(Your phone starts ringing; you need a second to recognize the name, but you know for sure: it’s your partner’s friend - you last talked with her at your wedding.)
“Hey! How is it going? I saw that the new BazaarCON is in your town this year. Can I crash at your place for it? It will be only one week.”
Has this person thrown etiquette out the window? Or maybe you just replied, “No. Thanks for calling!” and that was it.
Do I need to accept the role before playing it?
It might sound like a weird question, but we must be aware of the roles and actively decide which one to play. Of course, this is all part of becoming a better communicator. Already confused? Let me present a different angle, one more pragmatic, about what some of us might consider “cultural” differences.
For some, it’s obvious, while for the majority, it is fundamentally hard to see. I believe there are two core approaches people take to establishing trust in communication. I’m bad at names, so let’s call them “truth-seeking” and “community-seeking.” Most people seem to have a dominant social mode in which they constantly operate, to the extent that “what communication is for” doesn’t even register as a belief; it is more a background principle of the universe. Thus, when they see someone operating under the other model, it registers as that person is a lousy communicator or even a bad person.
Ok, but first some culture
I’m not inventing something here. I usually don’t. But, in 2007, a comment in a fun thread to read presented something. Here is a copy of the comment:
This is a classic case of Ask Culture meets Guess Culture. In some families, you grow up with the expectation that it's OK to ask for anything at all, but you have to realize you might get no for an answer. This is Ask Culture.
In Guess Culture, you avoid putting a request into words unless you're pretty sure the answer will be yes. Guess Culture depends on a tight net of shared expectations. A key skill is putting out delicate feelers. If you do this with enough subtlety, you won't even have to make the request directly; you'll get an offer. Even then, the offer may be genuine or pro forma; it takes yet more skill and delicacy to discern whether you should accept.
All kinds of problems spring up around the edges. If you're a Guess Culture person – and you obviously are – then unwelcome requests from Ask Culture people seem presumptuous and out of line, and you're likely to feel angry, uncomfortable, and manipulated. If you're an Ask Culture person, Guess Culture behavior can seem incomprehensible, inconsistent, and rife with passive aggression.
…I’m a Guess, too. Let me tell you, it's great for, say, reading nuanced and subtle novels; not so great for, say, dating and getting raises.) The thing is, Guess behaviors only work among a subset of other Guess people — ones who share a fairly specific set of expectations and signaling techniques. The farther you get from your family, friends, and subculture, the more you'll have to embrace Ask behavior. Otherwise, you'll spend your life in a cloud of mild outrage at (pace Moomin fans) the Cluelessness of Everyone.
There was quite a big conversation about this; I will leave here some links to read further different opinions and views (just as I have one):
- https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/may/08/change-life-asker-guesser
- https://www.juliansanchez.com/2010/05/10/asking-and-guessing/
- https://theincidentaleconomist.com/dont-ask-dont-tell-now-dont-guess/
Back to truths and communities
While traveling, I experienced this difference quite a lot. Sometimes, it’s funny; other times, it’s frightening or maybe even eye-opening. Understanding that this transcends the significant communication layers (verbal, non-verbal, para-verbal, and written) makes it even more attractive to try and learn it.
A friend commented while walking together on a major street in my hometown:
I repeatedly heard you say things to others that made me uncomfortable, as they seemed unfriendly or insincere. Each time, I was puzzled by the overwhelmingly positive reactions people had toward you.
She is a great communicator and wanted to understand better what was happening. It wasn’t an issue with what you are classically trained about communication. She can read people’s body language quite well; she knows how to smile and send out friendly vibes, how mirroring works, and some other tricks. However, the conclusion that how you say things to people is way more important than what you say is not something you can easily find in a book.
I mean, you do find that conclusion in books, but I haven’t found one that refers to this specifically. So, if you also put much pressure on yourself in conversations to figure out the right thing to say, remember that maybe 90% of them don’t care. They are communicating on a different level, dancing in a different league.
So there are rules of the dance?
Let’s lay out the rules of the game more precisely. In no particular order, starting with truth-seekers:
- Communication is literal — what you say matters.
- The goal of communication is to convey information content; the output is the point.
- Conflictual words delivered in a warm tone are threatening.
- Open-ended communication may feel strange, even uncomfortable. The purpose of talking is to share information; at some point, you run out of information that seems worth sharing.
- “Improving communication” means learning to identify areas of disagreement at finer and finer levels of detail and to navigate those conflicts skillfully. It also means conveying the message in the shortest form possible.
- They tend to be “ask culture.”
- Their core fears tend to be about being wrong, misunderstood, or disingenuous.
I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead. - Mark Twain
And going next with community-seekers:
- Communication is affective — how you say it is what matters.
- The goal of communication is to play a game, and keeping it going is the point, so open-ended communication is welcome; it is an invitation to connect.
- Conflictual words delivered in a warm tone are a form of play.
- “Improving communication” means learning to identify and resolve the blockers that prevent you from connecting more intensely. Finding other subjects to communicate to only makes it better.
- They tend to be “guess culture.”
- They are more concerned with not being loved, being isolated, or being seen as unpleasant.
The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn’t said. - Peter Drucker
The dress question, not with colors this time
Do I look fat in this dress?
To a truth-seeker, this request for information deserves an honest response. Coercive/implicit requests for white lies are bad because they limit people’s ability to understand what is accurate and, therefore, undermine the purpose of communication. Lying undermines trust; a truth seeker might say, “If I don’t tell you when I don’t like something, how will you know to believe me when I say I do?” When someone comes to them with a problem, they reflexively interpret it as a request for advice and default to problem-solving mode. The idea of “validating” someone’s emotions before definitively determining that they are, in fact, valid seems patronizing.
To a community-seeker, this request for affirmation deserves a considerate response. Coercive/implicit requests for white lies are perfectly okay because having accurate signals about the specific things people believe is less important than conveying friendship and solidarity, which is the purpose of communication. Lying, under appropriate circumstances, reinforces safety, and not only is it acceptable, but its absence is considered rude. And yes, sometimes people want speech acts. When someone comes to a community-seeker with a problem, they reflexively interpret it as a request for commiseration and care. They understand that offering advice when it hasn’t been explicitly requested may feel patronizing or like it minimizes the importance of the other person’s emotions.
Putting them face to face
Community-seekers can seem low-integrity, even machiavellian, to a truth-seeker because they are willing to say whatever is expedient to navigate a social situation. Projecting warmth to get someone to like you is manipulative, as is “buttering up” someone for an ask.
Truth-seekers can seem cold, even sociopathic, to a community-seeker because they aren’t willing to make standard moves in a conversation to make the other person feel comfortable. Projecting warmth to get someone to like you is just how communication is meant to work.
Truth-seekers tend to be high-decouplers, able to separate a factual question from its cultural context when examining it. In contrast, community-seekers tend to be low-decouplers who reject the notion that facts can be examined without their implications. An example of this phenomenon, if you’re unfamiliar:
At a party, you might find somebody telling a joke from the dark humor type. It was essential that words mean something (truth-seeking) to one person, and they could literally imagine those things (high-decoupling). From the other person’s perspective, “from all the subjects, why did you pick this one?”
Truth-seekers tend to venerate science as a source of fundamental truth and be suspicious of others’ reported experiences unless they can identify a sufficiently persuasive mechanism underlying them or explain how they might work. Community-seekers tend to venerate spirituality as a source of fundamental truth and report the experience as the most relevant thing. So, they have no issue crediting people’s accounts without understanding the mechanism behind them.
You can get pretty far in life by sticking to one style. But you need to learn how to adapt to achieve great things. So again, to the question:
