It’s 90% niceties and explaining .map over and over again.
Similar things can be observed in many meetups and some companies. Everything is awesome. Everybody is nice. People shy away from deciding anything. Even the simple act of two people wanting to go through the same door at the same time is an impossible conundrum.
No matter how important psychological safety is (and it really is), a constant state of coddling serves nobody.
Tangential, but I hit this issue very often with couple of friends during university years; two of us wanted to go through a door, and get stuck in a "you go", "no, you go", "I insist" loop. At some point I said, "you know what, let's do rock-paper-scissors, if you lose you go first". It immediately caught on with my friends, and ever since that, when attempting to go through a door at the same time, we'd just exchange looks, and immediately play a wordless round of rock-paper-scissor to resolve the conflict, while the rest of the class looked at us and asked "WTF just happened?!".
I believe that the optimal solution to this problem is to offer, and then if there is a counter-offer, take it. If the other person is offended then they have followed the letter of the social law but do not understand it in their hearts. In addition, it is often polite to take what is offered to you.
La extrema urbanidad y cortesía
agota y cansa la paciencia mía.
Figúrate lector, y es un ejemplo,
que entrar queremos en sala, alcoba o gabiente
y que somos por juntos seis o siete.
¿No es un feroz y bárbaro tormento el
"pase Usted primero" y "faltaría mas, caballero"?
Y han así de pasar horas galanes y señoras[1],
estando todos ellos convencidos
de lo inútiles que son tales cumplidos.
Voy a dar aquí un mínimo consejo[1],
y mírese quien quiera en este espejo:
cuando te digan que pases adelantes,
no te hagas rogar, pasa al instante.
Figueroa
(Other... "unusual" behaviors include standing in the pouring rain for an entire hour till the other gives up, passing the party leadership onto each other for a solid 10 minutes until one of us starts the game queue...)
Rock, paper, scissors might work too. Haven't tried that.
There are cases where marking errors is done to belittle, offend, portray incompetence, etc.; however it shouldn't be too hard to avoid those perils -- it's just a matter of showing how mistakes are (mostly, and to a measure) inevitable, not disqualify the person for the mistake (i.e. recognize it's something that is not inherent and can be fixed). Avoid broadcasting mishaps (communicate one-to-one), be supportive when pointing things out, and the environment is going to be better for everyone.
Superficial niceness might be worse than sincere harshness indeed. But the best is bold sincerity and support, which ultimately creates trust and robust, enduring relations.
One can be assertive without being aggressive and aggressive without being assertive. They are different characteristics.
Assertive and not aggressive - deciding to speak up instead of being silent. "Excuse me, can you explain this decision to me?"
Aggressive and not assertive - being passive-aggressive, giving people the silent treatment / cold shoulder / "cancel culture", and similar behaviors.
edit: I'm saying - where you draw the line is about things like whether it's competent, and whether it's "OK" within the contex. A polite "excuse me" is both competent and almost always "OK". A polite legal threat might not be "OK" (and it might not be competent either) so whether you judge it to be aggressive will depend on your point of view.
One can also be awkward but not polite, polite but not awkward, and politely awkward. They're just different characteristics.
I think it would be a mistake to characterize assertiveness as just a subset of aggression, defined as all aggressive acts less the inappropriate ones, or the reverse, as you seem to be arguing here. I think it's more accurate to say there's a very small set of cases where they overlap.
Most advice given to men how to be more socially adaptive is actually advice how to best be taken advantage of. It has nothing to do with their own best interest.
Assertiveness is considerate and has compassion for the recipient, considers how our assertion may affect the recipient, may offer understanding and empathy for their situation, then asserts our need by taking personal ownership and using "I" language, etc.
The real world doesn't coddle you. Work should reflect that to some degree - with some respect to being a decent person in general. Just knowing that you know your shit, and it's okay (preferred even), if you fight to be your own advocate.
There's a balance between negative and positive reinforcement. We can't simply look at being "nice" to each other all the time as an optimal solution. It's a great way to get completely side-swiped by someone who is even only slightly aggressive.
If I have a terrible idea, I'd rather hear someone tell me that it's a shit idea than patronizingly tend to my "feelings" on the matter.
A week ago I saw an animal documentary where a lion was attacked by a pack of hyenas. A while later, another lion saw the situation and ran to help; the hyenas knew they couldn't take two lions so they fled. Afterwards, the lions cuddled. Both lions benefited: the first one might help the second one out in the future.
I would argue that one of the reasons why humans have taken over the world is that we help eachother and work together. If Bob has a bad knee and can't hunt, it doesn't mean Bob is useless and we should kill him. Bob can stay home and build weapons for the hunters.
Of course, if Bob is taking advantage of the situation and does fuck-all, positive reinforcement won't do anything. However, it does not mean the environment has to continually be abrasive and competitive, especially not for the rest of the group who are doing their job.
If my idea is better than my coworkers, I want that celebrated. If theirs is better, I want that celebrated, even if that means telling me that my idea isn't great.
Edit: Also, if Bob is doing fuck-all, he should expect to be kicked out of the group. He can find another tribe that accepts his bullshit (until they eventually drop him as well), or learn to carry his own weight before being reaccepted - by means of crafting weapons or providing in some other way as you mention. "Safe spaces" to me, are akin to allowing Bob to stick around and mooch off the group indefinitely because kicking him out wouldn't be very nice. Nature says you provide for the group, or you go. It's harsh, but real.
