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

charity.wtf

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

#281

Post by cf141q5325 »

watwut wrote: post #279
cf141q5325 wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Fake nicety - I pretend to be your friend or thankful or praise you while not thinking much of you. Passive aggression - I am intentionally trying to insult you or be condescending to you or stanf in your way while keeping plausible deniality. Intention matters. The above sentence does nit sound like someone pretending to be nice or think well of you. It sounds like someone telling you they don't think much of you, w…

Thanks for the elaboration, i meant i fail to see the distinction beyond intention. Since determining intention is error prone and unreliable giving the benefit of the doubt might still be a beneficial strategy. Even with you giving a good description of the problems that incurs.

I think it boils down to what kind of costs are at stake. False positive for negative intention leads to conflict and breakdown of cooperation, while entertaining a passive aggressive person increases the burden on you in favor of continued cooperation and additional information.

While a direct stop is beneficial for short games, reducing false positives is beneficial for productive long games and comes at only temporary costs.

Or differently put, while stupidity is not always the better explanation then malice, assuming stupidity first can be beneficial regardless. If people are then unwilling or unable to fix stupid it becomes another discussion. But those false positives sum up quickly.

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

#282

Post by cma »

Scarblac wrote: post #201
felurx wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Of course, someone might just be toxic. But if someone is actively trying to repair a relationship, wouldn't it be better for everyone to see it as that and try and reciprocate?

Maybe it's the difference between trying to sound friendly and actually being friendly. If it's noticeable that someone is using an unusual way of talking, the first impression is that it's merely the first, and insincere.

Look at the speech patterns of the boss in Office Space, they are somewhat similarly passive aggressive sounding to the rewording advice in the article.

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

#283

Post by watwut »

cf141q5325 wrote: post #281
watwut wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fake nicety - I pretend to be your friend or thankful or praise you while not thinking much of you. Passive aggression - I am intentionally trying to insult you or be condescending to you or stanf in your way while keeping plausible deniality. Intention matters. The above sentence does nit sound like someone pretending to be nice or think well of you. It sounds like someone telling you they don't think much of you, w…

Thanks for the elaboration, i meant i fail to see the distinction beyond intention. Since determining intention is error prone and unreliable giving the benefit of the doubt might still be a beneficial strategy. Even with you giving a good description of the problems that incurs. I think it boils down to what kind of costs are at stake. False positive for negative intention leads to conflict and breakdown of cooperat…

If you do not push back agains the above, it will be read as "you was wrong or overly emotional" by third parties on the meeting. That is after all what you was accused of. If you are negotiating, you will be at worst position.

Moreover, the regular insults and unaddressed put downs will accumulate. If you accept communication like that, over time you will loose confidence or at least become more passive and weak at asserting your needs or opinions.

Intention matters for the response. If you treat passive aggression or thinly veiled insult as something genuine or harmless fake compliment, you are in for a very bad time. Because you will be target of more and more of it. You need to stop or adress the dynamic, directly or indirectly.

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

#284

Post by cf141q5325 »

watwut wrote: post #283
cf141q5325 wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the elaboration, i meant i fail to see the distinction beyond intention. Since determining intention is error prone and unreliable giving the benefit of the doubt might still be a beneficial strategy. Even with you giving a good description of the problems that incurs. I think it boils down to what kind of costs are at stake. False positive for negative intention leads to conflict and breakdown of cooperat…

If you do not push back agains the above, it will be read as "you was wrong or overly emotional" by third parties on the meeting. That is after all what you was accused of. If you are negotiating, you will be at worst position. Moreover, the regular insults and unaddressed put downs will accumulate. If you accept communication like that, over time you will loose confidence or at least become more passive and weak at…

Again, i see the cost and risk of doing this. However

> Moreover, the regular insults and unaddressed put downs will accumulate.

