Popular Post ednaz Posted December 11, 2019 Popular Post Share Posted December 11, 2019 Discourse that rapidly declines into ad hominem attacks is to a great extent caused by people mistaking rudeness for frankness, mistaking being an asshat with not being politically correct, confusing arrogance with confidence, and overall taking everything way too personally by making everything way too personal. (That last one is the connection to religion...) The biggest compliment I got in my decades of business strategy and technology consulting was from a client who told me that I was the only person who could tell him that most of the decisions they made were wrong, that the application was built to anti-scale, that their strategy was so inward looking that it drives customers away... and they'd nod their heads with me, sigh, and say, well then, let's get to work fixing all that. (And btw, that is what I got paid for.) Or as he put it more colloquially, I could tell him "his baby's ugly" along with "and you and your wife aren't such a feast for the eyes either" in a way that he'd not take it personally but as honest observations, and would start asking for tips about hair styling and lighting and makeup. I didn't pull punches, or sugarcoat. But I stuck to honest, objective facts, and stayed away from I think, I feel, I believe. You can do that in business and in technical realms. I'm not sure that it's all that possible in more subjective realms. Disagreeing agreeably, being destructive in a constructive way, downgrading a product or strategy without degrading it - all are actual skills, maybe even arts, that must (and can be) learned and practiced and polished. And if you can't do it, perhaps you shouldn't, until you put in the time and effort to learn how to disagree in an agreeable way. thyname, The Computer Audiophile, Teresa and 2 others 2 1 2 Link to comment
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