[PragmaticPulp]

> Instead, guide them towards the path to figuring out for themselves that they're wrong. Build a foundation of truths and facts they can evaluate their own beliefs against. If they change their mind, great. If they don't learn, you're no worse off than you were before (and your blood pressure will remain lower).

I had a manager who would quietly disagree with things we said, then try to gently steer us toward the answer he wanted by asking a lot of leading questions. "Socratic method", he called it. He thought he was doing us a great favor by helping us discover the correct answer through his questioning.

There was a problem: He was sometimes wrong. In certain domains, he was frequently wrong. He often misunderstood a situation and would launch into multiple days or weeks of leading questions designed to gently guide us to the "correct" answer, often leaving us with "something to think about" that we were supposed to ponder overnight.

Some times we'd spend days trying to guide him back to seeing where he was wrong, or why he was asking the wrong questions. Once he convinced himself he was right and we were wrong, it was hell to stop his socratic method questioning and get him to look at the facts again.

It was awful. I spent so much of that job trying to guess what he was thinking. We always had to reverse engineer what he wanted us to say with his questions, because he wouldn't just tell us like adults talking to each other.

If I learned anything from that job, it's that I can't stand working with people who won't communicate directly. We lost so much time because he thought he was being clever by not telling us when he disagreed with us.

[freetime2]

Yup I have seen this technique used by someone who thought they were being tactful, but just came across as being totally patronizing and wasting a large amount of time.

Polite directness is best. Explain your position as clearly as possible, your reservations with the alternative, what it would take to change your mind, and actually be open to considering alternatives and changing your mind.

That being said, I think it is possible to be direct while also employing the socratic method.

[Brian_K_White]

Exactly. You can both state your reasoning AND ask a question that not only tries to lead someone else to your conclusion, but also allows them to rebut your conclusion with their own better one.

Assuming that that last doesn't exist is just insufferably patronizing asshole.

When I ask "what did I miss?" I'm really asking that.

Sure I know I've put a lot of time and thought into the topic (otherwise I'm not trying to state anything in the first place), and sure I may even be pretty sure I'm the authority in the immediate viscinity, but obviously anyone else from any background at any time on any topic may know something I don't know or have considered something I never considered, and may actually have an answer. In fact it happens all the time.

[riedel]

Totally agree. It can really feel passively aggressive to me if someone politely asks you to reflect. IMHO it is really important to be transparent. It is important for the opposite to understand also how important something is to you and why. I tend to really dislike people whose trained communication strategies you can observe, even it is something like nonviolent communication (whose underpinning I understand but am particularly bad at)

[falcolas]

Of course poor communication skills will cause problems. It's well worth asking for clarifications in such situations; I have few problems playing the dumb oaf and admitting my lack of understanding if it gets someone to ELI5 their point. And generally, someone who brags about using the Socratic method out loud will gladly display their brilliance you've blundered past.

In the end, I'm not advocating for confusing the person you're communicating with, I'm advocating for not butting your head against their beliefs; against their ego. Perhaps this advice is better suited to online debates, but I've also seen it too often in real life to waste my time trying to change someone's beliefs.

[lazide]

The issue is that it is often very important in engineering to get to the point and state what you believe as directly as possible, so that others (and yourself) can compare it to the facts quickly and easily. And listen, and figure out where they might be wrong afterwards.

And we can and should expect everyone in Engineering to do the same for what they believe too. Because otherwise we all waste time we can’t afford to waste, and end up with more broken situations.

What you’re describing is fine for politics and social meet and greets. It wastes time, causes confusion, and results in expensive (and sometimes fatal) mistakes when the facts matter.

[falcolas]

Engineers too are human. They have egos and beliefs and care more about the things they build than they should. Their feelings get hurt when people are rude, short, or belittling - or when they perceive that someone's being rude, short, or belittling.

The perfectly rational engineer (read: human being) doesn't exist outside of a select few neurodivergant folks. Acting as if every engineer is perfectly rational is now, and always has been, a mistake.

Just ask Linus' more verbose colleagues; have a look at how he has changed over the many years he's lead the kernel development.

[lazide]

It is entirely possible to be direct without being an asshole.

Being indirect, Socratic questioning, etc. has its place too. But it can easily just result in someone being a passive aggressive asshole instead of a direct one, or, as others noted in the thread, being confusing and a drag on everyone because they won’t actually say what they think.

[tomnipotent]

> to be direct without being an asshole

You don't have any control over how people perceive things, which is the point. Everyone is an asshole to someone.

[lazide]

That’s the ‘no one is an asshole, everyone is an asshole’ type of BS that muddies the waters.

Linus has been an asshole, he didn’t have to be, and everyone agreed on that, including him.

He’s getting better at being less of an asshole.

That is what I’m referring to. It isn’t ambiguous. It isn’t ‘a bad day’. It isn’t one person getting offended about something that no one else saw. Pretending it is does no one any favors.

[brabel]

I think the point of the parent comment wasn't about communication per se, but that you can't always be right (even when we like to think we are) and your method of trying to lead others to adopt your wrong conclusions can be hell to deal with.

[rendall]

People often misuse the Socratic method like that. Socrates asked those questions not to guide the students to a certain answer, but because he himself didn't know where the questions would lead. It really was a dialogue and not a way to get students to some particular preconceived answer.

[xtiansimon]

“ We lost so much time because he thought he was being clever by not telling us when he disagreed with us.”

Are these insights from a confession or somehow related by a confidant? Otherwise, isn’t this conclusion just speculation?

Lack of leadership is frustrating. Indecisiveness wastes time. That said, the job and style of the manager invite different styles of management.

My current boss is very opinionated and direct. And this makes sense for a sole-proprietor who has to make decisive choices and decisions. Also, in accounting consulting (the domain) clear leadership is very productive, which is tied to our business model. Of course you can argue and swing opinion, and soon find more responsibility to your plate. Haha

I’ve lead projects where I was the programmer and others were closer to the content and context. I worked to gently guide them to look for the patterns of their content, so i could determine if there were higher orders of complexity—which I was struggling to understand how to solve.

The picture I’m working to paint is that over my career I’ve seen different models and used some in low stakes business—not rocket science or healthcare. YMMV

[JackMorgan]

A great description! I've worked with someone who abused the Socratic method, and it was infuriating. Especially considering he wasn't a particularly good technologist, his only claim was that he was the manager.

I'm remembering all the days spent with him asking leading questions, where after the first question it was immediately obvious he wanted us to "realize" a seriously inferior solution. It felt very patronizing, and a huge waste of time as I'd immediately start to explain why his end result couldn't work for some glaring reason, but he'd be certain I somehow misunderstood the problem and keep asking questions. Sometimes he was right, and legitimately guided the team to a better solution, but maybe only 1/3rd of the time. Whew.

[pjio]

The Socratic method used to avoid being faced with the possibility of being wrong about something.

[pammf]

Thank you for this comment. I feel that I have been operating in the same mode of your former manager and never considered how this could be as harmful as being too direct.