Quote from Matthew Whitewood on February 7, 2021, 2:16 am

Lucio, it's very kind to offer feedback on this interaction.
I would prefer to clarify with John directly by giving more details.

If we don't manage to "resolve" the conversation, external feedback would be welcome on my side.
Although maybe you would be busier in the future, which in that case, the feedback now could be good.

I am only speaking for my own preference.

But that is not my problem, it is yours unfortunately.

Yes, this is my problem.
You are helping me with my social situation.
And I thank you for spending time to give me feedback.

 Lucio did not interpret it as I was his boss.

I see how Lucio is interpreting your statement of "great job".
And it is indeed in a positive manner.

Great job to both of you! And me! Teamwork!

My first post was to point out that I am uncomfortable receiving "Great job" from you.
On all the other aspects of breaking down the dynamics of "great job", I appreciate that you took the time on the weekend to share your perspective, and thank you for that.

Here are my intentions and what I want to communicate to you, John:

• I am not comfortable with receiving "great job" as a compliment from anyone.
  This is emotionally so I cannot change this in a snap of a second.
  As such, I would prefer not to receive this compliment if that is convenient.
• This is a separate matter.
  I understand your intention of wishing "great job" is good in your first post.
  So I thank you for that.
  It could be my failure to communicate that, and I focused too much on my discomfort.
• I thank you and Lucio for spending a great deal of time to help me analyse what "great job" could mean from another perspective.
  It could certainly be the case that I may be viewed as inflexible towards accepting "great job" as a compliment after all that discussion.
  Now I understand analytically what the other person intends to convey when wishing "great job".
  And thanks a lot to everyone who helped me to understand that.
  However, personally, I would still prefer not to receive this compliment
• My preferences may change over time because I am learning power dynamics.
  And my intuition takes time to develop.

Quote from Matthew Whitewood on February 7, 2021, 2:25 am

John, there's also a broader pattern of our exchanges that I would like to discuss if you would spare the time.
It is a matter of preferences when communicating on the channel of this forum.

My approach to communicating on the threads is opening up the conversation more at the start.
Then maybe we find some similar viewpoints and narrow it down in a particular direction.
Which means introducing different perspectives from the start resulting in a discussion.
I understand that this would take up a lot of time and not everyone would like to give the time to such a discussion.

As such, there may be a conflict of desires sometimes when I would like to open up the thread, and you would like to reach a conclusion on a thread.

Of course the above is my interpretation, and I may be reading the whole situation wrong.

Quote from John Freeman on February 7, 2021, 11:49 am

As such, there may be a conflict of desires sometimes when I would like to open up the thread, and you would like to reach a conclusion on a thread.

Yes, this happens. Some people want to talk more about a topic and others have already had enough. I don't see it as a problem.

Quote from John Freeman on February 7, 2021, 11:59 am

Quote from Matthew Whitewood on February 7, 2021, 2:16 am

Lucio, it's very kind to offer feedback on this interaction.
I would prefer to clarify with John directly by giving more details.

If we don't manage to "resolve" the conversation, external feedback would be welcome on my side.
Although maybe you would be busier in the future, which in that case, the feedback now could be good.

I am only speaking for my own preference.

Hello Lucio, thank you for your kind proposition: No thanks, we're all good! :)

But that is not my problem, it is yours unfortunately.

Yes, this is my problem.

This could be interpreted as an attack. It is not, it's a "shocking frame" if you want. The goal is to move from "this is bad for me", to "how can I deal with this thing that challenges me". To give the brain a different interpretation of this stimulus.

You are helping me with my social situation.
And I thank you for spending time to give me feedback.

As I said: anytime, man!

 Lucio did not interpret it as I was his boss.

I see how Lucio is interpreting your statement of "great job".
And it is indeed in a positive manner.

That's my whole point. That's all I mean. The whole point of the whole conversation from my side.

Great job to both of you! And me! Teamwork!

My first post was to point out that I am uncomfortable receiving "Great job" from you.

