrained and gave it right back. Hearing Oom Rob laugh at her precision strikes made it all clear. We got along great after that and really had a fantastic time.
For what it's worth, I find Russians are expert at this as well.
That's an interesting observation, that russians and dutch share this trait. I agree but think the russians often deliver their insults in a bit more veiled manner. They will use irony and sarcasm, making you have to figure out if you were just insulted or not. The dutch are more brute-force insulting. I enjoy being roasted by both ;)
They had your best interests at heart even if it might not have come across that way. I'm glad you figured that out back then and the relation didn't turn sour!
I personally haven't met many Russians, but many Romanians seem to share this trait as well
On the other hand I started to appreciate way more the way the English do it once I moved there for a while and worked closely with them - they tell you what's wrong, but really nuanced and careful as to not openly offend. But it takes a bit of practice and skill to understand what's actually being said, and once you have the skill and understanding, you can correct things without openly offending anybody.
Unless someone has real data on this, I'll keep to my anecdote of having worked with dozens and dozens of people from all over Europe and the Americas, and I can count with one hand how many people were actually productively direct and not just rude and immature.
("Prominent" here meaning "writes popular books as well as academic ones".)
One of the things that jumps out is that "culture X" is rarely as broad as an entire country (except perhaps a microscopic one). There are always cultures within the country, defined by gender, age, religion, wealth, location, ethnic heritage, etc etc etc.
There genuinely are cultural groups who will speak less directly ("Would you mind passing the salt?") and those who will speak more directly ("Pass the salt.") It's not just more-and-less; you still have to hit the correct level for the specific instance.
Tannen is perhaps most famous for writing about the different styles that men and women use (in different groups; it's very much taught by culture, not biology). I found it immensely helpful for understanding not just what women say but also what I say. I highly recommend her books.
I'm sorry I don't have direct links to scholarly articles that provide exactly what you're looking for, but that's where I'd start looking for them. It's entirely possible that they exist -- but they almost certainly don't come down to "The Dutch are more direct."
This isn't a pissing contest, it's simply the social standard here which sometimes accidentally leaks out to people who do not appreciate it, or wrongly interpret it as rudeness.
For us as practitioners of this behaviour, intended rudeness is actually easy enough to spot.
The point is that there are many cultures of which people claim "they are so direct". I've heard it said about Bangladeshis and Israelis too.
It may be true. A significant part of the world may be outside the "always lie to avoid offense" way of conducing yourself.
I would also say that "being direct" and "saying difficult things" are often not be the same. The former may just be "saying whatever pops into your head" whereas the latter is much more carefully considered.
> This isn't a pissing contest, it's simply the social standard here which sometimes accidentally leaks out to people who do not appreciate it, or wrongly interpret it as rudeness.
Well, as in any other country: there exists rude people in The Netherlands as well ;)
So, the next time when someone says "Oh boy, I talked to this Dutch... he was rude!", what are the chances of that Dutch being a) straightforward, b) rude, or c) both?. I find c) happens most of the time.
Oh yes plenty of rudeness to go around here. And I get what you mean, there's a perfect example in one of the other comments[1] of what can happen when the true intent is unclear.
Although not always easy, not letting yourself feel offended, assuming positive intent, and just walking away with a smile is a guaranteed win under most circumstances.
Are you sure you were in the proper position to define rude, mature, or productive? I don't mean this as a diss but those are all defined by either implicit or explicit standards or goals.
Australians and Israelis can also be pretty direct.
In the USA I always had the impression that the east coast (specifically NYC) is more direct than what you find on the west coast.
It seems much better to say outright that you think something is stupid vs. thinking it's stupid and pretending it's not. In cultures where it's common people can take it, in cultures where it's not common you're perceived to be an offensive jerk.
Somehow neutral directness of truth always gets mixed up as being equal to name-calling (e.g. "snowflakes"), but that isn't about bringing clarity at all; it's just attempting to lower another person or group in order to prop oneself up. The difference in language is subtle but they serve very different purposes.
"Directness" is an excuse that I sometimes hear to justify aggressive or rude behaviour, but it's possible to be direct in a polite manner.
