Contrary to other comments I think you’re actually trying to provide a meaningful “blunt” to “not likely to become a problem” lookup table of sorts. Hope it works.
I think that if you expanded the scope a bit to include advice on when to avoid saying something, it would be more helpful. For example, "I told you so" shouldn't really be said in most contexts. It comes off as unprofessional no matter how you say it, so there's no entry you could create that would not seem wrong. If in those cases you suggest alternatives to saying anything, it would come off better.
“This falls out of my job description but if the opportunity for a role expansion becomes available I would be happy to discuss reworking my contract to better align with these new responsibilities”
I think the suggestions are good, but the premises aren't. All of the statements that you click are an aggressive voice, but the revealed suggestion is passive.
That being said, so long as you don't feel as aggressive as the premises, you'll be okay.
On the contrary I feel like that's pretty close to what my PO and PMs do all day.
I used to work at a former Nokia company and my PO was Finnish. He would get people upset all the time by simply being too direct, especially with American colleagues.
I get mildly upset when people send me messages like this, because I know that wasn't what was in their head and that's not what they wanted to tell me.
It feels really... I don't know, like you can't even bother to speak to me like we're human beings.
I'd rather someone just talk to me like a normal person than use this corporate buzzword speak. But I was also raised in a family where you'd be told to "stop being an idiot" and then an explanation of why what you're doing was stupid. My mum wasn't one to mince words.
The suggestions here seem like they're taking a sentiment with negative framing and just recasting it in a positive light. A lot of the corrected phrases assign blame, are hostile, overly confrontational, flippant, accusatory, curt, and impolite. Are you saying this kind of communication is how you think normal humans should speak with one another? What kind of environment do you think is created when everyone speaks that way to one another? Is that a place you'd like to work?
In a high-trust environment, candor is not perceived as hostile.
When you encourage people to interpret candor as hostility, you make everyone constantly afraid of offending others. It's hard to build trust and rapport with your coworkers in that environment.
I don't think calling someone an idiot, for example, is candor. I have plenty of trust and rapport with my coworkers, and I can't imagine them saying anything of the sort on this list to me. That's actually how we've built the trust we enjoy, by not engaging in the kind of language exhibited in TFA.
If you can casually tell someone they're acting like an idiot, it's (to me) a sign that you have a level of trust with that person and the ability to empathize/communicate with each other.
If someone comes to you in private and says, "Look man, you're really fucking up.", it hits different than "You might reconsider some of your recent behaviors."
It shows that you are emotionally invested enough to use empathic language, rather than make blasé/meek innuendos to avoid any chance of offending them. The point is "You need to hear this" and not "I want to avoid offending you", which feels more productive to me.
I found myself laughing for having used a majority of these phrases in meetings or emails. To each his own, I guess.
The initial phrase is what you use in verbal communication, if you have a close working relationship. The 'professional' version goes in the email, which you assume is publicly distributed.
People do in fact speak this way in corporate situations.
I once sat in a meeting of reps from about a dozen big companies in the agchem industry. They were proposing some kind of cooperative data thing. One guy spent five minutes spouting exactly this sort of enterprise speak, and it all could have been boiled down "what's in it for us?"
I wonder if the people speaking this way in corporate settings just don’t know how to do better?
A good deal of corporate culture is people just following the patterns they see around them to conform. A good deal of culture change is just proudly, kindly, and confidently demonstrating how to do better - and having epic patience to wait for people to take notice and start following you (which might never happen.)
Like it or not, this is what a lot of enterprise communication sounds like.
Half the reason for mastering it is to avoid coming off as a huge back of dicks by inadvertently sending the wrong message through some polite-seeming offer to help or whatever.
you'd be surprised... I've had "it has come to my attention that you ran 'rm /var/log/some_random_log' when you should have enquired regarding the importance of said 'some_random_log'" instead of "wtf did you just remove some_random_log, you nut" in the past.
Agree with that, it depends on person to person, but hey, since the repo is open sourced, please feel free to make any changes and send a PR, I'll be happy to take a look at it :)
Good idea, but a lot of these feel like saying the professional way of telling someone to eat shit and die is “consume fecal matter and perish in an inferno”.
Yes. The difference between acting professionally and not is usually in what you choose to say, not how you choose to say it. Dressing up an unprofessional comment in bigger words doesn't make the comment more professional, just more pretentious.
There are some here that are okay, but a lot just shouldn't be said (like "I told you so").
This. The worst sin is the "I'm not saying X, but... (then proceeds describe a euphemized form of X)". Mentioning that you are not mentioning something is the most blatant form of passive aggression, and it's entirely counterproductive.
What’s the likely outcome of doing so?* Why are you saying it? To show you were right? To make them feel stupid for not listening to you? How will you feel afterwards? How will they feel? How will that likely affect your interactions with them in the future?
Maybe you're fine with the likely outcome. But maybe not.
* And there’s a distinction between what’s likely to happen and what you think should happen. They’re not always the same thing.
If you make a prediction correctly, and it is ignored, then that's an indication that you should either make it more assertively next time, or you just can't work with this person.
And anyway, some humbleness is due -- sometimes we think we've given good advice, but it ends up being somehow inapplicable to the problem for reasons that are outside our scope.
