Plain Spoken

For my entire adult life, I’ve been plain-spoken. Never one to mince words, I call it like I see it. When people ask my thoughts or opinions, they can trust that I will provide my complete, honest point of view. I have long known that my blunt honesty is a double-edged sword. In the end, people understand my position, but along the way, feelings occasionally get hurt.


By reading written language, hearing subtle verbal cues, or observing non-verbal behavior, I can usually tell when people are uncomfortable with my cut-to-the-chase style of communication; and I fully understand that such discomfort reduces the overall efficiency of communication. Once people become uneasy in their interactions with others, they tend to become defensive and worry more about protecting themselves than truly communicating. As a result, when I observe distress in my conversations, I tend to temporarily stop trying to make my point… mainly by closing my mouth and listening for a bit. Usually this alleviates the discomfort. Once they’ve regained their equilibrium, we are again free to discuss the matter at hand.


In circumstances where the other person is particularly sensitive, I utilize as much diplomacy as I can muster, but based on my nature, I find this difficult. I have a solid command of the English language, and am good at reading people, but employing tact is foreign to my nature. I understand the social necessity of delicate communication, but have a difficult time implementing that knowledge. Being an analytical individual by nature, I prefer efficiency, productivity and facts. Additionally, I pride myself on having a broad range of knowledge and experience. When people try to argue against what I know to be factually correct or highly efficient, I sometimes become uncomfortable with the conversation, which puts me on the defensive. When this happens, my primary nature takes over, making it increasingly difficult for me to maintain diplomacy. I don’t get angry, and I don’t lose my cool, but I do lose a measure of my tact.


As a blunt individual, I naturally appreciate direct, cut-to-the-chase communication, as opposed to delicate beating around the bush. When people dance around the issue while talking to me, I tend to grow impatient and try to get to the heart of the discussion. I’m a person of few words (despite the length of this article), and superfluous vociferation strictly for the purpose of diplomacy goes against my nature of efficiency.


As a man who had a broad understanding of many learning disciplines (and a deep understanding of one or two disciplines), I also tend to feel disrespected when someone tries to tell me I’m wrong when I know for an indisputable fact that I’m right. Don’t misunderstand this, in the occasions where I’m wrong, I have no issue with admitting to my mistakes, learning from them and moving on. That’s a large part of learning. What really chaps my hide is when some blow-hard who thinks they know more than they actually do tries to tell me I’m wrong about something in my own field of expertise.


The worst possible way to undermine my attempts at tact and diplomacy is to try to tactfully tell me that I’m wrong, when I know for a fact that I’m absolutely, irrefutably correct. When that happens, I end up shutting off my emotions and bluntly discuss from a strictly intellectual standpoint. By this point, tact is out the window, and it quickly becomes incredibly difficult to regain a diplomatic demeanor.


As I said earlier, I understand society’s need for diplomacy, but our drive for a soft approach has gotten entirely out of hand, and based on my experience, it’s completely hypocritical. As a network engineer, I have to handle co-workers who are irritated over such-and-such not working as they expect on a daily basis. When they call, they’re upset, stressed and sometimes angry that things aren’t working correctly. Much of the time, they speak to me with a tone of voice that implies the problems they’re experiencing are my personal fault. In return, because they’re my customers, I am expected to quietly take this abuse, and diplomatically help them solve the problem. In most cases, the root of the problem is more due to their lack of knowledge, something they did, or due to something completely out of my control. The overwhelming majority of the time, I can keep my cool, maintain a respectable level of diplomacy, and still fix the problem in an expedient manner.


Occasionally though, I resort to my innate, curt method of communication. When this happens, my customers are less than 100% satisfied. Despite the fact that they’re abusive to me, regardless of the fact that I’ve rectified their problem, they’re dissatisfied because I failed to kiss their ass. This is what I think I hate most about the politically correct movement. Somehow people think that decency and common courtesy applies to everyone except them. It’s perfectly acceptable for them to interact with me in a downright abusive manner, but if I fail to smile and fix their problem while I’m being verbally accosted, it’s somehow totally unacceptable. I am never rude. I don’t tell people to shut up, I don’t raise my voice, and I don’t become sarcastic or snide.


Overall, I think diplomacy is a highly over-rated commodity in today’s society, and the straight talker is under-rated. Admittedly, I’m a little biased in this view, but years’ worth of observation has convinced me that society is not benefiting by our obsession with kid-gloves interaction. There are many casualties in the sensitivity-run-amok culture of today…


“The Golden Rule” has gone out the window. I was raised to treat others as I’d like to be treated. I want to be treated with respect, but not at the expense of someone else being able to be honest with me… not if others feel like they can’t tell me what they’re really thinking and feeling. And if someone treats me in an abusive manner, they should not have the right to expect me to continue treating them as if they’re God’s gift to society. As it is, many people seem to believe that they can act like complete asses, while simultaneously expecting others to treat them like royalty. This serves no purpose other than alienating people from their fellow man.


Truth is also a casualty of today’s kid-gloves mentality. I’ve heard people say that “Diplomacy is the art of telling someone to go to Hell, and having them look forward to the trip.” Well, last I heard, Hell is a bad, bad place. If I tell someone to go there, that’s bad enough. But if they look forward to the trip, get there, and find out things really suck, aren’t they going to be doubly pissed at me? After all, they looked forward to something that I knew would suck. It seems obvious to me that they’d not only be pissed at me for giving them unrealistic expectations, they’ll also be upset about the fact that I wasn’t completely truthful with them.


If tact and diplomacy hasn’t lowered society’s sense of personal expectations and raised our sense of entitlement, I don’t know what has. Has anyone heard the latest term for failure?!? Today’s PC movement is calling it deferred success. What a crock! Let’s picture this… There’s a baseball game on. One team obviously wins the game, and the game is over. Did the other team experience deferred success? I don’t think so. Once the game is over, the losing team cannot possibly win the game.


If I have to spend my time, knowledge and energy worrying about how I’m going to say something, then I am saying it less efficiently in every possible way to interpret efficiency. By focusing on how I will phrase something, I am diverting at least a portion of my energy from the message to the “spin.” And if it’s something very bad – usually the case, because negatives generally require more diplomacy than positives – it dilutes the ramifications. Additionally, when people try to approach something with me in a tactful manner, my internal alarms go off, and I know that it’s nothing good. That puts people on the defensive, making it harder yet to communicate efficiently.


If I see something that’s really, really bad and tell someone else it’s “not good,” there’s a lot of room for interpretation. It could be neutral, a little uncomfortable, catastrophic, or anywhere other than not good. Though tone of voice usually indicates that “not good” is less than good, “not good,” while more diplomatic, is less succinct and accurate than “crappy.” As a result, diplomacy decreases the likelihood that we can fully understand and appreciate alternative points of view.


I’ve spent a lot of time ranting about being plain-spoken vs. being tactful and raging against society’s need to become ever-more diplomatic. But I want to clarify that I don’t see tact and diplomacy as completely evil. Like just about anything else in life, there is a time and a place for a soft touch. All I am trying to say is that subtlety and savoire-faire have become too pervasive in our society. It’s time to re-learn to speak our minds.