"This new plan is stupid" is rude, whereas "I'm frustrated about this new plan, it won't work because X" is assertive without being rude.
I disagree that your alternative is assertive, and that the former is inherently rude. It's only rude depending on each person's social communication expectations. Otherwise, it's an assertive statement, and like any other, it could seem rude. I find it rude when people are passive aggressive, but they might feel like it's polite.
"The new plan is stupid" is rude because it's not actionable. It doesn't say what specifically is wrong, why it's wrong, or how it could be better. The older I get the less tolerant I am of people simply venting or breathing out generalised criticism that doesn't help us navigate to a better place.
I expect people to bring criticism, but I expect them to do so constructively if they want to be listened to. "This plan is unworkable because X but if we did Y instead that would lead to Z which would work much better," is actually helpful. "This plan is stupid," isn't.
We'll tell a higher-up why his new plan is stupid and that we're not very excited to waste our time it
I'm curious how this scales. In your culture, how do you deal with a thousand people in a company feeling comfortable telling the CEO how wrong he is? What happens when 500 people think one way and 500 think the other?
There are nuances to it. The criticism needs to be constructive and concrete. Saying “the new plan is stupid” without a coherent argument for why it is stupid won’t be listened to. If you have a credible, coherent argument you will be taken seriously by the CEO. However, offsetting this is the reality that in many parts of Europe that work like this there is a class consciousness — what will be taken seriously often needs to be on matters deemed appropriate to your perceived knowledge and ability. They don’t automatically trust that you have any idea of what you are talking about. It generally isn’t like voting on “rightness” or “wrongness”, it is about building a consensus on the true state of the world.
Lastly, you need to moderate your feedback because sometimes the CEO can take you too seriously! If you just lay out a coherent argument that something is stupid, it can look very dire to the CEO. Offering a thoughtful and slightly more optimistic alternative perspective can help a lot. I had to learn that I was unduly stressing CEOs in these situations, because they took the negative feedback seriously without proactively offering a counter-balancing optimistic scenario when that existed. The best approach is “this is won’t work but I have an idea”.
Even in cultures where this is considered normal, most people don’t do it, or don’t do it well. Constructive no-bullshit feedback is genuinely valued by CEOs at large companies. Being that person, which I naturally am, has been very high leverage across many large companies in my experience.
It depends on the subject, how the CEO is known to react (perhaps the CEO is not from here), a trainee might hold back a little bit more, and more such factors do of course play a role.
Our organisational structures are generally just as flat as our landscape, which might help promote more opportunities for people to speak their minds to upper management. I don't have data on this though.
A distant relative of mine always said his business would have never started making money if it weren't for the Polish ladies who worked in his factory complaining so much about their work areas. He had his lunch in the general cafeteria together with everyone else whenever he could, and that is not uncommon here.
Edit: We also have a concept called "medezeggenschapsraad" or "ondernemingsraad" (depending on context), which is a kind of employee panel with decision making power that businesses of 50 employees and up are required to have. Unsure if this is unique to the Netherlands though.
Unfortunately in many western cultures, criticizing is often synonym to mocking/shaming.
So if you are being honest but with a positive intent, people will still feel attacked because it's what the situation would mean in their own culture.
> "I don't know how many of you have ever met Dijkstra, but you probably know that arrogance in computer science is measured in nano-Dijkstras." -- Alan Kay
"We'll tell a higher-up why his new plan is stupid and that we're not very excited to waste our time on it"
There's a difference between 'what my instinct is' and 'thoughtful communication'.
It's possible in these kinds of situations that 'the plan is objectively dumb' and surely therefore someone might not be interested ... but I've seen more often than not people not really understand why something is initiated, what the objectives are etc. and just make narrow assumptions with belligerance, which they believe is 'being direct'. It's 'direct' in a way, in that it's a 'direct articulation of a narrow set of assumptions' - but that doesn't make it good or professional.
"This is dumb, I don't want to work on it" is surely direct, but it's also essentially an immature and unprofessional way of communicating.
