Paul: [00:00:06] Welcome to Employing Differences, a conversation about exploring the collaborative space between individuals.

Karen: [00:00:13] I'm Karen Gimnig.

Paul: [00:00:14] And I'm Paul Tevis.

Karen: [00:00:16] Each episode, we start with a question and see where it takes us. This week's question is: Does directness work?

Paul: [00:00:24] We want to start this episode with a little bit of a disclaimer, which is Karen and I both have a tendency to be relatively direct in a lot of things. There are a number of different communication styles out there. One of the things that we've discovered in working together on things is that we're both pretty clear about things that we think we share pretty directly, things that we want.

Paul: [00:00:45] And particularly when we get asked questions, we tend to answer them pretty clearly. And that sometimes gets us in trouble. Because this idea of directness, or indirectness, is a thing that lives in the space between. This is sometimes a difference between people about how direct or indirect they are about talking about things.

Paul: [00:01:06] We've talked a long, long time ago about these ideas of ask-versus-guess culture, and we're kind of in that space as well here. So we want to talk a little bit today about things that we've discovered, benefits of being relatively direct, and also some drawbacks, and things that we can try to do to mitigate some of those things. We're going to explore some misunderstandings that are humorous in hindsight that we've occasionally had in some conversations.

Karen: [00:01:34] Yeah, I think that's very well put. And I definitely have spent a lot of my life cleaning up messes that came because somebody asked me a question and I gave them a clear and decisive answer. And in fact, what they wanted was something that felt to them softer, more collaborative, more engaging. And some of this really is culture, and it's what we grew up with and it's what we expect.

Karen: [00:01:59] But we find that for people who are very direct, and like to be very direct, we can get very frustrated with people who aren't. So people who come up and say, as both of my husbands have done things like, 'Do you want this?' And I think, 'Do I want that?' And then I answer them, 'Yes, I do.' 'No, I don't.' Whatever the thing is, absolutely clearly. And they tell me later that they have been run over because I didn't make room for their opinion. And I think 'You didn't give me any opinion to make room for! I didn't have any idea that was there!' 

Karen: [00:02:37] So the first hint I'll give about making directness work is get curious when questions come at you. And, you know, learn what the dynamic is. With Paul, we have enough of a relationship. We are two very direct people. I don't have to worry so much about that, but with a lot of people that matter to me in my life, if they come at me with 'What do you want?' Somewhere in my response to that, I need to make room for what they want. Because they may not be a person who's going to front and center their wants or needs.

Karen: [00:03:10] And my tendency to 'You asked me for an opinion? I'll have one!' even if it doesn't matter very much to me, can leave them feeling run over. And that there's no space for them even about a thing that I'm totally happy to do their way if I just knew what that was, kind of thing. So I am contributing to a communication pattern that actually denies me the information that I need to function well in the relationship.

Paul: [00:03:34] Karen told me this story before we started recording and I laughed because it's, it plays out in a lot of situations in my life as well. So it was very familiar to me. And I think part of the reason why I'm relatively direct about those things, 'If you ask me to have an opinion, I'll have one', is because I've actually come from the other side. I've come from the 'Well, I don't know! What do you want?' And so that's a space where I'm not contributing to the conversation really at all. And I'm putting it all back onto the person who's asked me.

Paul: [00:04:01] And what I'm trying to do in that space is to make room for their opinion. But I'm not helping because I'm not actually contributing to the conversation. That's not what they were looking for. They wanted to know, like, what did I think about a thing? And to the thing that you were saying, Karen, I think it is really important to make room that both of us actually get to have an opinion about this. We get to have a preference, and then we can sort through, given that these are our individual preferences or what we want, what do we want to do about that together?

Paul: [00:04:31] And so the idea of, 'Hey, I'm going to ask the other person, what do they also think?' whereas that is something that I've picked up. Another thing that I've picked up that I found useful that helps me to be direct or to be clear, but without being rigid, is to also signpost 'Here's how strongly held that opinion is'. Because it might be, if we're trying to figure out, for example 'Where might we get dinner from tonight?' If it's me, I probably haven't thought about it at all until I get asked the question. So I don't actually have an opinion until it shows up.

