Are you losing business by taking offense?

For the majority of respondents in a recent LI Group, there is an elephant in the room that has so much to teach. Even more than the 3 blind men!

"Part of my role in a French-speaking company in Canada is to mentor my colleagues to improve their business writing in English. …"

Is using Mrs. offensive?

The mobile-friendly response: 86 words

3) Telling isn't teaching, asking questions is.

2) Answer the question asked, not what we *want* to hear.

1) Address the elephant in the room and take the stick away.

Teach with love, or as Honest Abe said, "you'll catch more with a teaspoon of honey than with a gallon of gall."

For those of you on mobile, that's all you need to know. :)

The deep reflection for Straussians

(1) Praise God, the rest of the world is not the US. Yes, I believe most profoundly in American exceptionalism, yet if Isle of Man, Malta, the Portuguese enclave of Goa and tiny nations of Andorra and Tuvalu were not here, the family of man is lesser for it. (Read "take the stick away" in #3 below)

(2) Iain pose des questions sur les Canadiens fran?ais! (Iain asks about French Canadians!) These are not only *not* Americans, they are in French Canada! They. Are. Proudly. Not. You.

The grammar of Romance Languages eliminates so much of the wasted energy Americans spend on avoiding offense, when that very taking offense is the bitter fruit of bad seeds sown back in 1936.

It is a measure of the leader to see what makes them angry.

For the essential message, it helps to have lived in Manchester, NH, where a good half of the city is Quebecois! One can go to the bank, the movies, the car repair shops, dry cleaners, etc., not to mention half-dozen parishes and speak Canadian French. This is a time-honored tradition, not a legislatively enforced diversity mantra.

Circle back to the core of Iain's question:

• they are not American,
• they are not in an American market and most especially,
• they are doing this out of ill will.

Teach the translations with love, or as Honest Abe said, "you'll catch more with a teaspoon of honey than with a gallon of gall."

The myth of cultural inequalities as repression

The very fact that there are unequal results drives some to insane links to prove offense|repression. Luminaries as bright as Heidi Grant Halvorson and Thomas Sowell have written brilliantly on effective cultures and those less so.

Because this is a "Mrs." question, let's use Heidi's example:

https://hbr.org/2011/11/the-trouble-with-bright-kids

"But smart, talented people rarely realize that one of the toughest hurdles they’ll have to overcome lies within."

In the Psychology Today version of the same article, Heidi focuses on "bright girls" to lay the matter more clearly at the relevant doorstep for her role in mentoring and leading women to greater achievement.

"Even if every external disadvantage to an individual’s rising to the top of an organization is removed — every inequality of opportunity, every unfair stereotype, all the challenges we face balancing work and family — we would still have to deal with the fact that through our mistaken beliefs about our abilities, we may be our own worst enemy."

Effective cultures stratify what is worth overlooking. It is a hallmark of mature leadership to be able to discern what matters.

What we Americans face in the international markets are "mistaken beliefs" to the degree that some elements of US society have become "our own worst enemy."

This slice of life is covered in our recent business fable: "Sn?birna’s Profitable Day (Episode 2)" where Sn?birna Georgsdóttir, runs an Icelandic fashion firm with her twin sister.

https://theoakwheel.wordpress.com/2016/06/12/rock-eel-cafe-snaebirnas-profitable-day-episode-2/

\\ STRUCTURE YOUR SOLUTIONS TO TAKE THE STICK AWAY //

(3) Most importantly: Telling isn't teaching. Asking Questions is. Tim Yagle & Debra Rubin are right to suggest "ask", as is Iain W. Crofts to ask the original question, yet one must be smarter than the average bear…

Ask structured questions, those which steer the ship *away* from the shoals not onto them! The current question virtually guarantees an offend-a-tron response just by the way it is structured.

Asking if something is offensive in today's me-obsessed culture is like asking a child if they want ice cream or chocolate! Their answer is both, naturally, so now you've doubled your problems just on how you asked the question…

America is saddled with people that have been groomed since FDR's administration in being offended. This is well addressed in Amity Shlaes' great book: The Forgotten Man

https://www.amityshlaes.com/books.php

where she "takes us back to show us how the roots of our disillusionment can be found in a single election year, 1936." The origin of the entitlement culture is the origin of our "offend-a-tron" industry, which now includes targets from titles to toilets!

In the timeless lessons of "South Pacific" these mesmerized minions have been carefully taught:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAZ8yOFFbAc

Sidestepping many poor choices

By contrast, the hallmark of a "resilient" corporate culture is that they "take the stick away" from the offend-a-tron industry.

Building a culture, in business, or in the body politic involves the tough love of teaching what works and telling the objective truth of what does not.

Telling someone you are offended is me-centered. Asking questions from a limited list and telling them why you are asking, helps keep from getting spam on your input forms.

Now, I know that *none* of the members here have *ever* received false data, but you may know people who have, yes?

Our current me-centered, self-indulgent culture has inverted the effective power pyramid, which is not race, creed, or gender specific.

While languages and cultures vary across this big blue marble, the Golden Rule:

Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto You

applies everywhere, all the time. It has worked wonders for years and will continue to do so, as long as the sun rises in the East.

The effective power pyramid says, "Who is the best player for the job?" which makes appeals to gender-identity sloganeering or marital status clearly irrelevant.

Women globally dominate in semiconductor manufacturing because God gave their DNA better fine-muscle control. Whether the pay is fair in that industry is not even under consideration in the question of who is the best fit.

As a global safety engineer & risk analyst, with an average of 850x ROI from our solutions, questions of fair pay, effective ergonomics, and dozens of others *are* important. They are just not the question being asked in "Who is the best fit?"

The very reason a female-led athletic startup asked me as advisor is "you'll tell us what we don't want to hear and back it up with data."

By structural embedding, through effective story-telling, we can restore some of the horse sense that was so common in the "Greatest Generation."

Part of that understanding:

If I am offended, then I likely need to check my own perceptions and more often than not, return to the fount of humility that is the source of all wisdom, to learn what it is about the sun rising in the east that has gotten me so riled up.

Humility is the source of all wisdom

The offend-a-tron culture has thankfully gotten its comeuppance: both here in the US, with the unanimous Hosana-Tabor decision and in the EU with the Lautsi v. Italy decision.

(If interested in the specific decisions, either search them on DuckDuckGo or just connect and I'll send you the links).

For those of you who've read all 1208 words and not stopped at the mobile-friendly 86 word headlines, you are more than likely to be thoughtful people who make *much* better decisions that knee-jerk headliners.

Take-Away

Is it offensive? Ineffectively structured question. Asking such gives a platform to those who shout fire in the crowded theater of our society.

It is not to the majority of business-minded people, because they have matured to the point of reaching across the aisles to get beyond titles, thus it never comes up! Titles matter to those who cannot stand on their achievements. Those who can do not give a hoot what you call them, but rather that you do call them and maintain a profitable, mutually-beneficial business relationship.

That is one of the hallmarks of taking the stick away. The rest is graduate-level stuff. If interested, reach out.

ACTION: Teach your agents to ask which business title your contact uses, or offer a choice of no more than 3 or 4.

Have a great US Labor Day, where ever on this earth you may be tomorrow!