Maybe therein lies the rub (a fun idiom): if one wants to say "I told you so", or whichever variant to say "I was right", then one should also say "I did not tell you so", or the "I was wrong" when that person made an incorrect prediction :-D
There's nothing to gain from saying it to a coworker. You should:
- Remind them next time it's relevant - "Remember last time we touched this service and the Widget crashed and took the rest of switch down with it? I think this could be similar and we should reconsider my plan to isolate the network before hand."
- Mention it to your manager. Failing to heed a warning can be blameless and rational, but if you're consistently right when others aren't that's a sign you should have more formal influence (and responsibility). You won't get that by complaining to peers.
- If it was extremely serious (it rarely is - the really bad stuff is usually stuff no one foresaw) and your concerns dismissed out-of-hand (also rarely the case - people legitimately have different priorities), discuss it with your/their manager.
You can also of course do it if there is no other escalation path - CEOs and EMs ideally didn't get where they are by being unable to take criticism - but you should also be very sure your advice really was right, and not a stopped clock.
Yes; that's correct. There's a change of language register to "corporate workplace" but no change of meaning or intent.
I can still tell you're being an asshole even if you write in business English, so can others who read it, and no-one is giving bonus marks for "professionalism".
It's like the old gag where someone uses a thesaurus on every word in their letter to make it sound cleverer, but just ends up demonstrating their own lack of knowledge.
I've worked in the UK and in Germany. In the UK there's much more of a tendency to use roundabout phrases to get across what you mean, much like many of this site's suggestions. In Germany, people tend to be more abrupt. Both registers can be just as kind and supportive, and just as cutting and destructive. But either way, there's no magic politeness spell you can cast that stops you from appearing to be, like the parent commenter says, an asshole.
Exactly--many of these are hostile sentiments; it would be a mistake to assume that re-wording them will lead to a better outcome, as most people will (correctly) perceive the hostile intent in spite of the re-wording. A more useful list would perhaps be, "How to _not_ say", which could guide you through a way of successfully resolving the conflict when you find yourself wanting to express one of the listed sentiments.
Not only are these very passive aggressive, some of them leave you with action items that I have no desire to carry out.
If I say something isn’t my job, that’s the end of it, you hear me? I will certainly NOT be happy to waste my time helping you find someone else who can do it. Do your job.
Depending on your career goals, being the person that everyone approaches for help on finding the right path is a very valuable thing. It means they see you as a leader who can work with other people to help them get things done.
Having an attitude of “I don’t know and won’t make any effort to help you. Leave me alone” is going to negatively impact how people see you, and limit your growth potential in any company.
Maybe that’s fine for you if you just want to write code, but it will stop you from obtaining even team lead type roles where you need to collaborate with others.
But I don't think most of the rewordings suggested here are going to make people want to interact with you. They make you sound like you run your every utterance by HR, legal, and three teams of consultants but they won't keep you from seeming like an asshole.
The tradeoff here being how much of your time are you willing to dedicate towards helping others, and for what level of task.
As a general rule of thumb, I try to ask "Have you X, Y, or Z'd?" as a quick filter for if the person has engaged with the problem at all. A common example being "Do you know why I'm getting error message X?" "Have you checked the Y logs?"
Ideally, people do some amount of leg work first and proactively state what they've done. Sometimes people will do the leg work, but need to be asked to share the context they've gathered. Sometimes people ask immediately, without any investigation of their own, because you might know and be able to save them time.
Of course, having the full blown belligerent attitude of "I wont make any effort to help you" isn't very welcome, but "You should take a few hours to dive in, if you're still stuck, I'll set aside some time to take a look with you" is pretty reasonable.
I used to get annoyed at that, then I caught myself doing it to someone else (accidentally). It's surprisingly easy to do, especially if you get distracted midway through reading an email.
I've had much better success numbering all my asks, that reminds people that there's more than one question to answer. It also helps to cluster all the questions at the end of the email, when possible.
>As per my prediction, this outcome does not come as a surprise.
Whew ... that sounds quite arrogant and egoistical.
I'd probably just say "you see, I told you so" with a very friendly attitude, almost as a joke, followed by "but it's fine, let's focus on how are we going to proceed now that ...".
I agree that anyone uttering the entire phrase in isolation comes across as a pretentious douchebag.
But "as per my prediction, revenues were below target again" or "x is not functioning correctly. This does not come as a surprise" is normal enough corporatespeak, and more polite than "I told you so" because it could mean other things.
Polite: Being mindful of timelines. Let’s concentrate on the initial scope.
Blunt: That meeting sounds like a waste of my time
Polite: I’m unable to add value to this meeting but I would be happy to review the minutes.
Blunt: I told you so
Polite: As per my prediction, this outcome does not come as a surprise.
Blunt: That sounds like a horrible idea
Polite: Are we confident that this is the best solution or are we still exploring alternatives?
Blunt: I already told you this
Polite: As Indicated prior
Blunt: Can you answer all of the questions I asked and not just pick and choose one
Polite: Are you able to provide some clarity around the other questions previously asked?
Blunt: Did you even read my email?
Polite: Reattaching my email to provide further clarity
I’ll provide an update when I have one
Blunt: Stop bothering me
Polite: You have not heard from me because further information is not available at this time, Once I have an update I’ll be sure to loop you in.
Blunt: I don’t want to talk to you right now!
Polite: I am currently tied up with something but I will connect with you once I am free.
Blunt: Do your job!
Polite: It is my understanding that you are the appropriate person to contact in regards to this. But If there’s is someone better equipped for this let me know.
Blunt: That's not my job
Polite: This falls outside of my responsibilities but I would be happy to connect you with someone who can help.
