They will betray you more quickly, for they are easily aroused to envy. They also become spoiled and tyrannical. But hire a former enemy and he will be more loyal than a friend, because he has more to prove. In fact, you have more to fear from friends than from enemies. If you have no enemies, find a way to make them.

Be Wary of Friends

<ul><li>Though you think friends are trustworthy, you do not know your friends nearly as well as you imagine.</li><li>A friend will often tell you a sweet lie because they don’t want to hurt your feelings.</li><li>Sometimes they mean their words, sometimes they don’t.</li><li>Your goal is to get things done, the better choice is to work with those who are most competent rather than just hiring friends – this is ideal both for your enterprise and your personal development.</li></ul>

Keep Friends for Friendship, But Work With The Skilled 

<ul><li>People do not like owing a debt to someone else.</li><li>When you help someone in a major way, they feel burden of debt in their soul, and they subconsciously resent you for it.</li><li>They want to feel that they deserve their good fortune.</li><li>When they know that they were chosen because of friendship, not necessarily because they were more deserving, they feel resentful</li><li>You will see this resentment slowly: flashes of envy here and there, and before you know it, you’d have lost your friend.</li><li>Show some gratitude before friendship goes to astray.</li></ul>

Ingratitude Will Kill You

You destroy your enemies once you befriend them.﻿

Hire your enemies once you befriend them.

<ul><li>Your former enemies don’t expect much from you and will be more loyal to you because they have more to prove.</li><li>A man who has something to prove will move mountains for you.</li></ul>

Hire Your Enemies Once You Befriend Them.

<ul><li>Without competition, it’s harder to grow stronger because without competition, you lack that extrinsic motivation – the desire to be better than others.</li><li>You will be more alert, productive, and industrious when you have a few declared enemies – you can’t afford to take it too easy.</li></ul>

Keep Some Enemies Around to Keep You Sharp

<ul><li>Without enemies around us, we grow lazy.</li><li>An enemy at out heels sharpens our wits, keeping us focused and alert</li><li>It is sometimes better then, to use enemies as enemies rather than transforming them into friends or allies.</li></ul>

Opportunities o Test Yourself

Be wary of friends – they will betray you more quickly, for they are easily aroused to envy. They also become spoiled and tyrannical. But hire a former enemy and he will be more loyal than a friend, because he has more to prove. In fact, you have more to fear from friends than from enemies. If you have no enemies, find a way to make them.

People want to feel they deserve their good fortune. Favors lead to resentment: they feel they've been chosen out of friendship, not because they are deserving. Hire a former enemy and he will be more loyal than a friend, because he has more to prove.

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Personal Development

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Motivation & Inspiration

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Communication

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Leadership & Management

Never Put Too Much Trust in Friends, Learn How to Use Enemies | 48 Laws of Power

"The only limits you have are the limits you believe."

"Success is really nothing more than the progressive realization of a worthy ideal. This means that any person who knows what they are doing and where they are going is a success ."

"You cannot always control what goes on outside. But you can always control what goes on inside."

"Clarity is Power"

55 Questions to Ask Yourself Book PDF Download best book  55 Questions to Ask Yourself is written by Manoj Chenthamarakshan Free Read Online

55 Questions to Ask Yourself

<ul><li>Don’t fall into the trap of trying to cover everything in a single talk. Instead, convey one big idea that leverages your personal experience.</li><li>A big idea can take an audience on a journey that alters the way they view the world. You should be able to define your idea as a throughline that is 15 words or fewer. Essentially, what is the core point of your talk?</li><li>Think about the audience, their context, and why your problem matters to them. As a tip, choose one person that you like and assume you are presenting the talk to them.</li></ul>

Convey One Big Idea

Script the opening minute and the closing lines. These are the most important parts of the talk. Use good images and stories to ignite curiosity and reflection. How people remember something is largely influenced by how it ends.

Open and Close Strong

Avoid sales pitches or talks that focus on what your organization does.For the visuals, No slides = better than bad slides. For each slide, convey just one idea and remember that less is more. For photos, have them take up the entire slide. Use only one typeface and 3 fonts throughout the presentation. Avoid bullets, italics, and underlines.

