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Ask vs. Guess Culture

jeanhsu.substack.com

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Re: Ask vs. Guess Culture

#341

Post by jasondigitized »

g9yuayon wrote: post #133

I grew up in China and the guess culture was predominant there. It was quite a culture shock after I came to the US. In a training session back when I was in IBM, the VP of marketing told us a story about the ask culture: he was an American-born Japanese. When Lou Gerstner asked him what he wanted, he instinctively tried to be humble. Lou cut him off and said: I can't help you if you don't tell me what you want. Come…

In business, being direct is efficient and efficient "transactions" drive the business. In your personal life, at least in certain cultures, being transactional is seen as being shrewd and self serving.

Re: Ask vs. Guess Culture

#343

Post by rdiddly »

I feel like in addition to the cultural East-West and young-old biases mentioned in the article, there's also one about gender. At least in the US, girls/women are traditionaly encouraged to be sensitive, helpful, considerate (guess culture) while boys/men are encouraged to be assertive, clear/factual and not worry too much about what people think (ask culture).

Re: Ask vs. Guess Culture

#344

Post by jasondigitized »

snapetom wrote: post #69

Wow, this strongly resonates with me, especially the tieback to Asian cultures. I was both told many times, and shown by example many times, that it was rude to put someone in awkward positions. I still carry that to this day in personal relationships, and my wife (white, US-born) doesn't understand why I don't just ask for things from our families/friends, often going to great lengths to avoid questions. However, at…

I don't mind a transactional mindset at work, but I'd prefer my personal life to not be treated and gamed as a set of transactions.

Re: Ask vs. Guess Culture

#345

Post by jasondigitized »

v3gas wrote: post #29
chasing wrote: post #10

I don't really care for the "Ask vs. Guess" framing. More like "make demands without considering the other person at all vs. think for a second about not imposing yourself on other people unnecessarily." But mostly this article is about the virtues of being a clear communicator and having decent interpersonal skills, which is neither an "ask" nor a "guess" thing.

You're clearly a Guess :)

And a lot of "Ask" are simply "Grab"

Re: Ask vs. Guess Culture

#346

Post by _g0wg »

galaxyLogic wrote: post #205
reddit_clone wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. >"Do you not have X?" In my head it sounds belligerent and accusatory. While the other form sounds polite. This negative phrasing to induce a positive response, may be a Japan only thing?

It's interesting, it somehow means you are agreeing with them if they don't have it, so they don't have to feel so bad about not having it.

I'm from Appalachia and we have the same thing, and yeah at least for us it's like you're agreeing with them that they don't have it.

"Do you not have bananas?" is like "is it true that there are no bananas?". Then if there are bananas, the host can gleefully surprise you with them and feel like they solved a problem for you. This is only if it's said in a constantly upwardly-shifting tone, though.

It can be said another way, same words different tone, which sounds more like "how perplexing, there's no bananas, let me just make sure I didn't miss them because I thought they should be here". The host usually backs their answer up with an explanation of why there are no bananas.

A third form exists where it does sound accusatory. Like "you should have bananas you piece of crap". Usually said in a huffy puffy I-dont-have-time-for-this tone.

Re: Ask vs. Guess Culture

#347

Post by DoreenMichele »

burlesona wrote: post #137
quacked wrote: post #7

I am from the northern US (Protestant Scandinavian/German) and my wife is from the southern US (Protestant English/German) [1]. In the first several years of our relationship, we had several big disputes about how to treat each other, and how to treat guests. After a while we realized that she had been brought up to feel extreme insecurity over responding to the needs of guests, and I had been brought up to be blithe…

This is fascinating to me, because I'm from the southern US and strongly align to "ask culture" and my wife is from the northwest and strongly aligns to "guess" culture. I wonder how much it's about individual family background and not strongly regional?

I grew up in the South. Daddy was a Hoosier and spent a lot of years in the army and retired in Georgia. Mom is a German immigrant.

The upper classes of the Deep South, where people are very religious and often call folks "Mr./Mizz. First Name" as a mark of both respect and familiarity at the same time, seem to skew Guess culture. But then the upper classes generally seem to skew Guess culture.

The South is also a place where people are more likely to own guns and join the military. Military culture is mostly Ask culture. They tend to be very direct and some people find this refreshing/no BS and others find it rude, crude and socially unacceptable if you are influenced by that.

Working class stiffs in the South may be more influenced by the very direct Ask culture of the American military.

So it's probably a lot more complex than regional cultures.

Re: Ask vs. Guess Culture

#348

Post by xyzelement »

Resonates with something I recognized and to some extent fixed in myself. Not only would I hesitate to ask lest I seem unreasonable, I was foolishly assuming that others had done the same before asking me. And I would stupidly get frustrated with them for putting me in a bad situation by merely asking. I assumed they had figured out that I should say yes and they put a lot of pressure on me.

Learning how to make simple requirements and decline request simply was liberating.

Re: Ask vs. Guess Culture

#349

Post by jasondigitized »

RangerScience wrote: post #180

A friend of mine (we're all pretty solidly "Ask", but ofc there's a mix) pointed out that a really important unspoken part of an "Ask" culture is what you are allowed to ask about - thankfully (and anecdotally) you can generally just straight-up ask "what can I ask for?". Still. Important realization, and definitely something I've failed at before.

This. "Guessers" cannot stand "Askers" who don't know where the line is between a polite tactful request and a imposition. The classic example is someone coming into your town and asking if their family can stay at your house for a week instead of a hotel. Saying no for someone who doesn't want multiple guests to stay that long is a really uncomfortable spot to be in. Most of the time the line is crossed when the requestee has to sacrifice a non small amount of time, money, or comfort for the requestor's benefit.

Re: Ask vs. Guess Culture

#350

Post by jiggawatts »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #273

The formal terms for this difference are high context culture and low context culture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-context_and_low-context_c... "Guess" culture would correspond to high context culture. You need to have a lot of shared context -- or be able to read a lot of clues to the context -- to infer what was really meant as a means to be adequately polite. "Ask" culture would correspond to low context cu…

A common example of this is the US servicemen that had come back from tours of Iraq or Afghanistan telling stories of how lovely and "welcoming" the locals were.

E.g.: the locals would make a token offer to the soldiers, expecting them to politely refuse.

The Americans would take that offer at face value and accept, to the surprise of the locals.

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