Earlier quoted context omitted.
yes, coworkers thanking me for a bugfix or a feature bothers the hell out of me. man I am not doing it for you, I am doing it for money that is thanks enough
> yes, coworkers thanking me for a bugfix or a feature bothers the hell out of me. man I am not doing it for you, I am doing it for money that is thanks enough And they're thanking you for doing something that will keep them employed. I had a customer one time like you. I was talking with her on the phone and I was phrasing requests (as I often did) as "would you do this for me?" "I'm not doing this for you, I'm doin…
How to communicate when trust is low without digging yourself into a deeper hole
241–250 of 304 posts
Re: How to communicate when trust is low without digging yourself into a deeper hole
#242> Say “please” and “thank you” a lot. I remember a previous role the team leaders all went on a management training course. Everyone came back and started adding "please" to every request. I found it really patronising and felt like I was being spoken to like a 5 year old. > "Can you run the SQL update in prod?" Vs > "Can you run the SQL update in prod please?" The "please" sounds like an exasperated parent that is f…
When people use a lot of emojis, the story in my head is that they care more about keeping appearances up than about honesty and transparency. It's fake positivity.
Re: How to communicate when trust is low without digging yourself into a deeper hole
#243How timely. My boss just crucified a co-worker today in our meeting and I think something like this could help mend things. Yes, my boss never heard of " praise in public criticize in private ". Welcome to working with a hot-blooded eastern european
> Welcome to working with a hot-blooded eastern european It's funny, one other commenter pointed out how you won't get far in Eastern Europe without saying "please" and "thank you" a lot. I'm from there and it's true - we have both rude and polite people!
Re: How to communicate when trust is low without digging yourself into a deeper hole
#244Re: How to communicate when trust is low without digging yourself into a deeper hole
#245This is all well and good advice. But sometimes you have to work with people who demonstrate traits of Narcissism Personality Disorder or Borderline Personality Disorder. E.g. someone who never accepts responsibility or someone frequently demonstrating emotional lability. I am not sure the best course of action in these situations.
Unfortunately, these diagnoses seem to get flung around by people quite unqualified to do so. My guess is that context and timing matters a lot and that these conditions are quite rare.
Since we work in male dominated field, it is not rare at all and most of us all worked with at least one.
Re: How to communicate when trust is low without digging yourself into a deeper hole
#246My number one advice for handling difficult people is try not to internalize their behavior. It’s not about you or anything you did. It’s a “them” problem. Articles like this can make people on the receiving end of bad behavior are somehow at fault because they’re not saying please/thank you, etc. it’s a common fallacy, for example, that victims try to anticipate an abusers behavior and take on their own shoulders ma…
> It’s not about you or anything you did. It’s a “them” problem. It’s much easier to consider a conflict a “them” problem. That’s most people’s default. I’ve heard thousands of people complain about “them”, but they were never being abused or bullied. Instead you probably want to default to a conflict resolution attempt, or two or three, or whatever your tolerance is with that person. If those don’t work, then it’s a…
And I can confirm that being taught that you should adapt to everyone around and responsible for managing them is actively harmful for you.
Re: How to communicate when trust is low without digging yourself into a deeper hole
#247This is all well and good advice. But sometimes you have to work with people who demonstrate traits of Narcissism Personality Disorder or Borderline Personality Disorder. E.g. someone who never accepts responsibility or someone frequently demonstrating emotional lability. I am not sure the best course of action in these situations.
Yeah I think it's important to note that these techniques are for situations where trust has broken down due to something external, not due to a fundamental issue with one of the people involved. This stuff will never help with narcissistic ass holes.
If my experience is common (and let’s be real here, unless you’re in the psychology field none of us are qualified to diagnose narcissism), of course this stuff won’t help because the person is right and nothing would sway them, and bitter folks, or maybe jealous folks, decided to proclaim the person has a mental illness (read, they are now flawed and you are superior) as well as insulting them calling them an asshole.
And it’s kinda weird the other way too because if they do indeed have a mental illness, then they are not trying to be abrasive and often wouldn’t even be aware that they were until after the fact, so you’re calling a mentally ill person an asshole because they are mentally ill. Try doing that to someone with any other mental issue and see how well that goes over. But it’s fine to do for this one and everyone is fine with it.
It’s shitty to go into a conversation with the best intentions and yet you always end up fucking it all up, hurting the relationship with that person when your goals were the exact opposite, being confused about why that always happens, and reflecting after the damage is done and seeing where you fucked up, tossing that onto the never ending pile of regret that follows you though life, your lonely lonely life because it’s impossible to maintain any relationship at all, not for long anyway… and then on top of it you’re called an asshole by someone who doesn’t have any idea how much it blows having narcissistic personality disorder (or what kind of childhood environment it takes for such a disorder to take root), or, they don’t understand that it’s not the same thing as someone choosing to be a dick in a conversation.
Re: How to communicate when trust is low without digging yourself into a deeper hole
#248> TRY TO SOUND FRIENDLY. > Say "please" and "thank you"... use emojis... I'll add to this one -- use exclamation points! It's actually ridiculous how effective all these little things are. In my experience, men, engineers, and especially engineers who are men tend to think of this as unnecessary fluff. They often decline to add these little social niceties because to them, they sound inauthentic. That's not a charact…
! can easily mean sarcasm A: Hey, it looks like there is this and that issue that is caused by one of your submissions. Can you fix it? B: Sure A: Thanks! Was that thanks genuine? Or sarcastic because A spent half a day trying to figure out what is going on
A is not super duper thankful or about to bring you a chocolate. That is neither sarcasm nor fakery, just normal communication.
Re: How to communicate when trust is low without digging yourself into a deeper hole
#249"That's not a character flaw or anything! You have every right to feel that way. I do think it is just categorically wrong, though." Do you have any idea how asinine that statement is? Let me translate it into English: "I respect your opinion, but actually I don't. You should communicate the way I prefer, not the way you prefer, because my feelings matter and yours don't". Don't tell me that's not what you said, beca…
Not sure why this is downvoted. Your assumption could be wrong and categorically ruling that out without giving any real reasons means you likely are. Either way its far from a respectful attitude and doing that on shaky grounds is even worse. At best your opinion is incomplete. It overlooks that people often take faked niceties quite bad. Like the parent post. And are not free but require mental effort. With humans…
Re: How to communicate when trust is low without digging yourself into a deeper hole
#250No second chances, ever.