One thing people should keep in mind is that rude responses are not only unpolite, they also usually suck at communicating the information you need communicated in order to get the job done effectively.<p>Sure, effective communication could also come across rude in certain situations, but for most people being rude is not an active choice they make but something they <i>feel</i> entitled to.<p>The rudest people I worked with typically also had some sort of insecurity, feelings of inadequacy, were overwhelmed by the role within their organization or with the workload they received etc. Being rude then can feel like a way to "fight back", only that it will usually not hit the people that are at fault/the root of the problem.<p>This is all no excuse, being rude to innocent people is typically due to a lack of empathy. That colleague who insecurely asks a (somewhat naive) question about IT does not deserve to be treated rudely, just like you yourself would not like to be treated rudely when you had a (to them: naive) question to legal or HR.<p>Sure if the same person keeps asking 10 times and it is the same answer each time, you could get stinky. But even there humour is superior to rudeness, because you feel better after it and it serves the same purpose of hinting that the other person might wanna get a grip.
This is only looking at the problem from one side. If there's a crisis and you're not treating it as one, you are committing two sins. Not only are you wrong, but you're wasting time more valuable than your own.<p>On the flip side, if you're treating something as a crisis when the person trying to help knows there isn't one, you're putting undue pressure and stress on someone and hurting both parties in the process.<p>The fundamental problem is inconsistent and inaccurate assessments of the situation. People are attached to their mindset and are often too stubborn to re-evaluate. The solution presented only shows concessions on one side. I'd add that if someone else thinks a situation is dire and you don't, you should try to understand their perspective better rather than immediately considering them rude and dismissing their concerns.
Keeping your cool and being polite when the whole world is burning down around you is something one can charge a market premium for, I've found. It's a ferociously good way to convince enterprise clients to pay for you in particular.
"Examples of behaviors that reflect a mechanistic mindset include doctors:<p>Performing medical procedures without letting patients know what’s happening<p>Ignoring patients’ complaints about pain<p>Taking pictures of patients’ injuries for documentation without informing the patient<p>Behaviors reflecting a humanistic mindset include doctors:<p>Comforting patients verbally or physically<p>Covering patients with a blanket after procedures are completed<p>Complying with patients’ requests to relieve discomfort, such as adjusting bed height or shifting medical tubes"<p>Absolutely!<p>Some of the ways my manager has been mechanistic: setting OKRs out of thin air that he can't explain how it ties to any business goal, we just have it. Can't explain why something needs to be out of the door by a specific date, just gotta have it. Why the CTO asks to take caution during holidays but manager is giving negative ratings to people who listened to the CTO. Ignoring engineer explaination of risk for their aspirational timelines.<p>I could go on. But poor managers are often the root cause of poor execution because managers forget that they are working with actual intelligent adults and that filling up context lets these adults make rational choices or to explain why certain things can't work.<p>To be fair, my manager experiences the same from his boss and all the way up.
This one hits close to home the last months.<p>I'm coaching someone in a different time zone ( 7 hours difference).<p>I tend to be effective and I also don't want them to feel without work.<p>There are some things that I consider weird with him, concerning his experience level. But after a talk internally, it was mentioned to ignore that until the onboarding is done ( different backgrounds).<p>Now, it's possible that my priorities related to him came across as rude.<p>So yeah, having a first "get to know" each other chat after 2 months ( 1 feature is down, but there should be improvements for the next feature socially wise).<p>Anyone came across to a similar situations or books regarding these things that they found valuable?
Everybody in my office (dev) prides themself on their great power of concentration. They can really get in the zone. Hyperfocus on that software all day.<p>But concentration has a dark side. When you focus on one thing you ignore 1000 other things. To the point of blindness even. And it can become a habit.<p>Such a creature, clear-sighted in his software work but blind to all else. That "all else" being a world of emotion and nuance and nameless fuzzy things.<p>That creature must surely be an asshole.
IMHE (in my humble experience),<p>TL;DR: When you invest in shared respect & people know each other, it's fine & probably important! to get more thin lipped during a crisis in order to get to a solution. No need to be impolite though, just focused.<p>When you invest in relationships with your coworkers, in times of crisis it's fine to "cut to the chase" and focus on high priority tasks, and sometimes naturally someone with expertise takes the lead and the other team members can fall into "support roles" and help them get their work done.<p>With our team it is a kind of "enhanced focus tunnel" where the team helps someone to debug a system or find a solution, while sometimes suggesting changes of strategy, holes in a theory or overlooked avenues of exploration.<p>But at the same time the "leader" can follow his instincts and will generally be respected for his approach, even if he drops some suggestions, and also be left alone by others with other tasks until the crisis is averted or can be deprioritised.<p>If there's only ever crisis mode at work, that's not good, and will not lead to good outcomes in the long run.<p>Then it's important to give - to take - for oneself and others time to breathe, to relax, to brainstorm, to draw out the current situation, and to find strategies out of the permanent crisis mode.<p>Unless you like the permanent adrenaline, but I don't think good systems are created and maintained that way.
> “When everyone has the same mindset, the team becomes an echo chamber. Balance allows the team to find more holistic solutions to problems"<p>I can relate to that as a Latin American working in Europe; in the USA specifically this balance is way easier to find and there are more checks and balances.<p>My first year here I came from this Humanistic Mindset which is the standard in America as a whole; however being in EU I found out that most of the people run (not are, but run) in this Mechanistic Mindset.<p>Initially makes sense because when you have a a different background, the best you can do is equalize the communication style.<p>Someone said something interesting about those differences that relate to the article: In the US the culture is more or less like a salad, where maybe all the ingredients are sliced but more or less you know each one, and the result is something good. In Europe, the culture is more like a soup or a Fundue where differences are below the water but the surface is homogeneous, or all the ingredients are melted together.*<p>* N.B: I do not have a horse on this race or any preference over another.
The cited bad behavior by physicians isn't only a "mechanistic mindset" - it's also something that clearly reinforces the status hierarchy of physicians-over-patients (and everyone else.) Which is why they are unlikely to change it, even if it would lead to better patient outcomes.
> “Why is it that people sometimes want to cut to the chase? They see incivility as a way to expedite the process,” Goh explained. “Sometimes in an attempt to be more efficient, we do things that make the process less efficient.”