These are not easy words for me to say probably due to my upbringing in a polite Asian family. We were raised to not offend others with the brutal truth but rather to maneuver around hinting at the truth and at the same time sparing hurt feelings.

The only times when  I was brutally direct is when I am in an anger fit and the words pour out without the filter of niceties. Then I grew up and was thrown into the working world where the rose-coloured glasses view of the world and the way it works come off.

People are still nice and still not offensive but what they say behind is incredibly damaging and hurtful if you ever got to know about it.  So in the end there is a need to learn to balance being direct in providing feedback and at the same time to be tactful in delivering such information.

I learned that beating around the bush and hinting does not help anybody much – because in the corporate world , it is even more dangerous and time-consuming to guess at what somebody is saying and trying to interpret it. That is why there are normally clusters of people around at the coffee corners  – normally to bitch about people behind their backs.

What about the other end of the scale then ? I have also dealt with people with incredible lack of tact and sensitivity and seem to go out of their way to be offensive. But they say they are just being direct, hmmm. After such meetings , I print out their photos in my cubicle and start throwing pins on their faces. OK before you run to my cubicle to see if your faces are there – I am joking but I DO it mentally (ala Ally McBeal) and I am guessing so do a lot of other people.

There are definitely pros to being direct as I learned for the first time in a company in the US of A. In a bid to interact and integrate, I had gathered some courage to ask the colleagues if they would like to lunch together. I had my first culture shock when they replied with a “No, thanks” without further explanations and nothing to soften the blow. Ask an Asian and very likely you get a “Oh , I can’t today – I already brought leftovers from my dinner yesterday, you see. It’s unfortunate timing but I  would have  loved to lunch with you. Thanks for thinking to ask me!” And then you ask again the following days – and the response is more or less the same and you start to get a nagging feeling that she actually does NOT want to lunch with you.

I am still learning to say “No” , without being overly apologetic but rather to state “Thanks for asking but I already have a lunch group I lunch with”. This gives I think a clearer response without being rude, for the asker that you are preferring to lunch with your normal group and hence she no longer wastes the time to ask.

It is a fine line to walk but I began to appreciate more direct responses that don’t have to result in  guessing games or being downright rude. I guess I have to thank the course in Constructive Criticism for that.

-The End-