More appropriately it would be: "I don't think this plan will achieve the understanding I have of the objectives for this, this and this reason, but here are some alterations that might work" - or "Technically, I don't think this will work because of this reason, but I don't understand what the non-technical objectives are so my feedback is limited to that scope" - or "I think these areas are more risky than implied, but these areas will work" or better "This won't work for these reasons, but fill us in on the strategic objectives and we can fill in the blanks with something that will, if we can".
I personally appreciate 'directness' a lot, but a lot of people misunderstand that to be 'what I think off the top of my head without trying to actually address the issue'.
And yest, there's way too much sensitivity around criticism going on. Legit criticism needs to be allowed. It's also really hard for some people to separate themselves form their critique or their work and so communications sometimes gets mangled on both sides.
I don't like your alternatives, because they are not the same thing. They also use too many words and assume you have mythical improvement.
But also, "this is dumb" is insulting. It is not direct, it it's just insult with 0 information.
"This won't work" or "this will cause issues" or "this is complicated" would be better equivalents, because they actuality hint to what your issue is and wont insult. The management, if it listens and have good reasons is then fully able to modify their own plan or stick with it while noting objections. They are also fully able to explain why they are doing it is objection seem to miss the mark.
Floor-level employees voicing discontent in only a few words to a director who just happened to walk past their station, is still infinitely more information than when they had kept their mouths shut and eyes down.
It's then up to that director to hear them out and find out what their concerns are really all about. Perhaps they should be given a bit more information, so they can also see the bigger picture and how it'll benefit them too.
Some really high leverage opportunities can come out of this.
Yes, it will land you in deep trouble with most Asian cultures. They may glower and not say anything, but you can expect that mentally, they would have crossed you off. This is unfortunately the reality.
Even if this is really true, does this actually translate to any measurable metric of success in the society? I'm not even comparing to the US, but to even the neighboring countries. It's not like I'm driving a Dutch car or sitting in a Dutch sofa..
Between Royal Dutch Shell (one of the world's biggest oil companies), LyondellBasell (one of the biggest petrochemical companies), and LDC (one of the biggest agriculture trading companies) you're almost certainly driving a car made with Dutch materials and sitting on a sofa made with Dutch-traded cotton fabric.
1. The Dutch were the pre-eminent traders in Asia after England.
2. Today, there are globally recognized Dutch brands like Shell, Philips, Unilever, and so on.
3. Dutch computer science has contributed to the advancement of technology in both theory and practice. Two representatives of those sides are Edsger W. Dijkstra and Guido Van Rossum. You may not be sitting on a Dutch sofa, but my money is on the that you do code in Python, which was developed at the Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam, now CWI.
4. Even in art, Netherlands has contributed a huge number of painters like Rembrandt, Vermeer, Van Gogh, etc
For perspective : the population of Netherlands is 17 million, which is 1/20th that of the US.
Despite such stereotypes as "going Dutch" etc., the Dutch have contributed enormously to the modern world.
This is such a weird question, surely you’re aware of the absolutely staggering amount of confounding factors that must exist at this scale which means the usefulness this trait might not be easily measured despite having utility? Particularly with such simplistic measures of “successful society”.
> For the longest time, I’d told myself that I was open to feedback and hard conversations because I’d repeatedly said to people that I’m always happy to hear it.
I don't know the author, but in my experience, this is usually false. People who tell you to be frank and that they are able and willing to receive any kind of feedback, usually aren't.
It's a power play.
They say this to appear strong, but if you take them up to their word and actually tell them the truth, they either get upset or completely shut you down. I have had many experiences of this, and one again pretty recently.
Some things are best left unsaid. Unthought even, maybe.
I think you've touched on something really important. There are definitely times where my emotional reaction to something doesn't line up with how I'd ideally feel. Most of the time I can moderate my response, sometimes not. But I think getting better at this comes with practise, and without inviting those kinds of conversations, I'll never get better.
> They say this to appear strong, but if you take them up to their word and actually tell them the truth, they either get upset or completely shut you down. I have had many experiences of this, and one again pretty recently.
Are these people you'd consider yourself very close with?
