Why I don't like to be polite

First off, before I start explaining the title, let me clarify two things :

1. I am not advocating to be unpolite, that's a different thing, hopefully I will be able to explain the difference in my post
2. I am posting it in Linkedin because this has quite an impact on the workplace, even if the concept is more general

What I actually mean with the title is "I don't like to act in a way that makes me appear polite, precisely I don't like to have to". This has a lot to do with communication, verbal and non verbal.

The way I see it, communication is a tool and in the workplace is used (or should be, anyways) to achieve specific goals: teams communicate to find solutions, to propel projects forward, to describe issues and overcome them.

Often these teams are as efficient as their internal communication is, there are plenty of studies and models on how teams work and how communication affects that (i.e. Bruce Tuckman model).

I’d argue that politeness (and the need of, by team members) is not helping in any stage of the process.

Let’s imagine a situation in which team member A comes out with an idea which team member B genuinely thinks is useless and maybe stupid.

B has the right to think that about this idea and he/she can genuinely come to that conclusion because of his/her experience. So far I have yet to find someone to challenge the fact that we can THINK something in our heads (but I fear that might change or have already changed in some places).Now, B could try to “butter up” A with some polite suggestion that eventually the team should explore alternative ideas.

They could definitely go that way… but … WHY?

Please understand that in this situation, anything B says that is different from “Your idea is stupid” is technically a lie as it does not represent what he/she thinks.

And while we are here, let’s get another thing out of the way: I specifically did not say “I think that your idea is stupid”.

In the situation it is universally obvious that B is expressing his/her opinion so, technically there is no need to explain it is one (yes, that means: “I believe there is no need”. If you did not get that, you are the one I am explaining this for and if you now feel offended, the rest of the post is definitely for you).

Added words that do not serve a specific purpose are making communication less efficient, but while it is clear that me saying that everything in the post is only my personal opinion would not add anything to the meaning of what I want to convey, it would probably still serve a purpose.

So, what’s the purpose? Being polite! Which we already know I don’t like to, as stated in the title.

So, A needs B to be polite and water down his/her thoughts while converting them in words… could that be that THAT is the real problem (A need)?

I am the kind of guy that has tons of idea, you can bet that most of them are simply bad, many are utterly stupid.

Sometimes it is not easy to understand which is which, to pick a great idea in a basket of moronic ones, but, the bigger the basket, the higher the chance to find some pearl there.

So, why do I have so many ideas? Because I don’t care if they are challenged, I don’t care if someone can prove my idea is stupid… granted, I usually hold my ground and I hope my counterpart does the same so that we can really weight pros and cons. Honestly, in that game, we have no time for politeness.

People who need politeness (in the workplace, that is) often does that in the fear that an idea might be declared stupid, and that actually might make them censor their own ideas instead of sharing them with the rest of the team.

One could argue that they censor themselves in the fear of being offended by me or other “rude” colleagues like myself, but the thing is that what offends someone is strongly personal, there is no general rule and the boundaries between acceptable and offensive move all the time, plus they might be different depending on the culture with which we were raised.

Try to read some newspaper article which was written, say, 20-40 years ago, for most of us that would be still in our lifetime, we were there, still chances are we could find words in it that now are considered offensive. I am pretty sure that the author of that specific article did not mean to be offensive.

I do not speak Japanese, unfortunately, but the few interactions I had with the Japanese culture, mainly in my two trips to Tokyo, fascinated me. Politeness seems to be an important thing in social interactions and that is reflected in the language.

“Arigato Gozaimas” (not sure how I should write it) means “Tankyou”, but actually “Arigato” already menas “Thankyou”, the Gozaimas added word (if you speak Japanese please feel free to correct) it is just used to make a verb “polite”.

That assumes that in general when you are grateful for something and want to thank someone you are trying to be unpolite (???!!!), unless you specifically declare it is not the case.

I am sure there are some valid historical and cultural reasons -whcih I am unaware of- for this and also there are somehow similar cases in other languages, still this Japanese one stuck in my head for some reason.

The question is:”Is it helping?”. I’d say no, because an expectation was created for a “non unpolite declaration” that would not be needed if we did not assume someone using regular words was trying to be unpolite.

It’s a trap, we are losing usable words and generating more and more expectations which are getting in the way of honest, direct and efficient communication.

I almost hope someone felt offended by my post, thus proving my point, but I want to make it absolutely clear I believe anyone has the right to feel offended for whatever reason.

But ultimately he/she should realize that the important thing is how he/she deals with it, does it get in the way of being able to work efficiently with others or not?

I’d love to live in a world where we can challenge each other, where we have the right to be wrong from time to time (even most of the time eventually, teams are there also for this), where we can simply say what we think and be passionate about it.

Until then, if you work with me, please don’t assume I am trying to be unpolite with you nad I would really appreciate to see you defend the ideas you believe in. That’s how we all have a chance to improve.