Honesty and directness.

I've talked with a couple of people (*waves to Lily and Liz*) about sugarcoating things vs. being completely direct with your words, and I've been meaning to blog about this for a while but haven't gotten around to it until now.

From my experience, most Americans, when communicating with others, tend to be very careful in their wording and are always trying to make sure to phrase things in a way that won't come off as offensive. Which makes sense- people want to be able to put their thoughts and opinions out there, but in a way that doesn't have the potential to start drama or make anybody angry or upset. However, although I understand the logic behind this mindset, I don't believe it is the best approach to take in most situations. Obviously, there are times where it is important to hold back and be careful with how you phrase things, but in most situations, I feel that being direct and saying exactly what you think is a much more effective way to communicate than sugarcoating your words.

When grading/editing papers or essays, for example, I think it is very important for teachers (or anyone else people let look over their paper) to give both thorough and honest feedback. If a person's work is filled with mistakes, each one of them should be pointed out; if there are a number of ways in which the person needs to improve, those should be indicated as well. Lily mentioned hearing about something called the "sandwich method," in which a teacher "sandwiches" a criticism in between two compliments, which we both thought sounded absolutely ridiculous. Not that I object to giving compliments or anything, but I believe that both compliments and constructive criticism should be given when needed, not in this forced format where pointing out each aspect that the student needs to improve will be overshadowed by so many positive points that they might not even notice the negatives. When I got back my first Shakespeare paper last semester, there was not a single positive comment on it- yes, I was disappointed with how badly I did, but because my TA gave me such detailed feedback, I knew what I needed to work on. Many people asked me to edit their essays in high school because they knew I would be honest with them and help them fix their mistakes/strengthen any weak areas. If teachers become so concerned with not wanting to hurt a student's feelings that it prevents them from giving the best help they can, how is that going to help them?

Another thing that bothers me is when people are constantly trying to hint at things instead of directly saying them, because they're afraid to or feel uncomfortable for whatever reason. Many times, when people try to hint things at me, I just end up ignoring them because it bothers me so much that they won't just come out and say what they want. Especially since at times when I have addressed people's hints directly, they'll say something like "Oh, no, no, it's okay," and just wave it off, and then I get mad because I know they want what they've been hinting at, so why do they keep making me go further to try and unearth their issue? What could have been over and done with in an instant if the person had just brought it up directly becomes this whole jumbled mess of passive-aggressiveness and creates a problem where there never needed to be one.

Oh, and just in case it comes across this way, I'm not an advocate at all for people being overly harsh or mean. There's definitely a fine line between honesty and being brutal, and there are some situations when telling the total truth isn't helpful at all. I just feel that in many circumstances, people choose to sugarcoat their words or beat around the bush so they won't cause problems, despite the fact that being completely honest gets their point across directly and leaves no room for ambiguity.