It's in your best interest-and your service provider's-to speak up when you don't like a result. You don't have to be an asshole about it, but you should get something you like in exchange for your money.<ul><li>Professional or expert who cares about their craft want feedback.</li><li>Hearing about your experiences will give them insight into what they do well and what they can do better.</li><li>Open lines of communication make it more approachable for the client or patient to express concerns or dissatisfaction.</li></ul>

Complaining Done Right

<ul><li>Don't fly into a rage or be demanding.</li><li>Remember everyone is human and the professionals offering you services are trying, even if they happen to fall short</li><li>Take your complaint up with the person responsible, whether it's a cosmetic practitioner, chef, or other involved professional</li><li>Be specific about the issue, and don't feel the need to use overly flowery language or be too effusive in praising the parts you did like</li></ul>

Complain Nicely But Effectively

It's in your best interest—and your service provider's—to speak up when you don't like a result.

Stashed ideas

How to Complain About Bad Service Without Being an Asshole

“The way we are conditioned to see the world in our own culture seems so completely obvious and commonplace that it is difficult to image that another culture might do things differently. It is only when you start to identify what is typical in your culture but different from others, that you can begin to open a dialogue of sharing, learning, and ultimately understanding.”

The majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding of how culture is impacting their work. This is especially true as more and more of us communicate daily with people in other countries over virtual media.
When you live extensively in a foreign country, you pick up a lot of contextual cues that help you understand the culture of the people living there, and you decode communication and adapt accordingly. But when you exchange emails with an international counterpart in a country you haven’t spent time in, it is much easier to miss the cultural subtleties impacting the communication.

The invisible boundaries that divide our world

“Leaders have always needed to understand human nature and personality differences to be successful in business--that's nothing new. What's new is the requirement for twenty-first century leaders to be prepared to understand a wider, richer array of work styles than ever before and to be able to determine what aspects of an interaction are simply a result of personality and which are a result of differences in cultural perspective.”

Cultural patterns of behavior and belief frequently impact our perceptions (what we see), cognitions (what we think), and actions (what we do).
Many of the cultural differences—varying attitudes concerning when best to speak or stay quiet, the role of the leader in the room, and what kind of negative feedback is the most constructive—may seem small.
But if you are unaware of the differences and unarmed with strategies for managing them effectively, they can derail your team meetings, demotivate your employees, frustrate your foreign suppliers, and in dozens of other ways make it much more difficult to achieve your goals

How we understand each other

It is common, to work across cultures for decades and travel frequently for business while remaining unaware and uninformed about how culture impacts you. Millions of people work in global settings while viewing everything from their own cultural perspectives and assuming that all differences, controversy, and misunderstanding are rooted in personality.
This is not due to laziness. Many well-intentioned people don’t educate themselves about cultural differences because they believe that if they focus on individual differences, that will be enough.

When having an open mind is not enough

Each of the eight scales represents one key area that managers must be aware of, showing how cultures vary along a spectrum from one extreme to its opposite. The eight scales are:
<ul>
<li>Communicating: low-context vs. high-context</li>
<li>Evaluating: direct negative feedback vs. indirect negative feedback</li>
<li>Persuading: principles-first vs. applications-first</li>
<li>Leading: egalitarian vs. hierarchical</li>
<li>Deciding: consensual vs. top-down</li>
<li>Trusting: task-based vs. relationship-based</li>
<li>Disagreeing: confrontational vs. avoids confrontation</li>
<li>Scheduling: linear-time vs. flexible-time.</li>
</ul>

Eight scales that map the world's cultures

<ul>
<li>In cultures where low-context communication styles are prevalent, people assume a low level of shared context — few shared reference points and comparatively little implicit knowledge linking speaker and listener. In low-context countries like the United States and the Netherlands, effective communication must be simple, clear, and explicit in order to effectively pass the message.</li>
<li>In contrast, in high-context countries such as the United Kingdom and Japan, people tend to communicate in ways that are implicit and rely heavily on shared context. Someone from a high-context culture might accuse a low-context speaker of being too direct, whereas a low-context listener might often wonder if the high-context speaker will ever get to the point.</li>
</ul>

Communicating: low-context vs high-context

Erin Meyer’s Evaluating scale offers insights into how to give effective performance appraisals and negative feedback in different parts of the world. The spectrum goes from “direct negative feedback” to “indirect negative feedback”.
With direct negative feedback, the feedback is delivered to a colleague frankly, bluntly and honestly. Negative messages stand alone, not softened by positive ones. In contrast, when indirect negative feedback is provided it’s done in a soft, subtle and diplomatic manner.