Blunt: Stop assigning me so many tasks if you want any of them to get done
Polite: As my workload is quite heavy, can you help me understand what I should reprioritize to accommodate this new task?
Blunt: answer my emails
Polite: If there’s a better way to get in contact with you please let me know as I am hoping to have this resolved as soon as possible
Blunt: This is not my problem
Polite: I recommend directing this issue to [Name] as they have the proper expertise to best assist you
Blunt: If you would have read the whole email you’d know the answer to this
Polite: I have included my initial email below which contains all of the details you are looking for.
Blunt: I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about
Polite: Can you help me better understand what exactly is it that you require on my end?
Blunt: Stop micromanaging
Polite: I am confident in my ability to complete this project and will be sure to reach out, If or when I require your input.
Blunt: Please hurry and get this done!
Polite: It is important that we have this completed in order to meet our targeted deadlines which are quickly approaching.
Blunt: Stay in your own lane
Polite: Thank you for your input. I’ll keep that in mind as I move forward with decisions that fall within my responsibilities
Blunt: I’ve told you this multiple times
Polite: There seems to be a disconnect here as this information has already been provided
Blunt: I’m not doing your job for you
Polite: I do not have the capacity to take this on in addition to my own workload but I’m happy to support where it makes sense.
Blunt: We do not need to have a meeting about this.
Polite: Being respectful of everyone's time let's discuss this through email until we have a more defined agenda
Blunt: Did you just take credit for my work?
Polite: It is great to see my ideas being exposed to a wider audience and I would have appreciated the opportunity to have been included in the delivery.
Blunt: Google that your self
Polite: The internet is a great resource for these types of questions and I am available to clarify elements that you are not able to find online.
Blunt: What you are saying does not make sense
Polite: We seem to have a different understanding on this. Can you elaborate further on your thought process here?
Blunt: I am not paid enough to do this
Polite: This falls out of my job description but if the opportunity for a role expansion becomes availa...
This is a great resource that'll be useful to many people. To the author, thank you for taking the time to write these down and put them online. It would be a fascinating sociological/psychological research project to go one level deeper and give a few variants of each response, noting the implications and nuanced differences in the connotation of each.
For example, for "answer my emails", the author suggests: "If there’s a better way to get in contact with you please let me know as I am hoping to have this resolved as soon as possible". This is a totally valid and common way to say that. However, taken literally, it's silly! The person would need to read this email in order to know to suggest a different way to get in contact with the sender. Who's going to reply and say (basically) "I got your email, but please contact me with the same inquiry on (different contact method)"?
Another way to rephrase "answer my emails" would be to say "Just checking: did this email get flagged by your spam filter?" It's similarly facially silly: if it was flagged as spam, then this followup would likely also be flagged as spam, so the recipient wouldn't see it. But it signals to the recipient that you don't/won't consider their slow reply to be their fault, which could increase your likelihood of getting a reply. And other things (eg the recipient doesn't want to be seen as having a dumb spam filter, short 1-question emails get the highest response rate, the recipient now has an opportunity to immediately help clear up a simple question--was the email flagged as spam--which is an immediate reward for them, etc.).
Ah, the infinite complexity of human communication.
The website could come in handy if I ever need to translate some of these theatrics back to human speech. The ability to switch the variants around would be a nice to have ;)
Edit: removed unintentional rudeness, throwing OP a bone
Definitely you would ignore it at that time, but you can basically send a message (like that or something else) once you are back to notify about why you were not able to respond at that given time.
The thing is, "stop calling me" implies a pattern of behaviour you want them to break, not a one-off.
If it's the first call from someone who doesn't know your working pattern, then you're not really saying "stop calling me", but genuinely telling them when you are available. Putting the details in your email signature works well if you have unconventional hours for your workplace.
If it's someone close to you - e.g. line manager or team mate - then they know your hours, so responding by telling them what your hours are strikes me as less polite than simply saying "I wasn't working when you called, but here I am now."
I don't think I agree with most of these. The professional way to say "I told you so" is to not say it. If there are specific action items you can bring them up in a post mortem without pointing fingers.
If you feel like you genuinely need to let people know that something wasn't your fault (which would be a bit of an organizational red flag) that's an action item for you to make sure your interjections are more visible next time.
Agree. Haven’t gone through the whole list, but the first few strike me as avoidance wrapped in fancy jargon.
I think a direct, kind, but clear and unambiguous response would go a lot farther. Followed by a suggestion, to demonstrate you’re not just complaining, you’re trying to be helpful.
To your point about culture: feeing like you couldn’t say any of the following probably says a lot about either the environment, or about your own comfort with candor.
You are overcomplicating this -> This sounds overcomplicated to me. Have you considered X instead?
That meeting sounds like a waste of my time -> Can you clarify what you’re hoping for from me being in this meeting? Can I read the notes, or send feedback async instead?
I told you so -> (Ask yourself why you want to even say this. Then, don’t say it, and say the why instead.) 1. “Well, that’s a shame. Are you looking for suggestions on next steps?” 2. “Should we go back and consider plan X?” 3. “What did we learn from this outcome?”
I've seen it happen often enough that someone's concerns are summarily ignored that I don't think you can always blame the person raising issues for not being loud or visible enough.
The way this often goes down is that someone who is perceived as more senior will push something through, steamrolling right over well-formed interjections. If someone lower on the org chart tries to make more noise than the steam roller, the consequences can be quite bad for them.