I did it on purpose to desensitize you. So you can see that it's not meant to dominate you. It can be said as a compliment. In communication, there is what is said and the intention of what is said. That is why between friends you can tease one another. Consider this as a friendly tease, if you want. In real life, I would have pushed you with my elbow, a smile and a wink as in: "Come on, my friend, don't take it this way, it's not that serious". But on the forum, more challenging to communicate this.

What I wish for you is that next time a co-worker says this to you, it does not register on an emotional level.

To remove the trigger. This is what will make you a "teflon rhino" I believe.

My own experience

A friend did it for me. There is a mispronunciation of my first name that used to annoy me. It was a few months ago. Imagine that: my whole life, every time somebody would mispronounce my name, it would annoy/anger me. So, it was a "button". My friend taught me to not care if the person was not a close one. And if at work, after some time I get to know the person a little more, I can tell them: "actually, my name is John (pronounced right)". I did that and it changed my life. So now, when people mispronounce my name, it does not register on the emotional level. It was the interpretation I was making of what was being said that was hurting me. I interpreted it as a sign of racism or disrespect. So every time a person would mispronounce my name I would feel disrespected.

I said all of this on the forum because we're here to learn. I did not say it to piss you off. It's like a training ground. It's not because you're sparring with your friend that he's your enemy.

On all the other aspects of breaking down the dynamics of "great job", I appreciate that you took the time on the weekend to share your perspective, and thank you for that.

Here are my intentions and what I want to communicate to you, John:

• I am not comfortable with receiving "great job" as a compliment from anyone.
  This is emotionally so I cannot change this in a snap of a second.
  As such, I would prefer not to receive this compliment if that is convenient.

Of course! I respect it. See above my intentions.

• This is a separate matter.
  I understand your intention of wishing "great job" is good in your first post.
  So I thank you for that.
  It could be my failure to communicate that, and I focused too much on my discomfort.

For me, the goal in learning is to get out of our comfort zone. As a fellow learner, that is what I was doing with you. I'm doing my best to help you get out of your comfort zone. And it is uncomfortable. You said it yourself: "Uncomfortable". You also admitted that it could be said in a positive way. As said above, I respect your wish about this sentence.

• I thank you and Lucio for spending a great deal of time to help me analyse what "great job" could mean from another perspective.
  It could certainly be the case that I may be viewed as inflexible towards accepting "great job" as a compliment after all that discussion.
  Now I understand analytically what the other person intends to convey when wishing "great job".
  And thanks a lot to everyone who helped me to understand that.
  However, personally, I would still prefer not to receive this compliment

I have not said and I don't think that you were/are inflexible.

• My preferences may change over time because I am learning power dynamics.
  And my intuition takes time to develop.

I don't think it's a power dynamics issue. It's an interpretation issue. Change your interpretation and it will change how you feel about it.

If you felt disrespected in our interaction, please excuse me. That was not my intention.

Quote from Matthew Whitewood on February 7, 2021, 1:50 pm

I think there are still lots to clarify about this.
To be clear, there was definitely valuable feedback.
What I am not sure about is how the feedback and exchange have been delivered.

But that is not my problem, it is yours unfortunately.

Yes, this is my problem.

This could be interpreted as an attack. It is not, it's a "shocking frame" if you want. The goal is to move from "this is bad for me", to "how can I deal with this thing that challenges me". To give the brain a different interpretation of this stimulus.

I did not interpret this as an attack.
I interpreted that you thought I was pushing the responsibility of figuring the dynamics out onto you.
As such, this was my way of accepting the responsibility of figuring out the situation while taking all the feedback into account.

This is why I wanted to post the second post:

As such, there may be a conflict of desires sometimes when I would like to open up the thread, and you would like to reach a conclusion on a thread.

Yes, this happens. Some people want to talk more about a topic and others have already had enough. I don't see it as a problem.