Evaluating: direct negative feedback vs indirect negative feedback

<ul>
<li>When providing an evaluation, be explicit and low-context with both positive and negative feedback. Don't launch into the negative until you’ve also explicitly stated something that you appreciate about the person or the situation. The positive comments should be honest and stated in a detailed, explicit manner.</li>
<li>Try, over time, to be balanced in the amount of positive and negative feedback you give.</li>
<li>Frame your behavior in cultural terms. Don’t use your cultural background as an excuse to be disrespectful but talk openly about the cultural differences that explain your communication style.</li>
</ul>

How to provide feedback

There are two types of reasoning we can use to persuade:
<ul>
<li>Principles-first (or deductive) reasoning derives conclusions or facts from general principles or concepts. People from principles-first cultures generally want to understand the why behind their boss’s request before they move to action</li>
<li>With applications-first reasoning (or inductive) reasoning, general conclusions are based on a pattern of factual observations from the real world. Applications-first learners tend to focus less on the why and more on the how.</li>
</ul>

Persuading: principles-first vs applications-first

“When interacting with someone from another culture, try to watch more, listen more, and speak less.”

An international business expert helps you understand and navigate cultural differences in this insightful and practical guide, perfect for both your work and personal life. Americans precede anything negative with three nice comments; French, Dutch, Israelis, and Germans get straight to the point; Latin Americans and Asians are steeped in hierarchy; Scandinavians think the best boss is just one of the crowd. It's no surprise that when they try and talk to each other, chaos breaks out. In The Culture Map, INSEAD professor Erin Meyer is your guide through this subtle, sometimes treacherous terrain in which people from starkly different backgrounds are expected to work harmoniously together. She provides a field-tested model for decoding how cultural differences impact international business, and combines a smart analytical framework with practical, actionable advice.

The Culture Map

Situated in southern Italy, Naples is a place where pizza is God. There are more than fifteen thousand pizza makers in the city, each one a rock star, cooking up hot and delicious pies with expertise, love and passion.
The famous Naples pizza, called Neapolitan pizza, is soft and chewy, with a moist, almost soupy top. The crust is light, thin and steamy, blast-cooked at extreme temperatures.

The Spiritual Homeland Of Pizza

Cooked in extreme heat, the Neapolitan dough is the main ingredient of the special taste the pies have. It consists of water, refined flour, salt and yeast, is fermented for 12 or more hours, and then topped with mozzarella cheese and tomatoes. The taste is defined as umami, a savoury flavour that is loved all over the world.

The Secret Is The Dough

Many Americans buy frozen pizza from the Supermarket, or order from those pizza chains claiming “30-minute or free” deliveries. The pizzas are full of uncooked and overcooked dough which is mostly sugar. The quality of cheese, tomato sauce or the ingredients are not taken into consideration, due to the self-imposed deadlines and marketing gimmicks.

Dominos Is A Joke

The city which takes pizza as its very identity is vibrant, sprawling and joyously confusing. Along with pizza and coffee that is to die for, Naples is also a mafia town, where crime-syndicates zoom around in the garbage filled roads.

The City Of Naples

<ul><li>Antica Pizzeria Port’Alba, established in 1738, is the world’s oldest pizza place.</li><li>Initially being an open-air stand for free-hand pizza making, the place turned into a restaurant in 1830 and was even visited by King Nasone.</li><li>The famous pizza with tomato sauce, oil, oregano and garlic is known as the marinara, a name coined from the fisherman’s wife who prepared the dish for the husband returning from the bay.</li></ul>

The World’s Oldest Pizza Parlour

<ul>
<li>Everyone's favourite pie was first eaten by the tribes in neolithic times, who put crude batter over the campfire stones.</li>
<li>The Greeks were known to feast on cheese pies, with a crust that worked as a handle. They called their ‘fermented pastry’ as pikte, which later evolved into pizza.</li>
<li>The Etruscans also created a grain mush, a kind of dough that was baked on stones, topped with oils and herbs.</li>
</ul>

The Story Of Pizza

Found by Spanish conquerors in the 16th century, the tomato was initially a dreaded fruit by which people could die, and was named ‘wolf peach’ by the Italians.The real reason tomatoes were killing some people was that the wealthy ate it from an alloy called ‘pewter’ which caused a reaction. Soon the humble red fruit, which was not even classified as a fruit at that time, gained acceptance and landed on pizza.

The Tomato

In 1889, Queen Margherita of Savoy called upon the best pizza maker of Naples at that time, Raffaele Esposito, and asked for three pizza pies to be made for her. She liked a simple one, which only had tomato sauce, cheese and basil. The pizza was later named after her.<ul><li>It is said that any Neapolitan pizza maker is only as good as how he makes the margherita pizza.</li><li>The colors of the Margherita pizza, red, white and green are also the colors of the Italian flag.</li></ul>

Queen Margherita Eats Pizza

A terrible pizza maker who uses the best raw materials will still produce bad pizzas, and an excellent pizza maker having terrible ingredients will also end up with substandard pizzas.The quality of the ingredients is critical to the art of pizza making.

The Art Of Pizza Making

The radiant, natural heat waves that come from multiple angles of the oven cook the pizza, and it isn’t uniform, as every oven has hot and cold spots. A skilled pizza maker knows when to move the pies so that he does not end up cremating his creation instead of cooking it.The heat is also the reason pizza making in Naples is restricted to men, as women cannot stand in front of the oven.