If something then fails as predicted, why shouldn't that be noted? If someone has expertise that was ignored, that should be taken into account in the future, and part of the post mortem should be figuring out why their expertise was ignored.
The thing is, it should probably be noted by management or whoever is in the chain of responsibility and probably not by the person who was ignored, but management often doesn't want to admit mistakes of this type.
So what do you do then? How is it constructive to ignore a glaring issue in your planning and decision making process?
that's an action item for you to make sure your interjections are more visible next time.
Takes a certain skill to be tactful and deliberate enough to do this.
Yet it takes mastery and wisdom to know when to say your peace and rest on that.
It's been my experience that even with a sufficient and proper amount of CYA, visibility and otherwise intentional effort put forth so that your actions and words toe the line and dutifully provide context, one can still find themselves on the pointy end of the blame stick being wielded by the more powerful, persuasive or otherwise popular trying to cover their own asses.
You can politely explain to someone that you think they are wrong now evidenced by the fact they they were proven wrong in a similar situation before.
In fact, I would argue its literally your job to do so. You’re paid to make the right decisions AND to persuade others (and to be persuadable if you’re wrong).
If it turns out you were right but failed to convince others because you failed to present all valid arguments, then you are negligent.
Sure, I agree, politely explaining what went wrong is good. Just saying "I told you so" (or similar) is different, though, and doesn't provide any actionable information. But I get the motivation to say it, so I suggest just saying it internally to let off some steam.
Sometimes you have to highlight that specific people were wrong before, particularly in a power imbalance.
Unfortunately, most organizations don’t do distributed meritocratic decision making. The hierarchical structure is often a key component of the failure lattice, and it’s attributes and effects need to be confronted directly.
"I told you so" has no value to a conversation, relationship or business results. 100%
I think it can be very productive to say something like "hey, I'm a little upset because I tried to get ahead of this problem and to me, it didn't feel like my concerns and ideas were taken into account and now we're considerably behind. I'd like to be helpful on these types of problems in the future, can we make a change to support that?"
If the statement is just about ego, it shouldn't be said. If there's something deeper that is causing relationship or business issues, find a way to dig it up and say it clearly with the goal clearly outlined.
"I told you so", perhaps wrapped in a corpspeak package if the recipient is resonant to those frequencies, adds a lot of value in terms of me not having to handle the fallout. Yes, I know some people want to do an awesome job, be noticed or whatever, but the easier solution (and fairer) is to let the fire burn under whoever caused it. OTOH if you find yourself in a situation when you have to clean up mess that was caused by indifference to your own concerns then it simply means you've lost politically, sadly.
Personally I would prefer "I told you so" from anyone I care about instead of these lamentations. Chances are high that I would completely ignore such input depending on the situation if I were the receiver. If I did indeed do a mistake, which doesn't have to be the case in business, it will be easier to learn from it if people communicate directly.
If I am your supervisor chances are that I would package it more friendly, but it depends. More importantly is that we put this conflict behind us. Depending on the relationship it could be "I told you so, next time let us do X".
So instead of saying, "I told you so" in four words, you stretched it out to 30+ words.
I can almost guarantee that if someone is saying, "I told you so", they've probably also tried to explain to someone why X is a bad idea or why Y isn't going to work the way they think it will, or at all.
The most infuriating item I’ve ever received on a performance review was that I’d warned the engineering organization of our poor source code control practices, but then took no action to prevent the inevitable failure of Microsoft Visual Sourcesafe. (I still have that review in printed paper form from 2003.)
At the time, I felt like “no one asked me to fix this, and I was doing all these other things you did ask me to do, so why are you bitching that I didn’t fix it?”
Subsequently, I wasn’t so sure and now lean towards thinking that I was in the wrong for not taking initiative on an item that was that critical and where I was the company expert.
> The professional way to say "I told you so" is to not say it.
The professional way to say "I told you so" is to write a post mortem.
- What was the problem?
- What solutions were considered?
- Why was the chosen solution implemented?
- How did the chosen solution fail?
- How would have considered but discarded alternatives fared?
- What will be the choice in the future?
That's basically "I told you so" in report form. Just stick to the facts and it's not petty but helpful. Hidden under the ego stroke of "I told you so" is a lost opportunity to have taken the correct or better path when it was available. Understanding why that opportunity was lost is important for an organization.
Step one is for everyone to agree the outcome was poor (or for the client to say so, or the market, or senior leadership, etc.).
Otherwise writing that report is very literally "I told you so", written to make a point.
(I do think it is a related scenario where the outcome was fine but you still believe an alternative approach has value; so you then have to make a choice between accepting "my way is not the only way" and moving on or repeating your point)
- Group 1 : These alternatives suggestions are great!
- Group 2 : These alternatives sound like corporate-drone-speak that are passive-aggressive and condescending.
The differences in perception seems like a unintended Rorschach Test. The differing interpretations looks like a worthy candidate for somebody's PhD psych research paper.
Conclusion: Projecting an intended tone to a universal audience is hard. Possibly unresolvable.
I mean, it's both: They are all great (I've used many of them in the past) AND it's stupid that we have to use polite euphemistic speech at work!
I wish I could tell people at work "Check your goddamn E-mail, this is the third time I've asked you to do your job!" or "Can you stop talking? You're derailing this fucking meeting!" but we can't if we expect our careers to go anywhere besides the basement.
