Substance should trump style
I prioritize clarity in my communications, above all else. That sometimes means I’m blunt. My sentences are straight-forward. I am not what you would call, “diplomatic.” Often this is helpful, but sometimes this is detrimental. I’ll accept that I need to work on my communication skills—frankly, many people need to work on their communication skills in one way or another. (Um, emails full of typos, run-on sentences, and no paragraph breaks, anyone?)
What I will not accept is when we elevate style above substance.
Example: Recently my client and the contractor got into a “difference of opinion” on something. The client sent a big official letter laying down the gauntlet. I forwarded it to my boss, to keep him aware of this issue in the event we get dragged into the middle. In my message, I wrote, “FYI. It’s getting ugly.”
And predictably, I got lectured. ”It would be better to write ‘Things are getting heated.’ All that stuff is discoverable.”
It’s “discoverable?” So phrasing exactly the same substance in a slightly less blunt way would actually make a lick of difference in a lawsuit? No. It would not.
What my boss did not do is spend any time coaching me on how to diffuse the situation, or how I could have prevented my team from getting at each other’s throats in the first place.
What would actually make a difference in a lawsuit would be actual performance of our job.
How about we all focus on doing our jobs well, instead of focusing on talking about doing our jobs well?
Let’s spend more time figuring out how we can be leaders who promote good teamwork, and less time worrying about the most artful way of phrasing our own failures in leadership?
Why don’t we spend a lot more time figuring out how to make our projects succeed, and less time worrying about how to cover our backsides during lawsuits?
I hope that was clear as day.
