
Lion, ready to spring, in Samburu National Reserve, Kenya. Directness can be somewhat intimidating, especially when it involves direct eye contact.
Photo by Richard A. Muller.
If we were always direct in all our communications, the world would be a boring place — when it wasn't busy being dangerous and explosive. Many cultures (including my own) value directness, but indirectness has its uses, and we'd all benefit if everyone understood better when to use it.
Uses of indirectness abound. For example, consider the question, "How do you like my new haircut?" Even if we customarily lie, we all recognize the evasive reply, "Interesting…"
Here are just some of the uses of indirectness at work.
- Deference to authority
- Sometimes deference to authority is essential to survival within the organization, especially when conveying criticism. Indirectness can provide a means to surface important information. Yet, in extreme situations, even indirectness can be risky.
- Mitigating the risk of offense
- Conveying information to someone directly can risk offense, especially in the absence of a request for it. We can mitigate this risk by asking permission to make the offer, as in, "I have something on that, would you like to hear it?" Even then, some risk does remain. An indirect approach can be a less risky way to offer it. For instance, "If you want some background on that, let me know."
- Deferring to those in pain
- We'd all benefit if
everyone understood better
when to use indirectness - When emotions are raw, and people are hurting, direct approaches are often rejected — if they don't make things even worse. Sometimes it's best to wait for healing, but indirectness can provide a channel for urgent communications.
- Maintaining deniability
- Sometimes it's necessary to convey information covertly, especially when you work in a politically unsafe environment. Hinting, suggesting, and speaking to be overheard are sometimes used this way. Of course, the lack of safety is fundamental, and it must be addressed, but short-term needs sometimes intervene before you find the long-term solution. Using indirectness for this purpose can be a signal that it's time to either resolve the safety issue or move on.
- Preserving or transferring of ownership
- When the message recipient must take ownership of the information, delivering the message directly can be problematic. Directness can result in a loss of ownership, or it can interfere with transfer of ownership. Using an indirect approach, such as hinting or speaking to be overheard, leaves the way clear for the recipient to assume ownership.
- Leaving space for creativity
- Conveying a direct message to problem solvers can bias their process. It can limit their creativity and it can cause them not to examine possibilities that they otherwise would. Indirect suggestions can give them necessary guidance with significantly less risk of biasing or limiting their creative process.
To whatever degree your own culture values indirectness, be assured that in this age of global teams you'll someday encounter someone who considers you overly direct. Prepare for these situations, if you want to be considered polite. Top
Next Issue
Are you fed up with tense, explosive meetings? Are you or a colleague the target of a bully? Destructive conflict can ruin organizations. But if we believe that all conflict is destructive, and that we can somehow eliminate conflict, or that conflict is an enemy of productivity, then we're in conflict with Conflict itself. Read 101 Tips for Managing Conflict to learn how to make peace with conflict and make it an organizational asset. Order Now!
Your comments are welcome
Would you like to see your comments posted here? rbrenjTnUayrCbSnnEcYfner@ChacdcYpBKAaMJgMalFXoCanyon.comSend me your comments by email, or by Web form.About Point Lookout
Thank you for reading this article. I hope you enjoyed it and
found it useful, and that you'll consider recommending it to a friend.
This article in its entirety was written by a human being. No machine intelligence was involved in any way.
Point Lookout is a free weekly email newsletter. Browse the archive of past issues. Subscribe for free.
Support Point Lookout by joining the Friends of Point Lookout, as an individual or as an organization.
Do you face a complex interpersonal situation? Send it in, anonymously if you like, and I'll give you my two cents.
Related articles
More articles on Workplace Politics:
Ten Tactics for Tough Times: I
- When you find yourself in a tough spot politically, what can you do? Most of us obsess about the situation
for a while, and then if we still have time to act, we do what seems best. Here's Part I of a set of
approaches that can organize your thinking and shorten the obsessing.
Organizing a Barn Raising
- Once you find a task that you can tackle as a "barn raising," your work is just beginning.
Planning and organizing the work is in many ways the hard part.
Stonewalling: I
- Stonewalling is a tactic of obstruction used by those who wish to stall the forward progress of some
effort. Whether the effort is a rival project, an investigation, or just the work of a colleague, the
stonewaller hopes to gain advantage. What can you do about stonewalling?
Stone-Throwers at Meetings: I
- One class of disruptions in meetings includes the tactics of stone-throwers — people who exploit
low-cost tactics to disrupt the meeting and distract all participants so as to obstruct progress. How
do they do it, and what can the meeting chair do?
The Risks of Humor at Work
- Humor at work can be useful for strengthening relationships, making connections, and defusing tension.
And it can be risky, too. Some risks: irrelevance to the here and now, leaving out the funny, or ambiguous
sarcasm. Read this post for five more risks.
See also Workplace Politics and Workplace Politics for more related articles.
Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout
Coming February 12: On Substituting for a Star
- Newcomers to work groups have three tasks: to meet and get to know incumbent group members; to gain their trust; and to learn about the group's task and how to contribute to accomplishing it. All can be difficult; all are made even more difficult when the newcomer is substituting for a star. Available here and by RSS on February 12.
And on February 19: Yet More Ways to Waste a Meeting
- Experts have discovered that people have been complaining about meetings since the Bronze Age (3300-1200 BCE). Just kidding. But I'm probably right. As an aid to future archaeologists I offer this compilation of methods people use today to eliminate any possibility that a meeting might produce results worth the time spent. Available here and by RSS on February 19.
Coaching services
I offer email and telephone coaching at both corporate and individual rates. Contact Rick for details at rbrenjTnUayrCbSnnEcYfner@ChacdcYpBKAaMJgMalFXoCanyon.com or (650) 787-6475, or toll-free in the continental US at (866) 378-5470.
Get the ebook!
Past issues of Point Lookout are available in six ebooks:
- Get 2001-2 in Geese Don't Land on Twigs (PDF, )
- Get 2003-4 in Why Dogs Wag (PDF, )
- Get 2005-6 in Loopy Things We Do (PDF, )
- Get 2007-8 in Things We Believe That Maybe Aren't So True (PDF, )
- Get 2009-10 in The Questions Not Asked (PDF, )
- Get all of the first twelve years (2001-2012) in The Collected Issues of Point Lookout (PDF, )
Are you a writer, editor or publisher on deadline? Are you looking for an article that will get people talking and get compliments flying your way? You can have 500-1000 words in your inbox in one hour. License any article from this Web site. More info
Follow Rick





Recommend this issue to a friend
Send an email message to a friend
rbrenjTnUayrCbSnnEcYfner@ChacdcYpBKAaMJgMalFXoCanyon.comSend a message to Rick
A Tip A Day feed
Point Lookout weekly feed


Beware any resource that speaks of "winning" at workplace politics or "defeating" it. You can benefit or not, but there is no score-keeping, and it isn't a game.
- Wikipedia has a nice article with a list of additional resources
- Some public libraries offer collections. Here's an example from Saskatoon.
- Check my own links collection
- LinkedIn's Office Politics discussion group