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Comment by telesilla | Hacker News Reader

#22 is one I'm struggling with at the moment with a colleague: How to tell someone they’re wrong without making them feel ashamed. I'm very tactful except when it comes to asking other people to be tactful. Any suggestions would be really appreciated here and make for an unexpected Sunday.

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I would approach this by bringing up (one on one) concrete examples of where this person displayed a lack of tact (without calling it as such). If the other party reacted strongly, analyze that and get this person to understand cause-and-effect, along with explaining that there are other ways of accomplishing their goals. Come with concrete ways of how you would have done it. If the other party reacted privately to you, instead talk about how you would feel, perhaps even ask them to imagine how they would feel if someone talked to them in a similar way. Don't make it personal at any point, your goal is to help them see that there are better ways of accomplishing their own goals. I find most folks are open to that kind of feedback. If the person is an incorrigible asshole, you may need to escalate.

This is something I test candidates on during interviews, I make a small mistake, or disagree with an opinion to play devils advocate, just to see how they will tell me. Are they going to be nice about it, or become nasty, and how will they resolve the situation of a disagreement.

Me personally, I sometimes just ask to double check "are you sure?" even though I know a person is wrong, and say something like "I am very sure of this, let's double check" instead of saying "no, you are wrong".

Yeah, I know someone who is otherwise pretty empathetic who has a tendency to lead with "No..." when there are better ways.

This is one thing where not being in person often hurts--although even pre-pandemic that was often the case with me. If a reasonable well-aware person is reading a not to large room, they'll probably respond if someone suddenly gives a "Did I just hear what I thought I heard look?"

Ask questions. Like, How does this work in that scenario? What if it fails on high traffic? If their idea is flawed they themselves will understand it. Then we can propose our approach. Encourage them to ask questions. This will help to find gaps in our approach. Who knows, sometimes we were wrong in the first place.

Edit: typo.

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