> If you treat passive aggression or thinly veiled insult as something genuine or harmless fake compliment, you are in for a very bad time. Because you will be target of more and more of it.

is working as intended. We arent talking schoolyard but workplace. You are checking if cooperation is possible so you have to spend less effort on managing the people around you and your reaction to them. Getting a clear signal on that means you can go over to actual conflict if you enjoy that and use some levers. Or just get a better environment so you can focus on work.

The image that presents for third parties is another issue and brings us back to short vs long games. That you shouldnt be reacting is besides the point. You arent describing a professional, let alone cooperative environment if they reward pointless personal short term conflict dragging everyone down to that level. And even if you are stuck in a dog kernel, your approach isnt without its own dangers. Goating somebody into overreacting is a tried and true strategy to make them look bad / unstable.

In the end defaulting on personal workplace conflict means you opt into playing emotional games. Which i see no reason to do, especially as idiots doing this have home field advantage. If they really made a decision for conflict and you fancy joining in make sure you have the advantage and mop the floor with them. They arent all too smart after all. But cooperation will be off the table, you will have to constantly mince every word.

edit: This is really about job description. Do you really want to be a dog trainer?

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

#285

Post by doetoe »

lastangryman wrote: post #174

> 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…

I think the intended difference in tone would be that between

> "Can you run the SQL update in prod?"

(optionally with "please" appended) and

> "Run the SQL update in prod"

(or something like that)

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

#286

Post by tptacek »

dilyevsky wrote: post #130
tptacek wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your team is mostly comprised of people operating in bad faith, no advice (other than "disband") is going to help you. The premise of this article is that you have a team operating in good faith, but with fragile trust, which is a much more common problem in startups than a team of vipers.

That’s certainly true but these techniques also dont work on people who just don’t care rather than being outright malicious and there seems to be a lot more of those

That's true. It's a good point. They also don't work on dogs, so you should keep that in mind if your team is largely canine in nature.

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

#287

Post by mock-possum »

lastangryman wrote: post #174

> 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…

I like emojis, I wish they were allowed in HN comments ;]

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

#288

Post by dilyevsky »

tptacek wrote: post #286
dilyevsky wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s certainly true but these techniques also dont work on people who just don’t care rather than being outright malicious and there seems to be a lot more of those

That's true. It's a good point. They also don't work on dogs, so you should keep that in mind if your team is largely canine in nature.

There is no way to tell if you do on the Internet. It is known

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

#289

Post by spimmy »

frob wrote: post #76
henning wrote: post #64

[flagged]

Wow, that's quite the accusation. I did some quick searching and couldn't find anything, but it's not the sort of thing that I would expect to be easily findable. What leads you to believe this?

news to me too, and it's my company. :)

i have no idea how these rumors get started.

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

#290

Post by vasco »

zestyping wrote: post #276
vasco wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody should be crucified either in public or in private. But correcting mistakes and making it explicit to the whole team what the problem was and how we'll minimize the chances of reocurring is best done in front of the team. Everyone learns together, and most importantly, they see how you react to mistakes. They won't be afraid to talk about their mistakes if they see your normal reaction. It'll also feel less ba…

The following case is interesting because it might fall in the space between what various folks on this thread consider acceptable. An engineer on my team once merged a change that created a security vulnerability, without review. We didn't have any real users on prod yet, and the potential impact was small. But I was still angry because I had given explicit instructions (speaking as the tech lead and the one with th…

I think writing "you merged" rather than,"we don't do this" would be a bit better. Also not acknowledging that there were no users yet, so impact wasn't there actually, but it would be if it happened later, was also important to acknowledge as the lead.

In general I'd write a similar thing, just speaking of the team, and not overplaying the impact. If you had no users it was no problem, that's the truth. But it would be a problem in the future so you want the team to know and practice safety. People tend to be upset if you hype it more than it is, even an little, and it comes across as you just wanting to be right for rights sake. And generally we/team/process focused language is better than "you fucked up". Why did you even have merges enabled without reviews? It's more your process failure than that guy.

That being said I work in full remote with many different cultures so I have an "international average". If this was a fully Russian team or some such even what you wrote was too soft in my experience and you actually need to be very clear or they think it's nothing.

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