Live data from Hacker News

How to communicate when trust is low without digging yourself into a deeper hole

charity.wtf

251–260 of 304 posts

Re: How to communicate when trust is low without digging yourself into a deeper hole

#251
post #18

> 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…

I feel almost as if this comment was designed to bother people.

Personally, I’m rarely if ever so excited about something at work where I’d feel the need to add “!”. I’m sorry but I don’t get pumped about things that often at the place I have to be at so I can afford to feed my family.

If I use “!” at work it’s never about work related conversation, and is almost exclusively used to show excitement for or to congratulate a coworker on a work or personal achievement.

Short of celebrating with a coworker in their excitement for something, using “!” in the context like what you’re suggesting, ie “Sure, I’d love to help!” feels insincere for me to say, because I’m not actually excited, and personally I know that my coworkers who knew me in the slightest would also read that as insincere, possibly passive aggressive, or just kiss ass. We don’t need to be enthusiastic about doing shit at a place we wouldn’t choose to be at if we didn’t have to, which wastes the biggest parts of our lives.

Re: How to communicate when trust is low without digging yourself into a deeper hole

#252
post #152
post #18

> 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…

Call it emotional mirroring. ;)

Look at that subtle off white coloring — the tasteful thickness of it. Oh my god, it even has a watermark.

Re: How to communicate when trust is low without digging yourself into a deeper hole

#253
post #78

"the story in my head" sounds really weird to me as a non-native speaker. Is that a common phrase? I guess "The story in my head is that you asked me to send that status email ..." means that this is what they remember. On the other hand "... the story in my head is that you think owning that number is part of my job, and now you’re upset with me, or you think I’m incompetent at my job" sounds like they mean "the sto…

You've pretty much got it bang on. I suspect the author of the article is referencing this concept from Brené Brown who has written a full book around it. It's definitely a great read if your interested I've found her writing style flows really nicely.

She does relate some concepts to her other books though so you may end up getting 3 books by the end of it :)

https://www.amazon.ca/Rising-Strong-Ability-Transforms-Paren...

Re: How to communicate when trust is low without digging yourself into a deeper hole

#254
post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. My spouse accuses me of only being able to communicate properly via text, and i think it's true. I am very uncomfortable in face to face interaction and struggle to find words, but the written word uses a different part of my brain and is easy to communicate with. It drives them nuts because they struggle to express themselves appropriately in writing. So we have important conversations that are very asynchr…

Congrats on the anniversary! That sounds like a pretty extreme form of what I meant, happy to hear you found someone who is happy to work with that system as well. Do you find that having everything on record to look back helps you? That's one thing I mind about talking: can't look up what was said or what I/we already figured out on some topic. (Occasionally that's a feature of course, but I try to avoid both using…

That's part of it, but the other part is that I struggle to think rationally in emotional situations (good or bad), and so using text gives me sufficient distance to express my thoughts more accurately. I also struggled with learning my native tongue growing up, and really believe that speaking and writing use very very different parts of my brain for me.

Being able to step back, compose, and edit previous statements before "commit" is definitely an aspect, though.

Re: How to communicate when trust is low without digging yourself into a deeper hole

#255
post #26

From experience CC advice and other similar corp bs techniques are like “self defense class” techniques of communication meaning they only work if the other party is well meaning and actively cooperating. Which is to say they rarely work even if properly executed.

Sort of like how MMA showed that most of the traditional martial arts aren't actually good except as exercise.

MMA showed everyone that shielding yourself with the back of your head is a great tactic in a sport where you can't strike the back of someone's head.

Re: How to communicate when trust is low without digging yourself into a deeper hole

#256
post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poland is typically regarded as Central Europe.

By whom? Czechs (wholly western to Poland) are always called "Eastern Europeans" in contemporary media and or any place I have ever worked before.

If you tell a Czech that they live in Eastern Europe, they will get very upset! They consider themselves to be in Central Europe.

I learned this the hard way!

Re: How to communicate when trust is low without digging yourself into a deeper hole

#257
> Compose yourself. Firing off a reply while you are in fight-or-flight mode reliably* leads to unintentional escalations.*

Oh, that's a pretty great insight! Or maybe not an insight, but it's putting clear words on a pretty important concept.

Re: How to communicate when trust is low without digging yourself into a deeper hole

#258
post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The above does not sound like fake nicety to me. More like pure passive aggression and condescending way to tell you you are wrong.

I fail to see the distinction and its relevance.

At that point we are discussing intention (stupidity vs malice) which makes it little better then analyzing for sarcasm. Benefit of the doubt goes both ways and the most charitable take is bad enough.

Re: How to communicate when trust is low without digging yourself into a deeper hole

#259
post #245
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Estimated lifetime prevalence of narcissistic personality disorder varies widely but may be up to 6.2% of the general US population, more in men. Since we work in male dominated field, it is not rare at all and most of us all worked with at least one.

What I’m seeing is 0.5%:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_personality_dis...

> Frequency 0.5%

https://www.therecoveryvillage.com/mental-health/narcissisti...

> Approximately 0.5% of the United States population, or one 1 in 200 people, has the disorder

Regardless, your point does appear valid about male dominated fields:

> There are significant gender differences when it comes to the prevalence of the disorder; about 75% of people with narcissistic personality disorder are men.

Re: How to communicate when trust is low without digging yourself into a deeper hole

#260
post #2

How 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

Hot blooded Eastern Europeans can learn, too. You do know the difference and concept. If it’s safe, educate.

It is not particularly safe.

My boss has several positive attributes, but emotional intelligence is not one of them.

Post reply on HN