Bad Talk And Bad Visuals

Rehearsals help shape the talk. Ask for advice on clarity, tone, variety, and examples.Structure: One potential structure for your talk: introduction, context, main concepts, practical applications, conclusion.

The Shape Of The Talk

<ul><li>When you build trust and connection with your audience, your idea will resonate. To do so, consider the following tactics.</li><li>Make eye contact as you walk confidently onto the stage.</li><li>Show vulnerability.</li><li>Drop the ego – consider being self-deprecating.</li></ul>

Build Trust and Connection

Our minds co-evolved with storytelling, a byproduct of fire; elders were often the best storytellers that helped us imagine, dream, and understand the minds of others. Stories are easy to follow, and they give us the ability to understand complex ideas and understand imagined realities. Adding stories to your public speaking toolkit will enhance your effectiveness.

Tell Stories

<ul><li>With whatever you set out to explain, you need to incite curiosity. Make the audience care. You also should be incremental with new concepts. </li><li>Don’t confuse everyone with too many concepts. Use metaphors to help people understand. </li><li>Finally, show people drafts of your talk to avoid the curse of knowledge – assuming that other people have the same context as you.</li></ul>

Explanation

Enhance your persuasion by offering a counterintuitive idea that convinces the audience that their worldview isn’t exactly right. If you can effectively prime people, add humour, and leverage anecdotes, you will increase your chances of success.

Persuasion

While there are many time-tested principles of public speaking, don’t be afraid to do things differently. Show your unique style and character. Challenge the norms. At the very least, be interesting. It also helps to believe in what you are talking about.

Do Things Differently

You have three options: write out a full script, write out a structure, or go unscripted.With a script, it’s sometimes difficult to translate written words into a talk. You also don’t want to sound too rehearsed, so if you go with a script, you need to fully master your memory of the talk so that you can add your character back in.Whereas scripts can make every word count, unscripted talks can be half-baked and rambling if they don’t have sufficient preparation. With unscripted talks, it can be helpful to have transition steps or a clear map of the journey that you can follow.

Script Vs Unscripted Vs Loosely Scripted

Have a mantra to keep you focused on why your talk counts, “This idea matters.” Five minutes before your talk, breathe, do push-ups, and drink water. Remember the power of vulnerability. If you screw up, say, “Oops, sorry, a little nervous here.” Look at the audience for sympathetic and encouraging faces. And finally, remember that it’s not about you, it’s about your idea.

It's Just Your Idea, Not You Personally

Wear something that makes you feel good, and rehearse your talk in that clothing. Ensure it is comfortable and you feel confident wearing it.

What To Wear

Zoom out to the vision of your talk. Show the possibilities that your idea unlocks. Have a clear call to action to help people engage with your idea or pay it forward. Paint a vision of what the world looks like when the idea spreads.

Ending Your Ted Talk

Tips on how you can become a master public speaker

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Books

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Videos

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Career

Master Public Speaking

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A must-read insider’s guide to creating unforgettable speeches and changing people's minds. Done right, a talk can electrify a room and transform an audience’s worldview; it can be more powerful than anything in written form. This “invaluable guide” (Publishers Weekly) explains how the miracle of powerful public speaking is achieved, and equips you to give it your best shot. There is no set formula, but there are tools that can empower any speaker. Since taking over TED in 2001, Chris Anderson has worked with all the TED speakers who have inspired us the most, and here he shares insights from such favorites as Sir Ken Robinson, Salman Khan, Monica Lewinsky, and more— everything from how to craft your talk’s content to how you can be most effective on stage.

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A must-read insider’s guide to creating unforgettable speeches and changing people's minds. Done right, a talk can electrify a room and transform an audience’s worldview; it can be more powerful than anything in written form. This “invaluable guide” (Publishers Weekly) explains how the miracle of powerful public speaking is achieved, and equips you to give it your best shot. There is no set formula, but there are tools that can empower any speaker. Since taking over TED in 2001, Chris Anderson has worked with all the TED speakers who have inspired us the most, and here he shares insights from such favorites as Sir Ken Robinson, Salman Khan, Monica Lewinsky, and more— everything from how to craft your talk’s content to how you can be most effective on stage.

