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More on honesty/discretion/tact/openness
Aug. 14th, 2007 11:26 amA couple of weeks ago I had a bad experience, the details aren't too important, but it involved me being socially naive amongst other things. I told a couple of friends about it, one or two at work, and a few of my uni friends. And one of my work friends had this to say to me: "I know you're a very open and honest person but I think you need to learn how to be more shy sometimes."
Huh? My self-image tells me that this is similar to telling water that it needs to be more wet. I've spent the last four years of my life trying to learn how not to be shy, and now someone is telling me to go back to that? So this is what I've been thinking about for the last few days, about openness, honesty, tact and discretion, shyness, and social appropriateness.
What I've come up with so far:
Shyness in the sense my coworker was using it means not disclosing information about yourself. Shyness in the sense I use it means not being able to hold a conversation at all. I suffer fairly badly from shyness in the second sense, but hardly any in the first. I generally decide whether or not to disclose information based on whether or not I have any right to disclose it rather than whether or not the person I'm speaking to has any right to hear it, and since I have the control over my personal information I can give all of it out without breaking any trust. Obviously sometimes it's not appropriate to do so and the important part of social interaction is working and when and how much to give out.
Openness and honesty go together in the sense that if you're a very open person you'll almost always be honest. The reverse certainly doesn't have to be true. You can be mysterious (ie not open) but still be a very fundamentally honest person. If you only give out information on a need-to-know basis then you're mysterious, if you give it out to anyone who asks then you're open (and socially naive if the person is likely to use that information in the wrong way), if you give it out without asking then you're being very open and often also inappropriate and possibly even intrusive.
Tact is largely defined by the ability to save face for the person you're talking to. All too often this means lying or deliberating skating around a certain topic so as not to cause them difficulty or embarrassment. Being tactful requires a good knowledge of what people are uncomfortable with and a good ability to read their reactions to what you say so that you can abort your current path if necessary.
Discretion is closely linked to tact because it also concerns knowing what not to say, however to me tact is about knowing how to say things in a 'good' way (which will often involve lies of some variety) while discretion is about knowing whether to bring it up at all.
So, my own areas to work on:
Working out who I can safely be open with.
Setting up some kind of mental filter so that I don't exist in a binary full disclosure/no disclosure state.
Become more comfortable talking to people face-to-face so that I can actually hold conversation, make eye contact, and so forth. I've noticed lately that even with my best friends I have trouble looking directly at them when I'm speaking..
Work out when tact needs to be exercised and when I can safely be as blunt as I prefer to be.
Get a better understanding of this whole appropriateness thing..
Learn how to evade questions I don't really want to answer without making it into this whole big awkward production. Also, learning how to say no gracefully
And then there's a few things which I probably should be working on but would require compromising honesty, so I'm probably going to just leave them be and society can go jump off a cliff if they don't like it :) Those things are mostly about learning how to hide my own reactions in order to be more socially appropriate, for example being able to hold a conversation with an annoying person without showing that I'm annoyed. I see the need for the skill but the idea of actually doing so myself isn't appealing at all.
Huh? My self-image tells me that this is similar to telling water that it needs to be more wet. I've spent the last four years of my life trying to learn how not to be shy, and now someone is telling me to go back to that? So this is what I've been thinking about for the last few days, about openness, honesty, tact and discretion, shyness, and social appropriateness.
What I've come up with so far:
Shyness in the sense my coworker was using it means not disclosing information about yourself. Shyness in the sense I use it means not being able to hold a conversation at all. I suffer fairly badly from shyness in the second sense, but hardly any in the first. I generally decide whether or not to disclose information based on whether or not I have any right to disclose it rather than whether or not the person I'm speaking to has any right to hear it, and since I have the control over my personal information I can give all of it out without breaking any trust. Obviously sometimes it's not appropriate to do so and the important part of social interaction is working and when and how much to give out.
Openness and honesty go together in the sense that if you're a very open person you'll almost always be honest. The reverse certainly doesn't have to be true. You can be mysterious (ie not open) but still be a very fundamentally honest person. If you only give out information on a need-to-know basis then you're mysterious, if you give it out to anyone who asks then you're open (and socially naive if the person is likely to use that information in the wrong way), if you give it out without asking then you're being very open and often also inappropriate and possibly even intrusive.
Tact is largely defined by the ability to save face for the person you're talking to. All too often this means lying or deliberating skating around a certain topic so as not to cause them difficulty or embarrassment. Being tactful requires a good knowledge of what people are uncomfortable with and a good ability to read their reactions to what you say so that you can abort your current path if necessary.
Discretion is closely linked to tact because it also concerns knowing what not to say, however to me tact is about knowing how to say things in a 'good' way (which will often involve lies of some variety) while discretion is about knowing whether to bring it up at all.
So, my own areas to work on:
Working out who I can safely be open with.
Setting up some kind of mental filter so that I don't exist in a binary full disclosure/no disclosure state.
Become more comfortable talking to people face-to-face so that I can actually hold conversation, make eye contact, and so forth. I've noticed lately that even with my best friends I have trouble looking directly at them when I'm speaking..
Work out when tact needs to be exercised and when I can safely be as blunt as I prefer to be.
Get a better understanding of this whole appropriateness thing..
Learn how to evade questions I don't really want to answer without making it into this whole big awkward production. Also, learning how to say no gracefully
And then there's a few things which I probably should be working on but would require compromising honesty, so I'm probably going to just leave them be and society can go jump off a cliff if they don't like it :) Those things are mostly about learning how to hide my own reactions in order to be more socially appropriate, for example being able to hold a conversation with an annoying person without showing that I'm annoyed. I see the need for the skill but the idea of actually doing so myself isn't appealing at all.