I think another awesome translator would be the reverse: When someone tells you something in corporate-drone-speak that sounds CorporateUpbeat, help me to figure out what it's really saying. Is this person really happy, or are they seething with rage at something I did, and can't articulate their anger in a work setting without coating it with passive aggressive euphemisms?
If someone needed to tell you to check your email, or stop interrupting the meeting, how would you want them to do it? How would you want to have others see you being told that?
"Hey, [name], could you check your E-mail? Your TPS report was due yesterday!" I mean, it's not offensive, and if I did screw up, I would want to know clearly and directly that I screwed up.
I've worked in a blue collar setting where people were direct and unambiguous. "You need to put the wrench back after you're done using it." is much better than "I would like to encourage you to address the speed at which you submit your TPS reports, given our well understood weekly cadence."
But generally I think that's where a lot of conflict in workplaces (and not only there) comes from. People have different preferences for talking, also because of having different goals, speaking habits and interests. Telling someone who speaks very diplomatically to read their goddamn email might come off intimidating while another person might just think this is really important. Or vice-versa passive aggressive/condescending. Both sides knowing this would already help a lot. IMHO this would even make frameworks like non-violent communication obsolete. People trying to bend their way of talking too much is definitely not fun
So almost like a training on different metalanguages we use? Not sure if that's the right word for it, maybe linguistic styles? I hesitate to use "communication styles" as I don't think it gets to the core language part of it, but maybe communication styles. EDIT: maybe "emotional communication"?
I ask because I work in this space and have avoided going into corporate spaces after quitting consulting about 10 years ago and am curious to dive back in.
Is there a term for it that resonates more with you?
Yeah metalanguages sounds good. I was also thinking of tongue or jargon, but metalanguages seems less ambiguous/more polished (not a native speaker anyway) Ah cool, that's definitely a useful job. In my last adventure in the corporate space as engineer that was definitely a topic.
(To answer the edit: I think this emotional communication reminds me so much of EQ and all this. Dealing directly on the language layer with this seems more next level I would say)
Ahh thank you! Emotional metalanguage? Haha probably too much. EDIT: "emotional" is probably too taboo for most workplaces currently. However I hope in the future we realize just how integral emotion is to communication—it's there whether we want to admit it or not.
Yes, that's how I'm hoping to act more these days. I've been locked into trying to project a certainty in business and I want to project more uncertainty, more experimental energy instead of "I know the answer" energy.
> At least it sounds less technical
Haha, true. But maybe the more technical works for the engineering places? Maybe I'll use both. "Emotional communication from a metalinguistic perspective." :-D
Or, "I teach people how to say how they feel." Which is pretty close to how one might say it using Natural Semantic Metalanguage[0].
"Professionally" might be rephrased as "approved use of corporate speak." Anytime anyone uses the words "unable", "reach out", "elaborate", "expertise" or "input" you know they're bucking for promotion, as they say in the military.
You need to translate another phrase: "You are sucking up."
This project is not just inspired by her work, but takes her jokes verbatim in written format. I you quote people, you're supposed to use quotation marks.
Of course if this is a collaboration, things are different, but it's not clear that it is.
I understand where you're coming from, this is not a collaboration but as you mentioned, the content is presented in written format which is a bit more easily searchable.
These are just some phrases and not "quoting people's thoughts", I did not consider adding quotation marks to each phrase.
I have added relevant credits every place possible (on web as well as code repo). I'll be happy to make the intent more clear if you have any ideas on how you would feel it can be best represented.
Agree with you, I have added the credits on the top section as well. As far as it goes about stating my intentions about making the content searchable, I feel that the input box for search pretty much conveys that, so I won't be explicitly mentioning this in writing (not at least on the website).
Thank you for your suggestions.
I hope that junior engineers/employees take all of these with a grain of salt. You can't skip meetings because you won't add to them. Part of your job is to observe and learn.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 225 ms ] threadthe hard part is how to not come off passive aggressive
many (all?) of the places i worked at, the professional versions suggested would get a negative reaction
ultimately, that’s not this tools fault
humans hate to be asked to do anything ever
I see you’ve chosen to play with fire.
is how I’d read this version, which is a threat
That being said, so long as you don't feel as aggressive as the premises, you'll be okay.
No human being speaks to someone else like this in a normal situation. Just say what you mean and stop dancing around silly social games like this.
I used to work at a former Nokia company and my PO was Finnish. He would get people upset all the time by simply being too direct, especially with American colleagues.
I get mildly upset when people send me messages like this, because I know that wasn't what was in their head and that's not what they wanted to tell me.
It feels really... I don't know, like you can't even bother to speak to me like we're human beings.
I'd rather someone just talk to me like a normal person than use this corporate buzzword speak. But I was also raised in a family where you'd be told to "stop being an idiot" and then an explanation of why what you're doing was stupid. My mum wasn't one to mince words.
When you encourage people to interpret candor as hostility, you make everyone constantly afraid of offending others. It's hard to build trust and rapport with your coworkers in that environment.
If you can casually tell someone they're acting like an idiot, it's (to me) a sign that you have a level of trust with that person and the ability to empathize/communicate with each other.
If someone comes to you in private and says, "Look man, you're really fucking up.", it hits different than "You might reconsider some of your recent behaviors."
It shows that you are emotionally invested enough to use empathic language, rather than make blasé/meek innuendos to avoid any chance of offending them. The point is "You need to hear this" and not "I want to avoid offending you", which feels more productive to me.
