Hacker News Reader

I always loved the scene[1] in Star Trek: The Next Generation season 7, where Data gives Wharf negative feedback about his job performance. It's obviously fictional, but it's a pretty good example of assertively, professionally and politely giving constructive feedback that can be accepted without losing face by the recipient. A lot of best practices shown in this one scene.

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdiQhMPt1Zo

Gotta love that Picard Maneuver at the very end.

According to the video below, it's Data's one and only!

https://youtu.be/3ar-eJwgTsM?t=910

Q's one and only was impressive!

https://youtu.be/3ar-eJwgTsM?t=710

You seem to suppose that there is always some magic combination of words that would make the other side to suddenly change their behaviour. Unfortunately, there may be not: say, other other side actively doesn't want to change their behaviour (they're personally fine with it, and your proposed changes would inconvenience them ever so slightly), and then can afford to not change — now what?

That assumes that any random selection of the human population is receptive to critical feedback.

Because it almost never works.