Paul: [00:05:04] But, you know, I can say, 'You know, I was thinking maybe something like this or this other place. I did this the other night. I'm not really sure what I would do, but, you know, don't feel strongly about any of those. What do you have in mind?' That's very different than 'I've been craving tacos from Los Arroyos all week. Could we do that?'. 

Paul: [00:05:24] Like, try to be clear with both of those things, both around what it is that I think or that I want, and also how strongly I think or I want that. So that the other person's got more information to work from. And then also get curious, as you said, about what do they think or want.

Karen: [00:05:40] Yeah. And I think that invites them to do the same thing. So if, you know, if you've said, 'Well, I don't really feel strongly, but there's this idea or that idea', the other person might say, 'Oh good! Because I do feel strongly, I'm craving oysters' or whatever the thing is. Or they might say, 'Yeah, me either.' You know, like neither one of us has a good idea.

Karen: [00:06:00] And I want to bring in another possibility, which is sometimes the thing that my partner needs to know, whether it's my relationship life partner or a work partner. All of this applies outside of wedded relationships, but sometimes the thing they need to know isn't actually the answer to the question.

Karen: [00:06:18] So if they're saying, 'What do you want to do about dinner tonight', I have been known to say 'I want to do nothing except eat it. I would just like you to take care of it. I don't have the capacity to make the decision.' And that's clearly ceding that decision making to them, like it's letting them know. But so it's not answering the question they asked. But it is giving them the information that they need and it's showing up with where I am with it.

Karen: [00:06:44] And of course, if they also don't want to do anything about it, then there's more conversation to have. But most of the time. Most of the time, if everybody can get their needs, wants, ideas, opinions into the conversation, along with the strength of 'how much does it matter to me or not', 'how much have I thought about it?' 'Where am I in my process around it?' If those things all show up together most of the time, everybody can get what they care about.

Paul: [00:07:16] Yeah. Again, it's about making that space and not, you know, holding your own thing back. I mean that is the thing about being direct. People generally know what you think because you're putting it out there. But 'Are they getting the information that they need?' I think is a really important thing to think about. Because that's something that shows up for me.

Paul: [00:07:35] I worked with a product manager for years who would come into my office and he'd ask a very specific question. 'How long would it take to do this?' 'Do we have this capability?' Like, it was always framed in such a way that I knew there was something else behind it, but didn't know what it was. And I didn't want to assume that I knew what it was. So I'd ask about it. Because I want to make sure that I was actually giving him the information that he needed.

Paul: [00:07:57] So this is the thing that I do very often now. If someone asks me a question, I'll answer it as clearly and directly as I can, but then I want to check and see did I actually give them the information they needed? And so I'll usually ask something along the lines of 'What's behind that question?' Or 'What are you thinking about?' I try to avoid the often accusatory 'Why do you ask?' unless that is an agreed upon protocol vernacular with the people that I'm working with or interacting with.

Paul: [00:08:26] But it's like, I can answer that question. But for me, I also need to know more about the context to make sure that I'm actually giving you the relevant piece of information. I know that I have a tendency to kind of drone on and do a lot of storytelling, so I'm trying to be efficient in the information that I pass along. But in order for me to do that, and to be respectful of the other person's time and attention, I kind of need to know what it is that they're trying to do with the information that I'm giving them. So I can make sure that I'm direct about the thing that actually matters. Because that's the thing, is that if I'm direct and I'm precise, I may be omitting all kinds of detail that would be useful to them if I knew what the real question that they had was.

Karen: [00:09:06] Yeah, and I think this is where that direct thing is useful. But also you want to be careful around it. And some of this too is kind of knowing 'Do I tend towards being very direct?' Then I want to think about softening. Do I tend towards being very accommodating, very flexible, maybe hesitant, slow to give my opinion, then I might want to lean into saying things more directly. So some of that is sort of self knowledge.

Karen: [00:09:35] But for those who are tending to be direct and wondering, can it work, one of the things I've learned to do is to add some language around whatever I'm saying that gives space for other ideas. And so I'll give you some of my favourites. And literally just putting these words ahead of whatever else you were going to say can make a big difference.

Karen: [00:09:54] So one of them is, 'The story I'm telling myself'. If I frame it that way, that means there is another story possible, and somebody else has the safety to give it.