Chris Anderson

Ted Talks

TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking

The decisions that we make are rarely impartial. Most of us already know that we prefer to take advice from people that we like. We also tend to more easily agree with opinions formed by people we like. The tendency to judge in favour of people and symbols we like is called the bias from liking or loving.We are more likely to ignore faults and comply with the wishes of our friends or lovers rather than random strangers. We favour people, products, and actions associated with our favourite celebrities. Sometimes we even distort facts to facilitate love.

The Bias Of Love

<ul><li>Most of us already know that we prefer to take advice from people that we like.</li><li>We also tend to more easily agree with opinions formed by people we like.</li><li>The tendency to judge in favour of people and symbols we like is called the bias from liking or loving.</li><li>Besides the liking tendency, there are several other factors at play: commitment/consistency bias, a bias from stress, an influence from an authority, a reciprocation effect, and some direct incentives and disincentives.</li></ul>

All Are Decisions Are Biased In Some Way

The Halo Effect occurs when a specific, positive characteristic determines the way a person is viewed by others on other, unrelated traits.In the case of beauty, we automatically assign favourable yet unrelated traits such as talent, kindness, honesty, and intelligence, to those we find physically attractive. For the most part, this attribution happens unnoticed.

Appearance and the Halo Effect

<ul><li>We like people who resemble us.</li><li>Whether it's appearance, opinions, lifestyle or background, we tend to favour people who in some dimension are most similar to ourselves.</li><li>Similarity bias extends to even such ambiguous traits as interests and background.</li><li>Even if the similarities are superficial, we still may end up liking the other person more than we should.</li></ul>

Similarity

<ul><li>We love to be loved and, consequently, we love those that love us.</li><li>Joe Girard, the world's "greatest car salesman", prints "I like you" and his name on every holiday card he sends out.</li><li>Our reaction can be so automatic, that we develop liking even when the attempt to win our favour is an obvious one.</li></ul>

Praise and Compliments Affect Us

<ul><li>Repeated exposure can be a powerful tool in establishing liking.</li><li>Take a picture of yourself and create a mirror image in one of the editing tools. Choose which one you like better</li><li>Show the two pictures to a friend and ask her to choose the better one as well. Your friend will prefer the true print, whereas you will think you look better in the mirror image</li></ul>

Familiarity

<ul><li>Charisma or attraction are not prerequisites for liking - a mere association with someone you like or trust can be enough</li><li>The bias from an association shows itself in many other domains and is especially strong when we associate with the person we like the most - ourselves</li><li>For example, a sports fan and his local team can be highly personal even though the association is often based only on shared location</li><li>Even a trivial association with success may reap benefits and breed confidence</li></ul>

Loving by Association and Referral

<ul><li>Someone who is conditioned to like the right people and pick their idols carefully can greatly benefit from these biases.</li><li>The time to call out the defence is when we feel ourselves liking the practitioner more than we should under the circumstances under which we feel manipulated.</li><li>Focus on our feelings rather than the other person's actions.</li><li>Ask yourself how much of what you feel is due to liking versus the actual facts of the situation.</li></ul>

How To Curb The Liking

The tendency to judge in favor of people and symbols we like is called the bias from liking or loving and it affects how we make decisions. Let's explore...

Understand yourself and those around you.

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Psychology

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Love & Relationships

Bias from Liking/Loving: Why We Comply With Those We Love - Farnam Street

<ul><li>Our lives are filled with storytelling, from the stories we tell our friends over dinner, to the ones we tell at eulogies, during toasts, at job interviews and on dates.</li><li>Stories help us relate to each other and build community.</li><li>Leveling up our storytelling game can lead to more meaningful connections.</li></ul>Here's their step-by-step guide on how to tell a story, from an idea to delivery.

