Comment by quanticle | Hacker News Reader

Comment by quanticle | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

The other problem that the article completely ignores is the difference in power between the manager and the engineer. NVC and NVC-like forms of communication work when the participants are relatively equal in power, when one person can say honestly and forthrightly what they feel and be reasonably certain that they won't be retaliated against for being honest.

In my experience, that describes very few business settings. There is a massive power differential between the manager and the engineer (after all, the manager can fire the engineer, but the engineer cannot fire the manager) and very often the engineer doesn't know the manager well enough to know how they would react to a statement like, "I feel belittled by the fact that you constantly ignore my feedback and impose unreasonable deadlines because a salesperson put you on the spot in front of the VP."

As I see it, a work environment that's safe enough for NVC to be useful is one where the lines of communication are open and honest enough for NVC to be unnecessary. As a result, whenever I see or hear someone speaking NVC phrases at me at work (especially if they have never done so in the past), I am immediately on guard, because I know they're trying to slip a fast one by me.

> very often the engineer doesn't know the manager well enough to know how they would react to a statement like, "I feel belittled by the fact that you constantly ignore my feedback and impose unreasonable deadlines because a salesperson put you on the spot in front of the VP."

There's one quick way to find out how they'd react! Seriously though, I generally find myself respected in the organisations that I work in, and I think it's at least partly because I'm willing to be forthright in calling people out and telling them what I think, regardless of their position. Of course, some may take it badly, but that's not the kind of organisation I want to work in (and in my experience, most people react well to honesty).

That works pretty well if you're confident of finding another job and/or have a safety cushion (aka "FU" money).

In that situation, your manager doesn't really have much power over you. What's the worst they can do, fire you?

But a lot of people don't feel confident of finding another job and are basically afraid of losing the one they have.

That's what makes it a significant power difference. They're afraid because they aren't secure.

> NVC and NVC-like forms of communication work when the participants are relatively equal in power

Could you suggest a general approach to mitigating conflict when there is inequality in power without getting to the specifics, listening to both sides, and attempting to find a win-win?

If the less-powerful don't try to get what they want, the more powerful wins by default.

> "I feel belittled by the fact that you constantly ignore my feedback and impose unreasonable deadlines because a salesperson put you on the spot in front of the VP"

Let's work with this. Are you feeling resentful because your need to be listened to? If the answer is yes, how about we take 15 minutes and you can explain the extent of the issues? If not, I haven't understood—could you try again?

>Let's work with this. Are you feeling resentful because your need to be listened to? If the answer is yes, how about we take 15 minutes and you can explain the extent of the issues? If not, I haven't understood—could you try again?

I'm not sure what you're trying to show here, because just because you can write a positive reply to that here on Hacker News does not in any way change someone's actual trepidations with expressing that to their actual manager.

Plus the entire subtext of that reply is just "I don't want to acknowledge the possibility that I have made any mistakes, and so I am going to reduce your problems down to cliches."

In your reply, this part

> “ Let's work with this. Are you feeling resentful because your need to be listened to?”

comes off as quite infantilizing and degrading. If I received this reply, I would feel you are not treating me with respect and you’re trying to undercut me by appealing to an emotion (resentfulness) and shifting focus onto that instead of dealing with the actual problems.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com