The initial phrase is what you use in verbal communication, if you have a close working relationship. The 'professional' version goes in the email, which you assume is publicly distributed.
I once sat in a meeting of reps from about a dozen big companies in the agchem industry. They were proposing some kind of cooperative data thing. One guy spent five minutes spouting exactly this sort of enterprise speak, and it all could have been boiled down "what's in it for us?"
A good deal of corporate culture is people just following the patterns they see around them to conform. A good deal of culture change is just proudly, kindly, and confidently demonstrating how to do better - and having epic patience to wait for people to take notice and start following you (which might never happen.)
Half the reason for mastering it is to avoid coming off as a huge back of dicks by inadvertently sending the wrong message through some polite-seeming offer to help or whatever.
Some of them might require slight changes depending on the context to not sound too passive aggressive.
I do feel like I have some even better suggestions. When I get back to my computer, I’m so taking you up on this.
There are some here that are okay, but a lot just shouldn't be said (like "I told you so").
If I told someone something and they ignore it, potentially even multiple times why should I not say it?
Maybe you're fine with the likely outcome. But maybe not.
* And there’s a distinction between what’s likely to happen and what you think should happen. They’re not always the same thing.
If you make a prediction correctly, and it is ignored, then that's an indication that you should either make it more assertively next time, or you just can't work with this person.
And anyway, some humbleness is due -- sometimes we think we've given good advice, but it ends up being somehow inapplicable to the problem for reasons that are outside our scope.
- Remind them next time it's relevant - "Remember last time we touched this service and the Widget crashed and took the rest of switch down with it? I think this could be similar and we should reconsider my plan to isolate the network before hand."
- Mention it to your manager. Failing to heed a warning can be blameless and rational, but if you're consistently right when others aren't that's a sign you should have more formal influence (and responsibility). You won't get that by complaining to peers.
- If it was extremely serious (it rarely is - the really bad stuff is usually stuff no one foresaw) and your concerns dismissed out-of-hand (also rarely the case - people legitimately have different priorities), discuss it with your/their manager.
You can also of course do it if there is no other escalation path - CEOs and EMs ideally didn't get where they are by being unable to take criticism - but you should also be very sure your advice really was right, and not a stopped clock.
OP's site adjusts the register to something more polite.
The confrontational statements are still confrontational when phrased more politely.
I can still tell you're being an asshole even if you write in business English, so can others who read it, and no-one is giving bonus marks for "professionalism".
I've worked in the UK and in Germany. In the UK there's much more of a tendency to use roundabout phrases to get across what you mean, much like many of this site's suggestions. In Germany, people tend to be more abrupt. Both registers can be just as kind and supportive, and just as cutting and destructive. But either way, there's no magic politeness spell you can cast that stops you from appearing to be, like the parent commenter says, an asshole.
LATIN: Stercorem pro cerebro habes.
WHAT YOU SAY IT MEANS: That's certainly food for thought.
WHAT IT REALLY MEANS: You have shit for brains.
If I say something isn’t my job, that’s the end of it, you hear me? I will certainly NOT be happy to waste my time helping you find someone else who can do it. Do your job.
Having an attitude of “I don’t know and won’t make any effort to help you. Leave me alone” is going to negatively impact how people see you, and limit your growth potential in any company.
Maybe that’s fine for you if you just want to write code, but it will stop you from obtaining even team lead type roles where you need to collaborate with others.
As a general rule of thumb, I try to ask "Have you X, Y, or Z'd?" as a quick filter for if the person has engaged with the problem at all. A common example being "Do you know why I'm getting error message X?" "Have you checked the Y logs?"
Ideally, people do some amount of leg work first and proactively state what they've done. Sometimes people will do the leg work, but need to be asked to share the context they've gathered. Sometimes people ask immediately, without any investigation of their own, because you might know and be able to save them time.
Of course, having the full blown belligerent attitude of "I wont make any effort to help you" isn't very welcome, but "You should take a few hours to dive in, if you're still stuck, I'll set aside some time to take a look with you" is pretty reasonable.
The message I want to send is clear. When you want code, come to me. Everything else, I can’t be bothered.
That hit close to home.
I've had much better success numbering all my asks, that reminds people that there's more than one question to answer. It also helps to cluster all the questions at the end of the email, when possible.
>As per my prediction, this outcome does not come as a surprise.
Whew ... that sounds quite arrogant and egoistical.
I'd probably just say "you see, I told you so" with a very friendly attitude, almost as a joke, followed by "but it's fine, let's focus on how are we going to proceed now that ...".
But "as per my prediction, revenues were below target again" or "x is not functioning correctly. This does not come as a surprise" is normal enough corporatespeak, and more polite than "I told you so" because it could mean other things.
Blunt: You are overcomplicating this
Polite: Being mindful of timelines. Let’s concentrate on the initial scope.
Blunt: That meeting sounds like a waste of my time
Polite: I’m unable to add value to this meeting but I would be happy to review the minutes.
Blunt: I told you so
Polite: As per my prediction, this outcome does not come as a surprise.
Blunt: That sounds like a horrible idea
Polite: Are we confident that this is the best solution or are we still exploring alternatives?
Blunt: I already told you this
Polite: As Indicated prior
Blunt: Can you answer all of the questions I asked and not just pick and choose one
Polite: Are you able to provide some clarity around the other questions previously asked?
Blunt: Did you even read my email?
Polite: Reattaching my email to provide further clarity
I’ll provide an update when I have one
Blunt: Stop bothering me
Polite: You have not heard from me because further information is not available at this time, Once I have an update I’ll be sure to loop you in.
Blunt: I don’t want to talk to you right now!
Polite: I am currently tied up with something but I will connect with you once I am free.
Blunt: Do your job!
Polite: It is my understanding that you are the appropriate person to contact in regards to this. But If there’s is someone better equipped for this let me know.
Blunt: That's not my job
Polite: This falls outside of my responsibilities but I would be happy to connect you with someone who can help.
Blunt: Stop assigning me so many tasks if you want any of them to get done
Polite: As my workload is quite heavy, can you help me understand what I should reprioritize to accommodate this new task?
Blunt: answer my emails
Polite: If there’s a better way to get in contact with you please let me know as I am hoping to have this resolved as soon as possible
Blunt: This is not my problem
Polite: I recommend directing this issue to [Name] as they have the proper expertise to best assist you
Blunt: If you would have read the whole email you’d know the answer to this
Polite: I have included my initial email below which contains all of the details you are looking for.
Blunt: I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about
Polite: Can you help me better understand what exactly is it that you require on my end?
Blunt: Stop micromanaging
Polite: I am confident in my ability to complete this project and will be sure to reach out, If or when I require your input.
Blunt: Please hurry and get this done!
Polite: It is important that we have this completed in order to meet our targeted deadlines which are quickly approaching.
Blunt: Stay in your own lane
Polite: Thank you for your input. I’ll keep that in mind as I move forward with decisions that fall within my responsibilities
Blunt: I’ve told you this multiple times
Polite: There seems to be a disconnect here as this information has already been provided
Blunt: I’m not doing your job for you
Polite: I do not have the capacity to take this on in addition to my own workload but I’m happy to support where it makes sense.
Blunt: We do not need to have a meeting about this.
Polite: Being respectful of everyone's time let's discuss this through email until we have a more defined agenda
Blunt: Did you just take credit for my work?
Polite: It is great to see my ideas being exposed to a wider audience and I would have appreciated the opportunity to have been included in the delivery.
Blunt: Google that your self
Polite: The internet is a great resource for these types of questions and I am available to clarify elements that you are not able to find online.
Blunt: What you are saying does not make sense
Polite: We seem to have a different understanding on this. Can you elaborate further on your thought process here?
Blunt: I am not paid enough to do this
Polite: This falls out of my job description but if the opportunity for a role expansion becomes availa...
For example, for "answer my emails", the author suggests: "If there’s a better way to get in contact with you please let me know as I am hoping to have this resolved as soon as possible". This is a totally valid and common way to say that. However, taken literally, it's silly! The person would need to read this email in order to know to suggest a different way to get in contact with the sender. Who's going to reply and say (basically) "I got your email, but please contact me with the same inquiry on (different contact method)"?
Another way to rephrase "answer my emails" would be to say "Just checking: did this email get flagged by your spam filter?" It's similarly facially silly: if it was flagged as spam, then this followup would likely also be flagged as spam, so the recipient wouldn't see it. But it signals to the recipient that you don't/won't consider their slow reply to be their fault, which could increase your likelihood of getting a reply. And other things (eg the recipient doesn't want to be seen as having a dumb spam filter, short 1-question emails get the highest response rate, the recipient now has an opportunity to immediately help clear up a simple question--was the email flagged as spam--which is an immediate reward for them, etc.).
Ah, the infinite complexity of human communication.
The website could come in handy if I ever need to translate some of these theatrics back to human speech. The ability to switch the variants around would be a nice to have ;)
Edit: removed unintentional rudeness, throwing OP a bone
In what circumstances would you use this phrase?
If they are calling you out of hours, ignore it. They'll eventually get the message.
If it's the first call from someone who doesn't know your working pattern, then you're not really saying "stop calling me", but genuinely telling them when you are available. Putting the details in your email signature works well if you have unconventional hours for your workplace.
If it's someone close to you - e.g. line manager or team mate - then they know your hours, so responding by telling them what your hours are strikes me as less polite than simply saying "I wasn't working when you called, but here I am now."
If my idea sucks, just tell me so and we can talk about why, don't beat around the bush with ambiguous politically correct words.
If you feel like you genuinely need to let people know that something wasn't your fault (which would be a bit of an organizational red flag) that's an action item for you to make sure your interjections are more visible next time.
I think a direct, kind, but clear and unambiguous response would go a lot farther. Followed by a suggestion, to demonstrate you’re not just complaining, you’re trying to be helpful.
To your point about culture: feeing like you couldn’t say any of the following probably says a lot about either the environment, or about your own comfort with candor.
You are overcomplicating this -> This sounds overcomplicated to me. Have you considered X instead?
That meeting sounds like a waste of my time -> Can you clarify what you’re hoping for from me being in this meeting? Can I read the notes, or send feedback async instead?
I told you so -> (Ask yourself why you want to even say this. Then, don’t say it, and say the why instead.) 1. “Well, that’s a shame. Are you looking for suggestions on next steps?” 2. “Should we go back and consider plan X?” 3. “What did we learn from this outcome?”
The way this often goes down is that someone who is perceived as more senior will push something through, steamrolling right over well-formed interjections. If someone lower on the org chart tries to make more noise than the steam roller, the consequences can be quite bad for them.
If something then fails as predicted, why shouldn't that be noted? If someone has expertise that was ignored, that should be taken into account in the future, and part of the post mortem should be figuring out why their expertise was ignored.