The Art Of Storytelling

Does the story you want to tell have a beginning, a middle and an end? Does it have tension? Does it show some sort of transformation? These are the basic elements that make an anecdote blossom into a full-bodied story.When you're telling a story, you aren't just describing what happened when you walked into the coffee shop and saw your ex on a date. You're telling us how that moment felt emotionally, how you were affected, how you reacted and how you're a different person after having endured that moment.

Understand that A Story Is More than A Scene or An Anecdote

Each of us has hundreds of stories we could tell. How do we know which one to pursue? Think back to moments in your life that really shifted you in some way.Big decisions are a good place to find stories; so are embarrassing moments and mistakes. Think of a time you did something but it didn't go as planned. Within these kinds of prompts, you can begin to explore moments of vulnerability.

Select a Meaningful Story

Once you find the story you want to tell, put it under a magnifying glass to blow it up big. Where were you (physically, mentally, emotionally) at that moment? How did it impact your life? What were the results?Remember that in any great story you're not just sharing events that happened, you're also sharing the thoughts and feelings running through you during those events.

Develop Your Story

A good rule of thumb is to start in the action of the story – this will draw people in. From there, ask yourself if you'll tell your story in chronological order, if you'll start at the end and find your way back to the beginning, or if you want, tell it in a series of flashbacks instead of a linear structure.Don't worry about getting too fancy with the structure – often, telling a story chronologically is the best way to go.

Figure out The Structure

<ul><li>By this point, you know the moment your story is centered on, what the stakes or tensions are and how you want to tell the story. Writing the ending can be the hardest part.</li><li>You just have to end the story in a different place than where you began.</li><li>The key to a good ending is showing the audience your transformation over the course of the story, even if it's a slight transformation.</li></ul>

Understand how You've Changed by The End

If you're considering telling a story rooted in vulnerability or trauma, it's important to consider whether you're emotionally ready to share that story.Here are some signs you might not be ready to tell a story publicly:<ul><li>if you get stuck on one scene and aren't able to come out of it because you're reliving it – this can happen with traumatic events and could be a sign of post-traumatic stress disorder. </li><li>if it's tough to find an ending to a story, it may mean that you're still living it. You might need to "press pause" and return to the story when you've had more time to process it.</li></ul>

Ask Yourself if You're Ready to Share the Story

It's natural to feel nervous before sharing a story aloud. Become very familiar with your story. Practice enough to be comfortable telling it from memory, but the Moth team recommends that you don't memorize it word for word. If you memorize it verbatim, your delivery can sound stiff and you might go blank.A good strategy is to really learn the words you want to use for the beginning and end of your story, but keep your notes in between as bullet points. That way you can naturally fill the gaps, but you have your most important elements well-rehearsed.

Don't Memorize Stories. They Are Meant To Be Alive

Keep it short and tight. If you're telling a story in a more interactive environment, like over dinner, remember that the purpose of storytelling is to engage with others. It's not about taking the spotlight for the entire time you're with someone. You want to offer a jumping-off point for someone else to share their own story, too.

Remember that Storytelling Is Not About the Storyteller – It's About Connection

Storytelling creates connections and builds community. In this episode of Life Kit, storytelling coaches from The Moth give a step-by-step guide to telling good stories.

How to tell a captivating story — from a wedding toast to a job interview : Life Kit

Practice is the foundation for effective learning. Yet, simple observation is more complex to do. Good practice is possible with the see-do-feedback loop:<ul><li>See. Find an example of how to solve a problem.</li><li>Do. Solve the problem yourself.</li><li>Feedback. Check if you got the right answer.</li></ul>

Practice is more complex than a simple observation

Decades of research show that experts get good by acquiring tons of specific patterns of knowledge. One specific study by Graham Cooper and John Sweller showed that when students were given examples where the problems were worked step-by-step and the solution provided were better able to solve test problems than those who did not get examples. The reason is that when you learn a pattern, it is less cognitively taxing.

See: The Power of Examples

Watching alone is not effective. Knowledge needs to become an automatic skill to be useful. Practice is not just for physical skills. A <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2014-05951-001">study</a> by Jeffrey Karpicke and Janelle Blunt showed that students that recalled a passage they've read did much better on a test than those who re-read the passage several times. The best approach to learning is to see a few examples of the pattern to be learned, then practice without examples so you can perform from memory.

