The way I see it, if "let's talk when you get a minute" comes across as spooky that means you already have a communication breakdown and mistrust has already blossomed. Here's a slightly different scenario: You have a disagreement with management; there are many subsequent conversations happening behind the scenes; but no one keeps you in the loop or updates you on what is being decided. In that situation, practicall…
> you already have a communication breakdown and mistrust has already blossomed
Or you haven't had the time and chance to build up communication and trust. That takes a long time, it's perfectly natural that it would take many months to a few years for somebody to feel perfectly safe in their relationship with their managers
The way I see it, if "let's talk when you get a minute" comes across as spooky that means you already have a communication breakdown and mistrust has already blossomed. Here's a slightly different scenario: You have a disagreement with management; there are many subsequent conversations happening behind the scenes; but no one keeps you in the loop or updates you on what is being decided. In that situation, practicall…
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 position to divulge more information. In other words, I take it that the problem OP raised is not "don't signal that bad news is coming" but rather "don't put out confusing signals." If you are a manager, and you say to someone "let's talk" and they can't figure out how to interpret that - they can't figure out whether they are about to be fired or whether you simply want to ask them about such-and-such - you have already done a bad job at establishing a rapport. A good manager, who has established good communication, can use a carefully placed vague statement to communicate that something unpleasant is coming.
This reminds me of this wonderful NPR segment from last year: >[...] when it comes to text messaging, the period has lost its original purpose because rather needing a symbol to indicate the end of a sentence, you can simply hit send on your message. But caution is needed, said McCulloch, noting that problems can start to arise when you combine a period with a positive sentiment, such as "Sure" or "Sounds good." "Now…
The dreaded "full stop of hatred", as we call it in my circles. In digital text-based communication, you have to choose: either go all-in with proper style - capital letters, proper sentences, correct punctuation - or don't capitalize at all, write in single sentences, and never use full stop. In the latter case, full stop is equivalent of hitting the desk with your fist for emphasis. Related: don't end sentences wit…
A relative of mine ends _all_ of his whatsapp messages with ellipsis, often multiple ellipsises per message. Drives me insane, I don't even understand what he's trying to express with these. He's also innovating by using the half-ellipsis: only 2 full stops rather than 3, which is even more efficient to produce confusion.
The way I see it, if "let's talk when you get a minute" comes across as spooky that means you already have a communication breakdown and mistrust has already blossomed. Here's a slightly different scenario: You have a disagreement with management; there are many subsequent conversations happening behind the scenes; but no one keeps you in the loop or updates you on what is being decided. In that situation, practicall…
> you already have a communication breakdown and mistrust has already blossomed Or you haven't had the time and chance to build up communication and trust. That takes a long time, it's perfectly natural that it would take many months to a few years for somebody to feel perfectly safe in their relationship with their managers
If you are in a new relationship with management and they are already hitting you with vague "let's talk" statements, you are pretty much guaranteed that they are bad communicators and that you won't be able to glean much of anything from what they say to you.
This is the corporate equivalent to “See me after class” and “We need to talk.”
It's funny to see so much serious conversation on this. On my team we always take the opportunity to roast the "see me after class" pair because 99% of the time it's unintentional and everyone does it at some point.
The way I see it, if "let's talk when you get a minute" comes across as spooky that means you already have a communication breakdown and mistrust has already blossomed. Here's a slightly different scenario: You have a disagreement with management; there are many subsequent conversations happening behind the scenes; but no one keeps you in the loop or updates you on what is being decided. In that situation, practicall…
Trust alone isn't enough to make a cryptic message not cryptic. I can 100% trust someone, but still be scared when they send cryptic messages like that. With a cryptic message, you won`t be able to predict what they are going to say, and they still might have to deliver bad news like "X has been fired", "X has passed away", "there was a critical failure in product Y", "our department has been having financial problems and we will have to layoff you and your team"... Not to mention the asymmetric power relationship, which exists regardless of trust.
I recently had spooky messages several times, like "All-hands meeting on Wednesday, attendance is mandatory". So, are we all getting fired? Are you leaving? If you want your employees dusting off their resumes, this is a great way to do it.
We had “town halls” for a long time and then one time it was called an “all hands”. You can bet everyone was on edge before the meeting, but the meeting was exactly the same as the others (general info dissemination). I definitely gave feedback not to arbitrarily change the name of the meeting like that.
The way I see it, if "let's talk when you get a minute" comes across as spooky that means you already have a communication breakdown and mistrust has already blossomed. Here's a slightly different scenario: You have a disagreement with management; there are many subsequent conversations happening behind the scenes; but no one keeps you in the loop or updates you on what is being decided. In that situation, practicall…
It’s impossible for me not to have any fear of someone whose job is (in part) evaluating and criticizing my work and determining whether I should be fired.
I should clarify: I don't mean that you shouldn't be worried when you get the "let's talk" message. What I mean is, it shouldn't come across as "spooky"; that is, when they say it, it shouldn't leave you with the utterly baffling sensation of not knowing whether they are about to tell you something utterly horrible or something utterly trivial.
> 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 always respond with "Yep, have a minute right now" regardless of what's happening. I'm not going to do more work if I am going to get walked out so work stops _right now_ to resolve the vaguery, so in the end there is a net loss in productivity when the message could've been, "Need to chat about , no rush", then we can minimize context loss for 2+ people. Basically the same length but clarified.