The thing is, it should probably be noted by management or whoever is in the chain of responsibility and probably not by the person who was ignored, but management often doesn't want to admit mistakes of this type.
So what do you do then? How is it constructive to ignore a glaring issue in your planning and decision making process?
Takes a certain skill to be tactful and deliberate enough to do this.
Yet it takes mastery and wisdom to know when to say your peace and rest on that.
It's been my experience that even with a sufficient and proper amount of CYA, visibility and otherwise intentional effort put forth so that your actions and words toe the line and dutifully provide context, one can still find themselves on the pointy end of the blame stick being wielded by the more powerful, persuasive or otherwise popular trying to cover their own asses.
In fact, I would argue its literally your job to do so. You’re paid to make the right decisions AND to persuade others (and to be persuadable if you’re wrong).
If it turns out you were right but failed to convince others because you failed to present all valid arguments, then you are negligent.
Unfortunately, most organizations don’t do distributed meritocratic decision making. The hierarchical structure is often a key component of the failure lattice, and it’s attributes and effects need to be confronted directly.
I think it can be very productive to say something like "hey, I'm a little upset because I tried to get ahead of this problem and to me, it didn't feel like my concerns and ideas were taken into account and now we're considerably behind. I'd like to be helpful on these types of problems in the future, can we make a change to support that?"
If the statement is just about ego, it shouldn't be said. If there's something deeper that is causing relationship or business issues, find a way to dig it up and say it clearly with the goal clearly outlined.
If I am your supervisor chances are that I would package it more friendly, but it depends. More importantly is that we put this conflict behind us. Depending on the relationship it could be "I told you so, next time let us do X".
I can almost guarantee that if someone is saying, "I told you so", they've probably also tried to explain to someone why X is a bad idea or why Y isn't going to work the way they think it will, or at all.
At the time, I felt like “no one asked me to fix this, and I was doing all these other things you did ask me to do, so why are you bitching that I didn’t fix it?”
Subsequently, I wasn’t so sure and now lean towards thinking that I was in the wrong for not taking initiative on an item that was that critical and where I was the company expert.
The professional way to say "I told you so" is to write a post mortem.
- What was the problem?
- What solutions were considered?
- Why was the chosen solution implemented?
- How did the chosen solution fail?
- How would have considered but discarded alternatives fared?
- What will be the choice in the future?
That's basically "I told you so" in report form. Just stick to the facts and it's not petty but helpful. Hidden under the ego stroke of "I told you so" is a lost opportunity to have taken the correct or better path when it was available. Understanding why that opportunity was lost is important for an organization.
Step one is for everyone to agree the outcome was poor (or for the client to say so, or the market, or senior leadership, etc.).
Otherwise writing that report is very literally "I told you so", written to make a point.
(I do think it is a related scenario where the outcome was fine but you still believe an alternative approach has value; so you then have to make a choice between accepting "my way is not the only way" and moving on or repeating your point)
- Group 1 : These alternatives suggestions are great!
- Group 2 : These alternatives sound like corporate-drone-speak that are passive-aggressive and condescending.
The differences in perception seems like a unintended Rorschach Test. The differing interpretations looks like a worthy candidate for somebody's PhD psych research paper.
Conclusion: Projecting an intended tone to a universal audience is hard. Possibly unresolvable.
I wish I could tell people at work "Check your goddamn E-mail, this is the third time I've asked you to do your job!" or "Can you stop talking? You're derailing this fucking meeting!" but we can't if we expect our careers to go anywhere besides the basement.
I think another awesome translator would be the reverse: When someone tells you something in corporate-drone-speak that sounds CorporateUpbeat, help me to figure out what it's really saying. Is this person really happy, or are they seething with rage at something I did, and can't articulate their anger in a work setting without coating it with passive aggressive euphemisms?
I've worked in a blue collar setting where people were direct and unambiguous. "You need to put the wrench back after you're done using it." is much better than "I would like to encourage you to address the speed at which you submit your TPS reports, given our well understood weekly cadence."
I ask because I work in this space and have avoided going into corporate spaces after quitting consulting about 10 years ago and am curious to dive back in.
Is there a term for it that resonates more with you?
(To answer the edit: I think this emotional communication reminds me so much of EQ and all this. Dealing directly on the language layer with this seems more next level I would say)
Yes, that's how I'm hoping to act more these days. I've been locked into trying to project a certainty in business and I want to project more uncertainty, more experimental energy instead of "I know the answer" energy.
> At least it sounds less technical
Haha, true. But maybe the more technical works for the engineering places? Maybe I'll use both. "Emotional communication from a metalinguistic perspective." :-D
Or, "I teach people how to say how they feel." Which is pretty close to how one might say it using Natural Semantic Metalanguage[0].
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_semantic_metalanguage
You need to translate another phrase: "You are sucking up."
https://www.tiktok.com/@loewhaley
For people not familiar with her content, take a look e.g. here: https://www.instagram.com/p/CcDPE1MOIBT/
This project is not just inspired by her work, but takes her jokes verbatim in written format. I you quote people, you're supposed to use quotation marks.
Of course if this is a collaboration, things are different, but it's not clear that it is.
These are just some phrases and not "quoting people's thoughts", I did not consider adding quotation marks to each phrase.
I have added relevant credits every place possible (on web as well as code repo). I'll be happy to make the intent more clear if you have any ideas on how you would feel it can be best represented.
Edit: And state your intentions, i.e. making the content searchable.