Blunt when necessary

September 5, 2012 by · 3 Comments

“If you could please send me that report sometime soon, that would be awesome.”

Why do we say strange things like this, instead of the more direct, “Send me that report, please”?

Linguist Steven Pinker explains:

It’s a bit of a social dilemma. On the one hand, you do want the salt [in our case, the report]. On the other hand, you don’t want to boss people around lightly. So you split the difference by saying something that literally makes no sense while also conveying the message that you’re not treating them like some kind of flunky.

Unfortunately, this politness can produce unintended consequences. A one page memo turns into three. A twenty minute meeting, turns into sixty. The cumulative effect: a whole lot of wasted time and unnecessary delay.

Vineet Nayar, Chief Executive of HCL Technologies understands these costs:

So, my meetings are not polite. They are fairly blunt on both sides, and they really come down to the crux of the issues, and we are done with it pretty fast. I’ll ask right in the beginning, “What do you want?” Sometimes it’s “I need your approval.” Approved. Thirty seconds, meeting is over. Go and do what you want to do.

In the interest of speed, most of us need to learn to be blunter, when necessary. And the best way to start is to give others the permission to be blunter with you when necessary.

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  • http://twitter.com/CUfan CUfan

    Great point. And I’ll hook on and recommend that we not only make the request directly, but we also add a time frame and brief explanation as to why we need “it” when we do, as well as checking to be sure the other person can meet your deadline. For example, “Send me that report, please” becomes “Send me that report by 9:00 a.m. tomorrow. That will allow me time to review it before the board meeting. Will that work for you?” That gives the other person the what, when, why, and an opportunity to negotiate if our deadline won’t work for them. Common sense, but not common practice as we say around here.

  • Erwinemg

    Efficiency isn’t everything. Folks in the U.S. are often considered rude and this hang-up with efficiency in social interactions may be why. My wife & I witnessed a shift change at our hotel in France. Everybody greeted everyone else, exchanged personal pleasantries, & did the European kisses on both cheeks.

    We got home went to a local restaurant for lunch and witnessed this exchange:

    “What’ll ya have?”

    “Special.” (Not even THE special)

    “4 dollars. Next.”

  • http://cocreatr.typepad.com CoCreatr

    I like blunt in the context of a corporate meeting. May work not so good in e-mail, in client interaction, or in informal meeting with colleagues.

    Client meetings in Japan can be blunt or appear evasive. Successful business begins with polite pleasantries because building trust is the basis of building business.

    On making e-mail work, Elaine Stirling advocates the I/you/we approach in her book The Corporate Storyteller.