> Most of the time I can moderate my response, sometimes not. But I think getting better at this comes with practise, and without inviting those kinds of conversations, I'll never get better.
The intent of some mindfulness and meditation exercises is to become more attuned to one's lower-level physical responses as a grounding point for being able to more readily identify one's higher-level emotional responses.
In the moment, it might be difficult to recognize and moderate the higher-level reaction without first becoming adept at recognizing the lower ones (e.g., sweaty palms or tense muscles).
> Are these people you'd consider yourself very close with?
The recent incident, no, not at all. But I had an abusive ascendant as a child, who would encourage us to "speak our mind" and then punish us for it. I can spot the type for quite a long way away.
Unfortunately, being able to spot them doesn't prevent one from falling victim yet again. We tell ourselves it will be better this time -- well, it usually isn't.
> I had an abusive ascendant as a child, who would encourage us to "speak our mind" and then punish us for it.
I'm really sorry that happened to you, it sounds traumatic. I can understand why you'd be hesitant to share honest feedback with others after going through that.
> The recent incident, no, not at all
I wrote this post with people who I'm close with, or interested in being close with, in mind. For a random person I'm going to have a one-off interaction with, or someone who I won't interact with regularly, I'd weigh up whether it's worth it or not. If I mean nothing to them, I doubt honest feedback would be received well
I've unfortunately not found this to be true. I regularly say the difficult things, sometimes ultimately productively, sometimes not; sometimes I'm successful at structuring the feedback so people don't feel "attacked", sometimes I'm not.
However, through all of that, I honestly feel I've only received the same kind of communication in return from people I've build trust with in other ways, generally through friendship of some sort.
Very interested in suggestions as to how to better translate a willingness to say the difficult things into getting other people to do it too, even to those without a preexisting personal basis of trust.
With no preexisting trust? Ask them to give their honest feedback as a favor. Make it into a cooperative discussion so they don't feel like they're the only one criticizing the subject. You need to prove to them that it is safe to discuss those thing with you first, you being by default direct can give some people the opposite impression.
> you being by default direct can give some people the opposite impression
Definitely rings true.
> Make it into a cooperative discussion so they don't feel like they're the only one criticizing the subject
If these are people I have time to have regular 1:1s with, then what you're saying does make sense. But there are a lot of people I work with where the benefits from saying the difficult thing would be large that I don't work closely enough with to be able to spend that kind of time. I guess what I'm really asking is how to translate that into a culture; either raise the average trust level or lower the required trust level for difficult conversations.
There's a common misconception that awkward conversations should be avoided because they are difficult and elicit drama. But that's just magical thinking. Believing that to make something go away you just need to stop thinking about it. Push it out of your conscience.
But not talking about something doesn't magically make it disappear. Things you don't talk about are still there, lurking in the shadows, subconsciously influencing everything you do.
You’re assuming that talking about the awkward situation will help fix it. If it’s something like code review, it might.
If it’s world politics, it probably won’t. Even if you do actually convince him that his pet solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict is a bad idea, he was never in a position to put his terrible plan into action anyway, so the whole conversation accomplished nothing.
That's exactly the problem: assuming that the only valid reason to talk about an awkward situation is to convince the other person that they are wrong or change their behaviour.
We can talk about about awkward things, nobody has to convince anyone of anything. You can listen to the other person and just come to understand how they feel and why. You don't need to feel the same way, just have a better understanding of why they feel how they feel.
If more people did this the world would be a much better place. It'd accomplish a lot, I think.
That is exactly the point. It's not about proving your point or bring proven right or wrong. It's about understanding the other point of view. That's what discussion is all about.
But what’s the point? Political conversations, even civil ones where everyone walks away understanding each other’s POV and agree to disagree, usually aren’t going to accomplish anything concrete, because very few people have the opportunity to affect government policy.
The best case scenario is that talking about politics doesn’t make your relationship worse. The most likely outcome, as you’ve noticed, is that we both leave convinced that each other are idiots. The good outcomes of more ordinary conversation, where we learn from each other and put what you learn into action, doesn’t exist. So what’s the point?
