[3mb3ry]

Recent events have reminded me of this topic and I thought that maybe this could be a useful read for the community.  

TLDR The impact you have on others is more important than your intention.

also quick note that the verbal and non-verbal cues could range from specific punctuation and spacing of words up to emojis and gifs, incase there is any confusion to how that translates online.

[PandaInPants]

fruck u pal

https://imgur.com/a/M5OIybJ
^rude person i am justified

[3mb3ry]

Im right your wrong lalalalala L bozo.

I'm curious, would it have been better to wait more than a couple days to share this or is me sharing this at all the problem? I did sit on this for a couple days before trying to go about sharing something that I truly find fascinating in a neutral way, this was not a spur of the moment "man i wanna be right" post.

[reina]

i love this post, it's really informative and does a great job of showing productive ways to resolve the miscommunications that exacerbated the situation. it feels kinda like a group therapy exercise for the community. thank you, embery :)

[Dildo Shwaggins]

This has a point. However, in situations where there is conflict that involves every side not being entirely wrong/problematic but not also being entirely right, it has to be a civil discussion and acknowledgment by ALL of the parties involved (not necessarily both as looking at it as two sides isn’t the healthiest either). I think this community has an issue with that fairly often, and it’s important when the goal is a mutual understanding of points of view even if disagreement still occurs. This isn’t saying everyone has to be like “I’m right you’re wrong” rather “hey, I can see where you’re coming from” and reaching a point where there’s a lesson to be learned for the future even if the disagreement leaves things a bit sour. For any of this to occur, there has to be de-escalation prioritized, which is a duty of staff, to be the first goal. Then work out the details of what was said and what is problematic from there.

[bryanbrr]

Hi Embery!

I think that this an important post that shares the need to recognize the intention in a conversation. Intention is important. I don't necessarily agree with everything stated though. I am always open to being wrong and often am wrong LOL. One thing that I disagree with in your post is the comment of "TLDR The impact you have on others is more important than your intention." To me, intention and impact are as equally important because of the interpretation that happens in between them.

Here an example that should help with what I am saying. (I'm not always clear in writing)
Example: My boss comes to me and has a conversation regarding my tardiness. My boss tells me that I have been late 5 times in the last month and that further tardiness will result in me being fired. They intended to inform me that I would lose my job if I didn't begin showing up on time. I hear this message and interpret it as them telling me that I am lazy and not a good worker. The impact it made on me is that they think I'm lazy and can't do my job correctly.

What's more important here? My interpretation of their message or their intention with the message? To me, they are equally important. 

What I believe is important in all of these situations is that both parties listen/seek to understand each other by being curious. I feel as often we just listen to what we want to hear instead of trying to understand what each other is trying to say. One point that I agree with in your post is that if the person they are communicating with begins to roll their eyes or change their body language, they should ask a clarifying question to make sure that there is alignment in the message and the impact it makes. It should be reciprocal though. If I'm hearing the message, I should reflect what i hear to be sure that what i am hearing is correct to mitigate any assumptions of my own. This is my own belief and of course am open to being wrong. I just believe that both items are important and that both parties need to be open to understanding and checking for alignment. 

(Sorry for my ted talk post.)

[RussEfarmer]

To me, intention and impact are as equally important because of the interpretation that happens in between them.

This is the fax

I work with a lot of people that have completely crap social skills but are otherwise awesome people (computer technicians and geeky manufacturing engineers)
They mean well but a lot of times they will say something that makes sense in their head but have trouble seeing how it can be interpreted in other ways, or even just don't have enough language skills to say what they are meaning without the impact being different than what they want.

In these cases it's your responsibility as the listener to have some patience and ask some clarifying questions to truly understand what they are saying before jumping to assumptions and taking their words at face value, and also to understand that people don't anyways have the skills to correctly say what they are meaning without problems

(It is also the responsibility of the speaker to realize when they are saying word soup and try to rephrase some stuff to help the listener out, which is in this diagram as #1-#4)

In the age of the internet where hundreds of people from all different places, cultures, backgrounds, languages, etc. can all come into one spot and start communicating, immediately looking at the impact of someone's words is a bad setup. If your social skills or language skills are crap then your words will not carry their intended meaning; and so you have difficulty controlling the impact. If listeners fail to look past the impact to try and understanding the meaning, it creates a full communication failure.

[Veni Vidi Vivi]

"Example: My boss comes to me and has a conversation regarding my tardiness. My boss tells me that I have been late 5 times in the last month and that further tardiness will result in me being fired. They intended to inform me that I would lose my job if I didn't begin showing up on time. I hear this message and interpret it as them telling me that I am lazy and not a good worker. The impact it made on me is that they think I'm lazy and can't do my job correctly."