Sometimes when I open up the conversation on threads, there may be a feeling that I am requesting for more time and effort for the other person to comment.
My intention is to promote an open discussion, and, if someone would not like to continue the conversation, he/she is free to do so.

There were a few threads that seemed to have this vibe.
One of the threads was on women winning at work.
You wanted to agree to disagree and didn't want to go back & forth.
So the discussion ended there.

As such, I wanted to clarify that I would prefer to continue discussing.
At the same time, I understand that you would prefer not to continue discussing and leave the different perspectives on the table.
So I decided to leave that thread alone and let it stand.

Great job to both of you! And me! Teamwork!

My first post was to point out that I am uncomfortable receiving "Great job" from you.

I did it on purpose to desensitize you. So you can see that it's not meant to dominate you. It can be said as a compliment. In communication, there is what is said and the intention of what is said. That is why between friends you can tease one another. Consider this as a friendly tease, if you want. In real life, I would have pushed you with my elbow, a smile and a wink as in: "Come on, my friend, don't take it this way, it's not that serious". But on the forum, more challenging to communicate this.

What I wish for you is that next time a co-worker says this to you, it does not register on an emotional level.

To remove the trigger. This is what will make you a "teflon rhino" I believe.

I'm not really sure about this.
First of all, I want to clarify that I don't have any hard emotions on this, and I don't feel disrespected.
If not, I would have pointed this out from the start.

I feel that this chain of posts is a grey area.
There may be elements that I am supportive of and other elements that I feel isn't the best way to go about things.

I am a bit sceptical that this chain of posts had the best intentions, but I may be wrong.
The intentions were hidden from the start.
Additionally, in a way, social teasing is a form of social dominance.
And the teasing is moreover intentional.

I feel that this is akin to the following.
When someone opens up a thread on this forum saying that he/she is uncomfortable with a particular remark, I make a further post to trigger those emotions in that person without telling the person beforehand.

Regarding getting out of comfort zones, I would prefer if intentions have been clear from the start.
It is like bringing my friend to an uncomfortable social situation.
I don't hide my intentions and throw the person into the water unprepared.

I may not be viewing the above in the best manner.
The above is how I interpreted the situation.

Personal preferences. Great job is a compliment in my book. It's about the context as we already discussed.

For me, it's the "I understand where you are coming from" that I don't like. To me, it sounds quite arrogant. It means: "I know what you're thinking", which is not a correct statement.

I would like to talk about this point so that we can understand each other.
There is a level of personal preference involved as well.

So, to me, we may have a different interpretation of "great job" altogether.
Just like with the sentence "I understand where you are coming from".
And that makes sense because these 2 phrases are vague.

I have not said and I don't think that you were/are inflexible.

Indeed you did not.
I was pointing this out as I needed to venture some guesses on whether I contributed to any misunderstanding.
I learnt this from "Difficult Conversations".
This is talking about whether I have contributed to any potential misunderstanding.

Blind Spots - Should We Get Lucio To Give Us A Third Party Perspective?

I am now open to having Lucio give me a third-party perspective.
I believe that I may be missing out on some potential perspectives at this point.
Because I have clarified what I wanted to clarify in quite some detail.

I would like John's perspective on whether he would like Lucio to give feedback as well.

Of course not only Lucio.
Any other person on this forum may have valuable insights and perspectives on our exchange as well.

Quote from Matthew Whitewood on February 7, 2021, 2:03 pm

From the other thread,

This is the learner mindset. It does not matter how the feed-back was given. The value is in the feed-back. If I would teach you the secret of eternal life/invisibility/time travel while insulting you, would it matter that I taught it while insulting you? Well I would not care. I would think it’s a fair trade. Tom Bilyeu takes the example of getting hit on the head with a golden nugget. If you don’t look at what hit you on the head, you might miss that it was a golden nugget and not a stone.

I separate the feedback from how the feedback was given.
Both are important to me.
I take feedback from my enemies as well.
Though I may not necessarily agree with how they deliver their feedback.