It accomplishes a better understanding between people and a less divisive society.
Which is also what we need to stick it to the man. They want us to fight and bicker and be divided into camps and never agree on anything. That’s how they can keep doing whatever they want. Even better if we convince each other that talking about this stuff is taboo and unproductive.
Remember: A populace than can work together is a scary populace, if you’re in power.
> But what’s the point? Political conversations, even civil ones where everyone walks away understanding each other’s POV and agree to disagree, usually aren’t going to accomplish anything concrete, because very few people have the opportunity to affect government policy.
That's true of most conversations - not just political ones. Why put them in a special bucket?
> The best case scenario is that talking about politics doesn’t make your relationship worse.
This is silly. There are lots of good case scenarios. Even "I enjoyed the conversation" is a good case scenario, and there are many better outcomes.
> The good outcomes of more ordinary conversation, where we learn from each other and put what you learn into action, doesn’t exist.
If you've convinced yourself an entity doesn't exist, then it will not exist for you.
Frequently, political conversations are personal. When you're debating about whether or not you should be allowed to vote, or whether you should be deprived of money or other rights, it's difficult to simply come away saying "I enjoyed the conversation".
Political conversations are more likely to be fun when they're discussing abstractions. But they can have real effects in a way that few other disputes can. Even though the absolute power of one vote is very small, it's not enjoyable to be told "I'm going to put my small amount of power to making your life worse."
> When you're debating about whether or not you should be allowed to vote, or whether you should be deprived of money or other rights, it's difficult to simply come away saying "I enjoyed the conversation".
Then I would suggest you discuss instead of debate.
> Political conversations are more likely to be fun when they're discussing abstractions. But they can have real effects in a way that few other disputes can. Even though the absolute power of one vote is very small, it's not enjoyable to be told "I'm going to put my small amount of power to making your life worse."
Many political discussions need not be that personal. This thread mentioned Israel/Palestine. I guarantee you that 99% of the people who have strong opinions about this are not at all impacted by it either way.
But yes, certainly issues about health care, taxes, guns, abortion, etc could be very personal. And that generally is a start for a good conversation. I grew up in the camp of abstract discussions, and while I still enjoy them, they're mostly useless when it comes to political/social issues. I put very little weight to well thought out analyses done in the abstract. When it starts involving real people, and clear "in your face" impact is when the conversation becomes useful. It may also become heated, too. But avoiding a heated conversation for an abstract one is not at all an improvement. And believing that a heated conversation is the only outcome is very flawed.
I personally feel very odd in discussions like the one you mentioned: Israel/Palestine. For those 99% of people with strong opinions but aren't impacted, 99% of them have based their strong opinion on information that's at best incomplete and most often wildly biased.
At best, you can hope for a genuine conversation where two extremely incomplete views come together to produce a state that is merely quite ignorant. That's an improvement, I guess. But I have a hard time getting enthusiastic about it. Especially since, if they did indeed come in with "strong opinions", the best case seems unlikely.
I myself have tried to aim for "weak opinions strongly held". Which is to say, recognize both my ignorance and the large amount of effort it would take to produce a state of genuine knowledge. I'm not kidding when I say that I have little interest in the opinions of anybody on the state of Israel and Palestine who doesn't speak at least one of Hebrew or Arabic fluently... and preferably both.
It's far from sufficient, but I find it weird how few people consider it necessary for holding strong opinions. As you say, these are real people, and if you're not able to speak their language, anything you know about it is at least one step removed -- and likely more.
There are people who will make any excuse not to talk about the exact thing they want to avoid and it's more trouble than it's worth pulling teeth trying to find a way to talk about the issue. They just don't want to face it at all.
There are two aspects to that: 1. being able to take the difficult thing, even offensive, but also not holding the grudge. 2. being able to give in a way that doesn’t come across offensive.
Saying that honest thing as the person who can take it can be potentially damaging because it’s easy to lose the feeling for _how to say it_. Not everyone can take it the same way as _we_ take it, even when they claim they can. This kind of clarity requires trust from both sides.