Do: The Need for Retrieval

You need to get feedback on your practice. If the problem is straightforward, seeing the correct solution is enough. But skills with gradations of performance or more subjective measures of success need a teacher, tutor or coach for feedback. <ul><li>Feedback correct errors.</li><li>Feedback can train your unconscious learning system. The brain works through rewards. It reinforces past actions that led to success and weakens those that led to failure.</li><li>Feedback guides your attention and motivation for future learning.</li></ul>

Feedback: Check Your Work

<ul><li>Languages: Notice vocabulary, phrases and grammar; test it out in a conversation, then check if you are properly understood.</li><li>History: Read a book, write a summary explaining the main points, then check back to see what you’ve missed.</li><li>Business: Learn a new management technique, implement it in your company, then see how it performs.</li></ul>

Examples of implementing the Loop

Practice makes perfect. But what's the best way to train? I review research showing the three ingredients to do it right.

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Learning & Education

See-Do-Feedback: The Right Way To Practice - Scott H Young

If you’ve ever suppressed the urge to unleash a string of obscenities, maybe think again. Some research suggests that it might be a better idea to simply let the filth fly.Scientifically speaking, a penchant for profanity doesn’t seem to be such a bad thing. Studies have shown that swearing relieves stress, dulls the sensation of pain, fosters camaraderie among peers and is linked with traits like verbal fluency, openness and honesty.

The Science Behind Swearing 

And the effects of cursing are physical as well as mental. A 2018 study in Psychology of Sport and Exercise found that letting out a few choice words during a workout can actually make you stronger. In the study, participants who cursed aloud while gripping a hand vise were able to squeeze harder and longer.Experts in this field of study suggest that humans partly developed taboo language as an emotional release valve.

What Happens When You Curse

“There’s a point where it’s just more efficient to say, ‘F*&^ you,’ than it is to hit somebody.We’ve evolved this very efficient way to vent our emotions and convey them to others.”

In 2009, researchers set out to study whether swearing alters someone’s experience of pain. Scientists found that swearing actually increases an individual’s pain tolerance. The team tasked 67 undergraduate volunteers with plunging their hands in ice-cold water for as long as they could handle it while repeating a swear word of their choice. Then, they did the experiment again — but this time, the students said a neutral, non-taboo word. The research team found that volunteers were able to keep their hands submerged in the frigid water for longer while repeating the swear word.See below...

Pain Relief Pt1

In addition, because swearing was accompanied by an increase in heart rate, the scientists think that cursing may trigger an individual’s “fight-or-flight” response. They suggest that swearing triggers negative emotions that serve as an alarm bell, alerting someone to danger and sparking an innate defense mechanism.

Beyond swearing's impacts on the body and mind, research has shown that cursing can influence our social dynamics, too. A 2012 study found that swearing can enhance the effectiveness and persuasiveness of an argument. In addition, cursing can also convey an emotional reaction to something without us resorting to physical violence.And while many might consider swearing less than savory, a recent study revealed that people who curse often actually lie less and have a higher degree of integrity.See below...

Damn Honest

After the scientists surveyed how often participants use profanity, they conducted a series of tests to determine how truthful an individual was. The research team found a positive link between profanity and honesty. Cursing was associated with less deception on an interpersonal level, and higher levels of integrity overall.

For many, the use of obscene language isn’t just a sign of boorish behavior — a common assumption is that people swear because they lack the vocabulary, education or even intelligence to express themselves in other ways. In other words, when language fails, we curse.“It’s a form of linguistic snobbery,” says Jay, referring to the presumed link between swearing and intelligence. “It’s a cultural stereotype. But the more I became sophisticated in language studies, the more I realized that every language scholar knows that’s not true.”

Fluent In Foulness

“People who are good at producing language are good at producing swear words. ﻿It’s not because they don’t have language — it’s because they have a whole toolbox full of words.”

See how psychological research shows people who swear like a sailor are more honest and intelligent.