By contrast, environments that provide psychological safety enable people who may have better ideas, but may not be as brash and overconfident to contribute.
I always felt that those sessions were more productive than just going around the table or people just speaking up.
I think great leadership is when someone notices that happening and shuts it down.
I prefer environments that teach you how to advocate for your ideas. Build you up as a good self-advocate.
Environments that say "Hey everybody! It's Timmy's turn to speak. Pass him the talking stick" are patronizing and disgust me at the onset.
Better to have someone by your side saying, "Timmy, speak up! You have a great idea. Tell everyone"
His point is that there isn't much correlation between good ideas and assertive personalities, so if you incentivize the latter you won't necessarily get the former. I'm inclined to agree with that.
A man of culture!
I think we can call in the Pareto Principle here. After a certain point, assertiveness / aggressiveness becomes zero-sum (or worse). But getting to the point where everyone worth listening to has had a chance to speak gives you a lot of bang for your buck. You can either have an environment which enables this (everyone gets the talking stick) or train everyone to have a baseline of assertiveness skills.
The baseline shouldn't just be "excuse me, I have a question" scenarios though. The baseline has to be sufficient to handle stuff like "I think my boss is screwing up big time".
You are probably right.
I don't have a good argument for getting your good idea recognized by others, if you are not an assertive type, other than learning to fight harder for it be heard, or finding someone to fight hard for you.
There may not be a correlation between good ideas and assertive personalities, but if you aren't at least somewhat assertive, I just won't hear your idea.
It's like playing a song in your basement and wondering why no one is praising your musical talent. Get yourself out in the real world and play in front of people, loudly enough for them to hear you!
This is an idealized version of the system and a million things can go wrong, but it seems like the only way that makes any sense.
Having worked at IBM Austin in the '90s, I'd tend to agree. The management style was very much "the loudest person in the room makes the decision." It did not end well.
I actually personally think its useful to say that in order to shut up overly opinionated people without publicly pointing them out and putting them immediately on the defensive. Opinionated people are also incredibly opinionated on their opinions, of course, and it's more efficient to sidestep that altogether.
I'm engaging in the conversation by bringing my points to the table. I see it as an idealistic proposal that doesn't match my understanding of reality. It is very plausible that I am wrong - please explain to me how you disagree, I'm happy to listen. Seriously.
Just because someone has an idea doesn't mean I have to immediately agree with it or like it. Feel free to disagree with me on this, as it would prove my point. It's your right after all.
It is not that you gave contra arguments, you just ignored.
Which is exactly issue with most confident win system.
You may regard an alternative as "idealistic", and it may be, but the alternative is how many existing environments are supposed to work, if you press those involved hard enough, and is frequently pretty bad at sorting ideas.
Exactly. I am very happy to be proven wrong, given the arguments against my position are good. A lot of people shy away from criticizing ideas, thinking that a person will take it as a personal attack (gotta admit, I am guilty of this too, if I don't know the person well enough to assume they take criticism well).
When it is the fight for the best idea or solution, I don't care how wrong I am, I care about finding the "truth" aka the best solution given the situation. As long as the criticism is directed towards the idea and not the person, I am just as happy, regardless of whether my idea won or not (as long as the idea that won had better arguments for it).
Further I don’t think a loud environment (again, putting it simply)and psychological safety are mutually exclusive.
One can be loud and assertive without tearing each other down.
Just advocate for yourself and the things you care about. It's not always easy, but that doesn't necessarily mean aggression.
It's like asking out someone on a date. If you have less experience, you'll probably do so in a dumb way and are more likely to seem like you're harassing them.
There's a lot of gaslighting that the line is aggression / assertion line is primarily about your internal state (mind reading arguments are often a good sign people are wrong), but the line is often about competence.
Pretending people should never be assertive means we aren't letting them develop competence except through experience. Developing competence through experience (without any clear direction) is like letting people learn to drive by letting them crash a bunch of times and learn from it which is hardly optimal.
Being justified in a social setting means other people need to agree with you.
It involves directly addressing the matter at hand; why it is you are justified in confronting somebody. It can also be tactful if you get the person you are confronting to be very specific on the details and why they did something worth being confronted about.
The crowd will decide on their own, but if you truly are justified in confronting somebody then you should have solid foundation for debate.
Now, certain crowds practice mob justice, but that's another thing entirely.
Everyone tries to distinguish these two, it's mostly just in the eye of the beholder - IMO aggression is just assertion when it's judged to be inappropriate or incompetently done - a drill instructor being assertive looks different to a police officer in a stand-off which is different to how you talk to co-workers - the distinction is highly contextual and subjective.
I think a lot of people with poor social skills thinks the aggression / assertion line is all about being angry or shouty or rude. Assertion uses a bunch of tools (including potentially - a louder or quieter voice, appearing angry, threats, manipulations, etc) to achieve a goal. Doing so in an inappropriate way is seen as aggressive (e.g. threatening to quit over a minor issue). Overusing any given tool (e.g. swearing a lot instead of realising a different tool is needed) is seen as incompetent (or losing control) thus it's seen as aggressive. But fundamentally there's no real objective difference.