Edit: it comes down to taking the ego out. Put your conscious self next to your physical self and focus on actions and emotions, not words.
I tend to be fairly direct. Some people see me as rude. Others see me as refreshing.
That has a lot to do with cultural expectations on their part.
Some people are "honest" as an excuse to be mean. There can be subtext and other things going on, especially in a group situation.
I like some saying I heard that "Those who like the brutal truth like brutality more than truth." You can usually be honest without being ugly to people (though sometimes the truth about them is what's ugly and then there's no good answer, just a least worst answer).
As part of practicing giving the hard feedback you can also practice framing the feedback to have the best impact. I've found focusing the feedback around behaviors and observed outcomes is the best.
E.g. instead of "please stop posting excessive memes on code reviews", "when you post memes on code reviews it pollutes the timeline and makes it difficult for reviewers".
Absolutely, and this has a flip side: when you try to articulate the actual harm, sometimes you realize there isn't one. And then you can learn to calibrate your own perspective about what's truly a problem as opposed to just a personal annoyance. Which lets you focus your energy and communicate more effectively.
For criticisms of things like code (or art), I think of that as "criticize the thing and not the person".
Bad: "You don't know what you're doing. This is poorly-written code that will perform badly on bigger datasets. "
Good: "The runtime of this code is prone to grow exponentially. A different algorithm will get around this. "
As much as possible I try and criticize from the viewpoint of wanting to make the work better instead of from wanting to bring down the person that did it.
Edit: To add - I will very possibly be _wrong_ about the definition of better, which is something else I try and keep in mind.
If the person is to blame, focusing on the mistake rather than the person may just be misdirection.
I think the big difference in the US is not (just) that people may have fragile egos, but that (pos related) the consequences are more serious - don't match up and you'll be fired.
This is an important point. Communication is not about dumping information on your conversational partner, but about doing so timely, appropriately, and with empathy.
Yup, this is what I was getting at. Wielding the truth as a blunt tool isn't productive. I'm looking to strengthen my relationships and build trust through honesty, not fool around with 'radical honesty' for the sake of it.
".. that people fear asking difficult/sensitive questions far more than being asked difficult/sensitive questions. That implies that in most social situations, people are afraid to talk about the juicy stuff because they falsely believe other people don’t want to talk about it. It’s yet another example of how nobody gives a shit nearly as much as we think they do. " [mark manson]
I Didn’t Want to Offend You: The Cost of Avoiding Sensitive Questions
> Across our studies, individuals formed similarly favorable impressions of partners who asked non-sensitive (e.g., “Are you a morning person?”) and sensitive (e.g., “What are your views on abortion?”) questions, despite askers’ reticence to ask sensitive questions.
I get really confused when these kinds of posts get lots of upvotes. There's almost no insight here. And the tiny little glimpse of insight he has -- they flub it.
The valuable part is not "being direct with other people so they can be direct with me". The valuable part is "creating psychological safety so that people can be direct with me". This is much harder, because you'll need to take into account how they work. Some people need the praise sandwich, others just need to be told, others will only want to be told what's wrong if you'll also tell them how to fix it.
> When I go back and read LessWrong, I’m awestruck by the apparent dissonance between my memories of it and the material in front of me. All I can remember about reading LW is a consistent and unending stream of insights. Mind-shattering insights. When I read it now however, my experience is also consistent and unending, though instead of insights I now say “obviously – who would think this is worthwhile to write about?”
> I take this to imply that I have internalized LessWrong. I’ve learned the majority of what it was trying to impart on me, and it’s become second nature. This has made my life better.
What's obvious to you may not be obvious to others as you've internalised the earlier steps.
I also feel like the psychological safety part requires a foundation of trust (and honesty). If someone who's lied to me a bunch of times in the past is giving me feedback, regardless of how it's framed, I'm not going to trust that feedback. It's unlikely that I'll be receptive to it, even if it's totally valid
I've found that one way to think about receiving difficult or challenging feedback is that people don't bother giving feedback to those they don't care about or don't have to work with again. It takes thought and emotional investment for someone to go to the trouble of giving such feedback.