People who swear like a sailor are more honest and more intelligent, studies show.

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Mindfulness

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Mental Health

Worried About Swearing Too Much? Science Says You Shouldn't Be..

“Just because it didn’t work doesn’t mean it was the wrong choice.The world is full of probabilities, not certainties.Find a game where the probabilities favor you and keep taking shots.”

“If you know where you want to go in life, people tend to help or get out of the way.Both of those are useful.”

“People follow incentives, not advice.”

“The best arguments in the world won't change a single person's mind. The only thing that can do that is a good story.”

“For me, forgiveness and compassion are always linked: how do we hold people accountable for wrongdoing and yet at the same time remain in touch with their humanity enough to believe in their capacity to be transformed?”

Am I willing to look foolish today so I can learn something that will make me better tomorrow?

1 QUESTION FOR YOU

3-2-1: How to change someone's mind, the balance between justice and compassion, and looking foolish

Rhetoric is language that’s carefully constructed to persuade, motivate, or inform the reader or listener about the speaker or writer’s position. You might have heard the term used in discussions about politicians and political goals. That’s because politicians, alongside people in other roles that involve public speaking, employ rhetoric regularly. In fact, the word “rhetoric” comes from the Greek “rhetorikos,” which means “oratory.”

Rhetoric: The Way Of The Word

Rhetoric provides a framework for critical thinking. It demonstrates your thought processes as a writer and speaker, and illustrates your arguments’ strengths. A heuristic is a practical approach to problem-solving or self-discovery. When you make an educated guess about something or use trial and error to reach a conclusion, you’ve used a heuristic. With heuristics, you don’t necessarily have to reach a precise answer; the goal is to reach an approximate or otherwise “good enough” solution.

Heuristics

Rhetoric is one of the three ancient arts of discourse, also known as the trivium, alongside logic and grammar. Discourse is the formal exchange of ideas in conversation, typically in an orderly way characterized by all speakers taking time to express their positions, opinions, and data on a given subject. The trivium, along with the quadrivium, makes up the seven liberal arts. These are the academic disciplines taught in medieval European universities, defined as the core of a well-rounded education by scholars of the era

The History Of Rhetoric: Part Of The Three Ancient Arts

Aristotle defined the three distinct modes of persuasion that we still recognize and use:Logos is language crafted to appeal to logic and reasoning. When you appeal to logos in an argument, you support your position with facts and data. Ethos is language whose credibility comes from its speaker’s reputation or authority. Pathos is language that creates an emotional connection with the reader or listener. Pathos attempts to persuade, motivate, or inform the audience by making them empathize with the speaker.

The Rhetorical Triangle: Ethos, Pathos, and Logos

<ul><li>Heuristics play a key role in rhetoric because speakers and writers often use them to illustrate the points they're making.</li><li>Plato called rhetoric a combination of logic and politics, and defined it as "the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion."</li><li>From Ancient Greece thousands of years ago, rhetoric has been the backbone of persuasive and motivational speaking.</li></ul>

Persuasive Speech

Rhetoric in types of writing like narrative writing and poetry often relies on linguistic tools like <a href="https://www.grammarly.com/blog/figurative-language/">figurative language</a> and well-known figures of speech.HyperboleAn extreme exaggeration meant to highlight the issue presented.EpistropheRepresents the repetition of a word through successive phrases, clauses, or sentences for the purpose of emphasizing it as a concept.MeiosisThe reverse of hyperbole, meiosis emphasizes how far outside the norm an issue is, through extreme understatement.MetaphorMetaphor figuratively compares two topics by claiming that one literally is the other.

Rhetorical Devices

The art of rhetoric hails back to ancient Greece and is still used today. Learn about what rhetoric is and how to use rhetorical devices.

What Is Rhetoric, and Why Is It Important?

In many life situations, including in the workplace, feelings of frustration and anger can surface. The desire to avoid confrontation and stifle these emotions is a common response. However, when those strong feelings are left unaddressed, they can manifest as passive-aggressive communication. These subtle but snide comments can slip through inadvertently and, over time, create more animosity within teams and professional relationships.

