61–70 of 228 posts
But....clearly there are people out there who use this kind of communicaton, some of them doubtlessly reading this thread. So my question is: those who do say vagaries like "let's talk when you have a minute* - why? What is your intention?
> When you’re communicating with your team, lead with context and reassurance. Never message someone on your team, “let’s talk when you get a minute”. That’s void of information and scary as heck! This should be engraved on a plaque in every office building.
I'd like to be able to follow this advice always, but what about when, say, you're scheduling a call with your manager to let them know you're leaving the team? Do I lead with context by titling the meeting "Discuss my Departure"?
Just call them without setting anything up or if you’re in the office pull them into a immediate quick chat.
As an extreme, think of the worst manager or company you worked for saying "let's talk" vs the best manager or company you worked for saying the same thing.
Honestly, I've worked in places (and with managers) where a message like that would scare the crap out of me, and places where a message like that would make me really excited, because:
- I trust that my manager will rarely negatively surprise me.
- I feel like most news is generally positive (ie positive feedback, good opportunity opening up, etc).
- I know that even if it is going to be negative (ie negative feedback, etc), I have room for failing and learning and my manager will generally have my back.
Tons of comments here agreeing that this kind of vague messaging is to be avoided (and I'll toss my comment in there as also being in agreement). But....clearly there are people out there who use this kind of communicaton, some of them doubtlessly reading this thread. So my question is: those who do say vagaries like "let's talk when you have a minute* - why? What is your intention?
When IMHO, it's better just to carry secret water as the manager in those circumstances, and have the conversation when you have time to have it.
The key to avoiding spooky messaging is asking "How is the person I'm saying this to going to receive it?" and "What good is going to come from their knowing what I'm going to tell them, between now and the actual conversation?"
Sometimes it's important! Like "Do it this way ASAP, we'll talk about why later." But in the meh version the person cannot do anything productive with "We should talk later." And in the worse version, they're worrying about it.
It works the other way around too. As a manager, when some of my employees sent me messages like: "Can we talk when you have some time?" One of my immediate fears was that they are quitting because he found another job. That happened only once, the other 300 times it was just about something they were working on and needed more information.
In our company's culture of few meetings, about 90% of the time I received a Slack message "Can we chat when you have a quick minute?" it was indeed the employee quitting. Eventually I would just respond in Slack to confirm they wanted to quit, so we could skip the dog & pony show that is assumed to be necessary for a "proper resignation," which I don't think employee nor manager enjoys.
If your workplace has common toxic symbols (e.g. the HR folks bought some pink envelopes), then you need to avoid them in your day-to-day unless you are trying to signal an abandon ship to your folks.
On a weird sidenote, if you commonly phrase things the same way, then don't decide to be different and change for change's sake. Consistent and predicable are gifts to anyone you manage. Variety is the spice of life, but consistency gets you better service.z
Monitoring language for signalling is the warning flag.
Because of increasing awareness of "spook" as a racial slur, it's probably wise not to casually throw around words like "spooky" anymore.
Oh come on...you cannot be serious.
Using the word "niggardly" can get you fired because it's slur-adjacent. Anyone who uses it in 2021 is looking to give offense. As we understand words like "spook" in a new light, it becomes prudent to avoid using them as well, lest we be seen as deliberately offending people.
It's always important to think about the social effects of what you say.
Tons of comments here agreeing that this kind of vague messaging is to be avoided (and I'll toss my comment in there as also being in agreement). But....clearly there are people out there who use this kind of communicaton, some of them doubtlessly reading this thread. So my question is: those who do say vagaries like "let's talk when you have a minute* - why? What is your intention?
* I know I'm interrupting so you don't have to act on this immediately.
* I also don't want to be overheard (in my case I didn't want the family member I was using it with to share something if they were with friends), so the message doesn't let on what the conversation will be about.
* Hopefully it won't be a long conversation.
I don't know if I've just gotten lucky or something, but even in a work context "let's talk when you have a minute" doesn't bother me. It and variations have been used a few times, and it's always been neutral or positive - a manager I don't have regular conversations with wants an update on something big they know I'm working on, my immediate manager wants to tell me about an upcoming project and if I can take it on/put aside current stuff to do it (and it's urgent enough it can't wait until our normal 1-on-1), stuff like that.
if "let's talk when you get a minute" is spooky, then you have other problems. In a normal environment, that phrase simply means "hey, I need some time, nothing urgent just need to talk about something". If brings dread to your day, then the job is not working out the way it should. You're in a toxic environment and need to extract yourself from it. If your workplace has common toxic symbols (e.g. the HR folks bought…
Give me context. If you want to chat for twenty minutes just to catch up, then that's fine but just tell me.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some degree of mistrust - or should I say, fear - is normal when communicating with your manager/supervisor, because there's a power imbalance in that relationship. Your manager has the power to significantly complicate or even derail your whole life. They're also themselves in a similar relationship with the person above them in the org chart. So no matter how much you trust them, there's always the possibility they…
I don't disagree, but I think it's more about establishing a good rapport where statements like "let's talk" can be informative and not just confusing. If you trust your manager and have good communication with them, "let's talk" should get you worried. Management obviously has a power advantage, but good managers that communicate effectively know how to become reliable signals, even when they aren't in a good positi…
If you’re going to tell me something unpleasant is coming, at least give me enough clues to steel myself for news about:
- technology problem
- customer problem
- team communication problem
- team performance problem
- personal performance problem
- litigation problem
- etc
Any of those things still might lead to me getting fired for any number of reasons, but at least my imagination can spin something potentially productive to bring to the meeting.
If you say only “let’s talk” all the time, it just becomes a background anxiety due to being acclimated to it, sure, but I don’t see how it’s productive.
This whole “you need to have anxiety now” makes absolutely zero sense to me. The meeting can be for the details that you’re not prepared to dig into right now, that’s fine, just give me enough broad context to hang a hat on.
Edit: I guess if there’s zero power imbalance, I might be fine with just “let’s talk,” but I still don’t see why providing zero context results in a better meeting.