Of course, that only holds true in certain work environments where you have choices and consequences, and the person giving the feedback also has this mentality...
This post has missed the trick; the reason people don't pass on hard truths is because they are worried about how the truth-reciever will respond.
The entire game of getting honest feedback is making people think that if they give honest feedback then the situation will end well for them.
How feedback is asked for is completely irrelevant. What you do with the feedback might be relevant. What happens to the truth-teller after giving feedback is critical and often overlooked.
Right. If we are in a culture where me being offended is your problem, no matter how neutral you've tried to word things, then we can't get out of the situation you've outlined.
I think it can be solved by everyone working on their own triggers, and taking ownership of their own feelings, but that doesn't seem too popular, so we continue with the facade.
I like this and think it reads true. Asides from the content, I also like the writing style and wish more pieces were similarly succinct and not weighted down with unnecessary pages of text before getting to the point.
That said, ending the piece with an allusion to "The Road Not Taken," a poem about how meaningless decisions make you incorrectly feel like you're in control, is an odd choice.
> ending the piece with an allusion to "The Road Not Taken," a poem about how meaningless decisions make you incorrectly feel like you're in control, is an odd choice.
I remember liking this poem but I never knew about this interpretation of it.
I looked it up on Wikipedia and Wikipedia agrees with you, kind of.
> It is a frequently misunderstood poem, often read simply as a poem that champions the idea of "following your own path," but rather it expresses some irony regarding such an idea.
> [...]
> According to Lawrance Thompson, Frost's biographer, as Frost was once about to read the poem, he commented to his audience, "You have to be careful of that one; it's a tricky poem—very tricky," perhaps intending to suggest the poem's ironic possibilities.
> Thompson suggests that the poem's narrator is "one who habitually wastes energy in regretting any choice made: belatedly but wistfully he sighs over the attractive alternative rejected." Thompson also says that when introducing the poem in readings, Frost would say that the speaker was based on his friend Edward Thomas. In Frost's words, Thomas was "a person who, whichever road he went, would be sorry he didn't go the other. He was hard on himself that way."
Thanks! And I read The Road Not Taken years ago when I was considering leaving San Francisco and it turns out I'd taken the completely wrong message away from it. Thanks for pointing that out
Everyone does. That's what's amazing about the poem. On a first read, it's a life-changing message about positivity so strong that it's endlessly requoted worldwide. Do you know how hard it is to write a poem that good? There are perhaps not even 100 of them in all of history.
And yet on a second or third or tenth reading, you start to realize that he was also writing a much more cynical poem with the opposite message. I can't even imagine how hard it is to wrap a meaning like that into the first kind of poem.
It takes time and commitment to build up the trust.
And the list of people whose judgement I trust is short indeed.
One of the better strategies is to locate a wise person and make a regular commitment to meet with them and give them permission to really dig into your motives.
The spouse is an obvious choice, but someone to whom you're not attached is also useful for this sort of thing.
I found that its often countries with a military draft and mission based command structure, were the best discussion cultures come from. Everyone can have a say, everyone can contribute, the power-hierarchy can ignored as long as that is helping to archieve the goal.
This communication culture, leaches into the civilian live and then into company culture.
It also can lead to furious conflict, as those in command feel "undermined", but its hard to argue with the results and outcome. And people will not easily back down because you are the top-dog, you will have to convince them with good arguments.
No real skin in the game here, but watching Americans tell the world how rude it is, is fairly hilarious.
Americans are not more rude on average in my experience, but they're usually more passive aggressive and use coded language. I'd prefer someone be rude to my face.
IMO hearing the difficult stuff (without jumping sky or ignoring it) is harder than saying it. But it depends. Most times, any prelude might help to prepare the receiver.
Uff facepalm. The post is something every grown up should have figured out by himself very early.
I have friends from nearly all -- sure, there are limits -- of the political spectrum exactly because of that.
But nice somebody found it worth posting and hn found it worthwhile picking up.
It's accepted, it's respected, and it's even expected. Unfortunately, more often than not, it's also not at all appreciated by people from foreign cultures and we have to be really careful with our words.