Being Passive-Aggressive

Passive-aggressive behaviour surfaces in different ways. It is sometimes used with the intent of secretly getting back at the person or group on the receiving end; other times, the passive aggression is not deliberate. It might present through body language, like eye-rolling, exaggerated sighs, or through written remarks. A person’s tone while making a passive-aggressive comment verbally can amplify a passive-aggressive statement, and in writing it can be difficult for the person on the receiving end to know the tone that’s being used, leaving it up to interpretation.

Passive-Aggressive Communication

There are <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/passive-aggressive-diaries/201403/7-reasons-why-people-use-passive-aggressive-behavior">many reasons</a> people communicate passive-aggressively. This type of behaviour can arise when someone doesn’t feel comfortable or capable of expressing their feelings in an open, honest, straightforward manner. Some people struggle to communicate clearly and directly or don’t feel equipped to articulate their feelings—or equipped to articulate them without blowing up.

Underlying Reasons for Passive-Aggressive Communication

Passive-aggressive behaviour can be intensely frustrating for the targeted person or people because it’s hard to identify, difficult to prove, and may even be unintentional. Passive aggression can lead to more conflict and mistrust because it prevents people from having a direct and honest conversation about the problem at hand.

The Effect On Others

Some passive-aggressive comments are so subtle that you might not realize they can be received as passive-aggression. Below are a few widely used passive-aggressive communication examples, including ways to reword to avoid misunderstanding.Per my last emailUse this instead: I’m following up on my previous email regarding . . .This phrasing is effective if you’ve sent the recipient a message asking for something, but they haven’t given a timely response. The alternative statement names specifically what you’re referring to without forcing the recipient to guess.

Five Common Phrases That Sound Passive-Aggressive: 'Per My Last Email'

Use this instead: What do you think about trying XYZ instead?“For future reference . . .” assumes that the recipient is a) aware of the reference you’re making and b) that your approach or insight is the only correct course of action. Asking for their thoughts about different ways to approach a situation in the future softens an accusatory, passive-aggressive tone.

'For Future Reference'

Use this instead: I don’t feel good about this. Can we talk about it in person?These words are contradictory, indicating that it’s both OK and that you’re dismissing it at the same time. A statement that’s both assertive (“I don’t feel . . . ”) and emotionally honest reduces the friction in a difficult workplace conversation. Additionally, speaking face-to-face can minimize misunderstandings about tone and illuminate other communication cues, like body language.

'Fine. Whatever.'

Use this instead: I’m excited to work together to find the best solution.Bringing in a manager should not be the first resort for working out conflict. This alternative signals that you’re willing to problem-solve with your coworker, and it promotes team cooperation. It’s also a nondefensive option that avoids bringing in leadership to referee an issue.

I’ve Copied [Boss] On This Email

Use this instead: I can clarify. Which part is confusing?Although a report or situation might be clear for you, not everyone will comprehend it the way you do. This alternative statement is effective because it doesn’t undermine the other person’s intelligence; instead, it communicates a willingness to understand where they’re getting stuck.

'It’s Not That Complicated'

While the above section highlights common instances of passive-aggressive communication, catching passive-aggressive language in all of your emails or internal memos can be challenging. One way to vet your communication is by asking yourself two questions: “How would I feel if I were on the receiving end of this message?” And, “Is this message helpful?” If the answers are “bad, hurt, or annoyed” and “no or not really,” then consider reframing your communication with more neutral language or offering guidance instead of a criticism or a brush-off.

How to Soften Passive-Aggressive Communication

Leaning on passive-aggressive language in professional communication might feel like a safe way to circumvent potential conflict with a coworker. However, hiding feelings of anger and frustration can grow into bigger conflicts in the workplace. Consider giving your messages a close read to make sure you’re being professional and helpful.

The Bottom Line

Each word you say or write provides a glimpse of what you think and feel.

Passive-aggressive communication can show up at work and affect your relationships with colleagues. Learn how to stop it and reframe it constructively.

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Marketing & Sales

How to Reframe Passive-Aggressive Communication

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