Karen: [00:10:05] Another is 'From where I'm sitting, it seems like'. So I can still give a very direct, clear view. But again, making space for if you're not sitting where I'm sitting, it sure might look like something else.

Karen: [00:10:19] Or 'What I'm seeing about this is'. Anything that's very much claiming this is what's coming out of my perspective, my head, my space. And then you can follow with your very direct, very clear, very decisive kind of statement, with still leaving that space for somebody else to come in.

Karen: [00:10:38] Now, I will say, if you put the words on and you don't mean them, that's a different situation. But what I had the experience of, in my younger years before I learned some of this stuff, was that I didn't think I was bulldozing or demanding or being rigid in my head. I was totally open to other ideas, and it wasn't heard. And so putting some of that language in kind of compensated for my usual my sort of natural tone of speech that can be a little, it can land a little more strongly than I intend it to, or a little more definitively than I intend it to. Adding that language when it was aligned with what I was actually thinking, helped it land the way that I meant it.

Paul: [00:11:21] There's a piece there, when you talk about sort of knowing your own tendencies, and where you tend to go on these, and counterbalancing them usefully. So it can be things like if I know that the things that I say that can be very direct can be taken as harsh, then I want to temper that with some kindness. How can I temper that? If I know that my directness can sound like arrogance, then I want to temper it with some humility, which is kind of what you were talking about in there of like recognizing 'This is my own personal experience and I'm going to be clearer about it that this is my experience, but I'm not going to necessarily overgeneralize and say this is always true.' So there is a piece of recognizing how to temper that and counterbalance it.

Paul: [00:12:02] And I'm reminded of crucial conversations. They talk about the idea of contrasting statements. Where it's like, 'I know that this can be taken in a certain way so I start by saying, "Now I don't want you to think that". I think I have all the answers here.' And then you say the thing you're going to say, which is kind of an additional piece to that of the like, 'I know how this could go badly.' And so I want to flag that.

Paul: [00:12:27] And when we do that, it has a tendency to now it makes the other person aware that, 'Oh, we know that this could come across in a certain way.' And if it does, sometimes they feel a little more comfortable saying, 'Yeah, it did sound a little that way.' But yeah, but this whole idea of, you know, when we say things, when we share information and perspectives, and preferences and opinions. 

Paul: [00:12:51] Like, when we're trying to do that in a working relationship, and a personal relationship, at any time where there's this collaboration in this space between, we need to make sure that we're doing it in a way that all of our perspectives are able to get in there. And so doing things where we kind of temper our own thing, where we make space for the other person, where we're curious about what's going on. All of those things help us to be clear without steamrolling, without crowding out the other person.

Karen: [00:13:18] Yeah. So in terms of does directness work, recognizing that I come, we both to some extent come very much from the bias of a favoring of directness. I'm going to say I think directness does work. I think it works incredibly well if it lands as relational. If we are being direct and collaborative.

Karen: [00:13:40] So being clear, even decisive, saying what we want, all of that I think is super useful. If we soften it with whatever it takes to avoid the sort of arrogance, rigidity or the perception of arrogance and rigidity and ego and all of that, that can leave people feeling steamrolled.

Karen: [00:13:59] So how do we do that? We want to be really thoughtful about what information do people need. Share the information both about what you think, and how strongly you think it. Or what you want and how strongly you want it.

Karen: [00:14:12] Also share information about how you would like it to land. So if I don't want it to land as a 'Definitive. Nobody can argue with me' answer, then say something that makes it clear that there's room for that. 'It seems to me', 'The story I'm telling myself', you know, 'One direction I am thinking about', anything that creates space for that humility. For that other person to have a different opinion and bring it into the conversation.

Karen: [00:14:40] If we can do all of that, then being direct is super useful. And of course the flip side is that if we're a person who's really good at softening, and humility, and being hesitant, making room for other people's ideas, a little more directness in the equation could be a very useful thing. Certainly, I would appreciate it if you're talking to me, but that might just be how to work with me.

Paul: [00:15:05] Well, that's going to do it for us today. Until next time, I'm Paul Tevis.

Karen: [00:15:09] And I'm Karen Gimnig. And this has been Employing Differences.