In my personal opinion, the method of delivery of the feedback suggests some intentions from the feedback giver.
For example, if my boss shouted at me for a mistake, I would acknowledge my mistake but bring up the shouting behaviour to him.

The example of exchanging eternal life for receiving insults is also quite an extreme example.

Clarification From That Thread

The feedback on handling social climbers was very valuable.
And I thank you for that.

I am making sure that I am discussing certain points while acknowledging the value that you have given me through the discussion.

Quote from John Freeman on February 7, 2021, 2:14 pm

Quote from Matthew Whitewood on February 7, 2021, 2:03 pm

From the other thread,

This is the learner mindset. It does not matter how the feed-back was given. The value is in the feed-back. If I would teach you the secret of eternal life/invisibility/time travel while insulting you, would it matter that I taught it while insulting you? Well I would not care. I would think it’s a fair trade. Tom Bilyeu takes the example of getting hit on the head with a golden nugget. If you don’t look at what hit you on the head, you might miss that it was a golden nugget and not a stone.

I separate the feedback from how the feedback was given.
Both are important to me.
I take feedback from my enemies as well.
Though I may not necessarily agree with how they deliver their feedback.

In my personal opinion, the method of delivery of the feedback suggests some intentions from the feedback giver.
For example, if my boss shouted at me for a mistake, I would acknowledge my mistake but bring up the shouting behaviour to him.

Of course, man. I am not saying you should accept this behavior. That is an other point.

The example of exchanging eternal life for receiving insults is also quite an extreme example.

It's on purpose. So I think I was not clear: of course, you want people to respect you, that's obvious to me. I'm saying that if you have to choose between:

1. Refusing the feed-back based on how it was delivered

OR

2. Accepting the feed-back if it's useful no matter how it was delivered (what Radical Candor advises, BTW and that you wrote you think was a good idea)

I think (and you wrote that you think it too based on the book as well) that number 2 is more desirable than number 1.

I took Tom Bilyeu's example to add to the rationale and took an extreme example to show that at the extreme, it is still desirable. This proves that it is a usable philosophy. That is it.

Clarification From That Thread

The feedback on handling social climbers was very valuable.
And I thank you for that.

I am making sure that I am discussing certain points while acknowledging the value that you have given me through the discussion.

That's what a forum is supposed to do. I feel a bit sad that you took my feed-back this way. Anyway, I'll remember to be more careful next time! I learned something, I hope you did as well!

Quote from Matthew Whitewood on February 7, 2021, 2:51 pm

1. Refusing the feed-back based on how it was delivered

OR

2. Accepting the feed-back if it's useful no matter how it was delivered (what Radical Candor advises, BTW and that you wrote you think was a good idea)

I view this as 2 separate matters.
I can both accept the feedback and address how the feedback was delivered.

Radical Candor suggests that as well.
The delivery is as important as the feedback itself.

In this extreme example, I would appreciate the feedback or knowledge given.
However, I would address the disrespectful delivery.

If the feedback is valuable but disrespectful, that may cross over into obnoxious aggression.
This would be the case if a boss shouts at you for a mistake.

Clarification From That Thread

The feedback on handling social climbers was very valuable.
And I thank you for that.

I am making sure that I am discussing certain points while acknowledging the value that you have given me through the discussion.

That's what a forum is supposed to do. I feel a bit sad that you took my feed-back this way. Anyway, I'll remember to be more careful next time! I learned something, I hope you did as well!

I'm not sure if we are on the same page for this.
Because what I wrote seemed neutral to positive to me.
Would it be convenient to clarify what you are sad about?

To be clear, the issue here is not about being too direct.
Whereas an even more direct approach could be even better.

For example, I did not know that you intended to give an extreme example.

Quote from John Freeman on February 7, 2021, 2:55 pm

I think I'm not getting myself understood. I gave my best effort, though! I'm sad because the way I gave you feed-back was not optimal.

Cheers, man! I have to get back to work.