Maybe I'm just autistic but this doesn't seem like a good example? It doesn't really work in your points favor. The impact it made on you will absolutely affect you more than the stated intent, and will probably backfire. You even say this by saying you interpret the message as a personal offense to you instead of just, understanding you should be on time. If you really interpreted that that way, you will have to wrestle with this insecurity in the future, whether you get fired or not. If you are particularly sensitive (not judging that) this could seriously impact your performance And your view on life. Japan's struggles with work life balance are a clear indicator of that, for a very serious real life example you can find a Ton of academic research easily.

If your boss unironically said, "You need to stop being late you lazy loser", you would assume you could be fired and you would probably feel upset at this treatment. Their intent could be to hurt your feelings, or it could just be to give you a small kick in the pants to get you back on track. What it's likely caused is for you to start looking for another job. This is why Intent is less important imho because it's a variable that doesnt affect the system. They could just not say it, they could not have a real intent, and they could also be flat out lying about their intent. The impact they had is definite and undeniable, it is Unchanged by the intent. That's why when we are children we are taught to apologize for hurting our siblings or friends on accident; they still got hurt even if we didn't mean to hurt them.

A further example: I make a claim to commit an illegal act as a joke. My intent was to make someone laugh. The impact is I get arrested. I could argue my case in court but I still made the claim and made someone afraid enough to have me arrested, despite my intent to entertain.

There's a famous quote that sums up years of people having this exact discussion well; "The Road to Hell is paved with good intentions." A quote I would be surprised if literally Anyone hasn't heard before.

Disclaimer: not attacking anyone! Just felt like the example you provided, Bryanbrr, wasn't an accurate example for furthering the discussion. It just didn't connect the dots between real life and your point. No worries if this isn't mindchanging stuff, but I hope this adds to the discussion amicably.

[chelllman]

I was debating whether or not to post this because I don't want to cause any issues, but when I was staff, people told me they valued my honesty so here we go.



Impact and intent are equally important.  I'm going to provide a high level reason why I believe this, and then give a personal example that mirrors the situation that happened earlier this week.

You can say something with completely innocent/good intent, and it can be interpreted differently than intended because each of us are the sum of our experiences, and different past experiences can shape how we react. This tends to happen more often through text communication because humans, by nature, gain a lot of information from tone, body language, facial expressions, etc. that are not present over discord text. We tend to automatically assume someones intent based upon our past history, and this can lead to situations like what happened with discord recent, where clear miscommunication, assumptions, and escalation turned what should have been a "Oh, I didn't mean it like that, here's what I was trying to convey" into multiple threads, damaged relationships, etc.


In the last year, one of my female friends reached out to me because her performance review (which is directly tied to salary increases) didn't go as well as she had hoped despite being one of the better programmers on her team. She got a salary increase, but not as much as she wanted, and wanted to know what I thought.  After some additional information, I told her she needs to be more aggressive about highlighting her accomplishments, such as finishing work ahead of schedule, helping other members of the team, and that she is clearly a critical member of her team.

She misinterpreted this as me telling her that she needed to stand up for herself because she was meek because she was a woman. For context, at no point did I bring up the fact that she was female when I gave her advice. Later, when we discussed, she revealed that men in the past had treated her like a child when it came to giving advice about being more vocal, advocating for herself, etc, so because of her past experiences, she misinterpreted my meaning.

The intent for me was that I'm an aggressive type A personality, like arguing, and reading about the theory behind arguing, so I was providing advice for what I knew worked for me in the past with salary negotiations. Additionally, I would give the same advice for someone in her situation regardless of race, gender, age, creed, etc.  My intent had nothing to do with the fact that she was a woman, but since I didn't know her experiences, my meaning was misinterpreted.  Ultimately, after some discussion, we both recognized that we both had to concede something: I should have clarified what I said and stated I would have given the same advice to any other person in her situation. She conceded that while it was only natural, it was unfair for her to immediately try to force my response into a box containing her prior experiences and judge my character based upon that.



So two lessons should be taken away: people can interpret what you say differently than intended, and someone's intent is not always the same as what you've experienced in the past. Good communication and healthy discussion are the most important thing you can do.

[Battons]

Im right your wrong lalalalala L bozo.

I'm curious, would it have been better to wait more than a couple days to share this or is me sharing this at all the problem? I did sit on this for a couple days before trying to go about sharing something that I truly find fascinating in a neutral way, this was not a spur of the moment "man i wanna be right" post.

No not at all, it’s a good reminder, I’m just making fun of people that are going to use this to validate themselves and invalidate other people even though both sides have a point, people are just refusing to listen.