Diplomacy

Phrasing what we are thinking diplomatically enables us to be honest while maintaining productive working relationships with our colleagues. Saying what we are thinking without being diplomatic can lead to people becoming defensive, upset, or angry - all of which are counterproductive in a professional work environment.

When we have the need to be honest about work-related facts or our professional opinion, we should carefully consider what outcomes we want to achieve by sharing what we know. As in the business world, we should only aspire to achieve positive outcomes - meaning an end state or final result that benefits the functioning and performance of the business - our goal is to make sure that when we are honest, we only achieve positive outcomes.

As businesses are made up of people, and those people enable the business to function, if something you share causes people to become defensive, upset, or angry the business will be negatively impacted.

This is not to say that we should be conflict-averse - meaning we avoid the potential for a conflict at all costs - only that we should try to minimize the chance of a conflict as much as we can. While we cannot control how people react to what we say, we can improve the odds that they will be open to what we say, rather than become defensive.

Defensiveness is when someone becomes closed off to what we are saying, often because of the way we said it. For example, if you were in a project status meeting, and were thinking of saying, "We're working a bunch of overtime just because someone decided to double the amount of work we have to do, and now we're going to miss our deadline, and be blamed for not working hard enough," you should stop and consider both the validity of your statement and the outcomes you want to achieve.

In terms of validity, let's assume that it is factually true that people are working overtime and that the team has been assigned twice the number of work items than were originally anticipated when deciding on the date of the original deadline. Further, your professional opinion may be that the deadline is now at risk for being missed, and that you fear that blame will be placed on the project team instead of the increase in work items, which you are concerned will have the effect of decreasing morale and therefore team productivity.

If we consider only the validity of what you are thinking of saying, it will seem it would be fine to say it. But now let us consider the outcomes that we want:

For the sake of the company, the project, and the project team, there are three outcomes that are desirable. The first is that the deadline is extended; the second is that the number of work items is reduced; and the third is to add more people to help with the work - assuming adding more people would help.

We now must consider if how you were thinking about sharing the facts of the project and your professional opinion would indeed lead to achieving one or more of these outcomes. It most likely would not, as the original phrasing lacks diplomacy, and would most likely cause the people in charge of the project to become defensive, upset, or angry.

Saying, "We're working a bunch of overtime just because someone decided to double the amount of work we had to do, and now we're going to miss the deadline, and be blamed for not working hard enough," is accusatory to the people running the project - the very people who you would need to persuade in order to achieve one or more of your desired outcomes. Further, using "a bunch" and "someone," creates confusion as to whether these are factual statements and an informed professional opinion, or are nothing more than your personal opinion. Finally, declaring the worst-case scenario of being blamed for a missed deadline implies that you are not thinking about how a positive outcome might be achieved.

Ultimately, the problem with the original phrasing was that it was blame-oriented instead of solution-oriented, such that it was more concerned with assigning blame and deflecting responsibility than it was about finding pragmatic solutions to a shared problem.

A far better way to phrase your honest professional opinion would be, "In my professional opinion, the project is at risk of missing its deadline, and there are three approaches we can choose from to help the project be successful: we can extend the deadline, reduce the workload, or add resources."

This would be considered a very assertive statement, as it is honest, diplomatic, and directly speaks to the issue at hand.

While this rephrasing does fix many of the issues with the original phrasing - as it is now clear that this is your professional opinion and not your personal opinion, and it is now solution-oriented rather than blame-oriented - it could benefit from a bit more diplomacy to help persuade the people in charge to choose one or more of the three options.

A more persuasive phrasing might be:

"I am worried that we might miss our deadline, and have been thinking about what we might be able to do to maximize our chances of success. The ideas I have so far are to move the deadline - which I know might not be possible; to reduce the workload - which I know might disappoint our customers; or add more people - which I know will cost us more money. I am open to other ideas, but feel it's important that we take action for the sake of the project."

While this phrasing dials back the assertiveness, it does so in order to gain persuasiveness by inviting other people to be a part of coming up with the solution. People generally want to have a say in important decisions that affect them, and even though you may be exactly correct with regards to your three solutions, you may improve your chances of winning over any skeptics by clearly communicating that you are open to the possibility that you are wrong.

Being diplomatic often comes with the tradeoff of being less direct, but as we should always strive to achieve positive outcomes, diplomacy should be utilized whenever it will help to achieve the best results.