The Importance Of Heat In Cooking Pizza

For hundreds of years, artisans in the southern Italian city have been cooking up the ultimate fast food

Inside Naples' World-Famous Pizza Culture

This is a person's confidence in their own abilities that they are able to control their own behaviors, motivation, and other social circumstances.
Many people struggle with handling insecurity and even goal strivers are plagued by it. Having a lack of self-efficacy denies us the pleasure of setting goals in the first place.

Self-Efficacy

Too often we believe that whenever a person is having a hard time pushing through an obstacle we provide unsolicited advice. By doing so, we unconsciously make them feel that they are incapable or unreliable.
However, a study suggests that instead of offering unsolicited advice, we should instead encourage them to share their own wisdom to convey that they're intelligent, capable, and the kind of person who can succeed.

Giving advice vs. Asking for advice

When someone comes to us for guidance and asks about what we should do in a certain situation, we give them honest advice and oftentimes, multiple choices to choose from. After we give out advice, we would then start feeling hypocritical we don't try it ourselves.
That is the Saying-Is-Believing Effect, wherein after we say something to someone else, we're more likely to believe it ourselves.

The Saying-Is-Believing Effect

<ul>
<li>Form an advice club - this is where a group of people help each other out by consulting with each other regularly for help. This not only helps forge friendships but also reap invaluable benefits.</li>
<li>Turn the advice-giving inside out when you're facing a situation. Ask yourself: What if my friend was struggling with the same situation I'm in, what advice would I give them? Taking this perspective can help us approach the same problem with a higher level of self-confidence and insight.</li>
</ul>

What To Do When No One Asks For Your Advice

When we want people to change, we typically tell them what to do. But what if we flipped the script and asked them for their wisdom instead? Behavioral scientist Katy Milkman PhD explains the power of this surprising -- and successful -- strategy.

Communication

Want to build someone’s confidence? Ask for their advice

Good communication skills are essential for fostering strong relationships with team members and being able to motivate people.
Some of the things we say can improve how we are perceived. For example, saying "sorry" too often and for the wrong reasons might hinder how confident you appear. Instead of saying "sorry for the delay," say "thanks for your patience."

The words you use matter

<ul>
<li>Rather than saying "I can't" when you're declining a request, try "here's what I can do for you." This way you'll set a boundary about what you're not willing or able to do and indicating a willingness to find a solution.</li>
<li>When you don't know something, instead of shrugging off the inquiry, say, "I'll find out for you."</li>
<li>When you start a request with "I hate to bother you..." you've assumed that you're creating a burden. Instead, assume it is not a problem and drop this from your language.</li>
</ul>

Replace "I can't. I don't know. I hate to bother you."

A lot of speakers will say, "We're going to address this issue." However, it doesn't mean you're going to solve the problem or take action. Try words like solve, fight against, or reduce, which communicate action.
Other swaps to consider that are more decisive:
<ul>
<li>"Allowed" can be replaced with enabled or authorised.</li>
<li>Instead of "meeting" a goal, try accomplishing or exceeding.</li>
<li>"Reacting" can be substituted with responding or solving.</li>
</ul>

"Address" is a vague word

Some people will water down a compliment by saying, "It was nothing..." or "It could be better..."
These responses are dismissive of the person giving the compliment. Instead, thank the individual and add, " I'm glad you like it." When you're thanked, instead of just saying "you're welcome, add "I'm happy I was able to help you." It leaves a positive impression with the person.

Dismissing praise

If you tell someone to calm down, they will probably not calm down.
Instead, validate the person's feelings and assure them you understand. Saying, "I can see you are upset, and I want to help," will go further to calm them.

The power of "I want to help"

These phrases can help you sound more powerful at work

A study found that one in every sixty words people speak is either um or uh. That means you are adding two or three of these 'fillers' per minute.
One idea on why we use fillers is that we can't immediately find the right word to say. But we could just as well stay silent. The real reason then is that going silent won't work.

Why we use filler words like "um" and "uh"

In a conversation, we always have to deal with who has the floor. Cooperative rules of conversation require us to use signals that regulate the flow of dialogue. If you stay silent, the other person may think you finished your turn at talking.
A filler is a signal that accounts for your delay: "Please wait. I'm not done yet. Transmission will soon resume."

Why we need filler words

You will always experience delays in free-flowing conversation because you won't always have the right words at hand.
In public speaking:
<ul>
<li>We get to decide and rehearse in advance what we are going to say. With good planning, we can be more fluent and avoid the need for fillers.</li>
<li>We don't have to let the other person know when it is their turn, making fillers less needed.</li>
<li>We are not engaged in a fast-paced back and forth of conversation. We can determine the temporal rhythm of our own speech.</li>
</ul>

Public speaking is different

Consciously slowing down will give you more time to formulate what you are saying (and your audience more time to process it.) Slowing down will decrease the likelihood of cognitive pressures that lead to delays and, in turn, to ums and uhs.
Slowing down will also make you come across as more authoritative and relaxed.

Avoid filler words in public speaking

Why even great speakers use filler words.

A linguist explains why it’s okay to say “um” and “uh”

Hand gestures while talking are a powerful aspect of communication.
A study analyzing TED Talks found viral speakers used nearly twice as many hand gestures as the least popular speakers. People who "talk" with their hands tend to be seen as warm, agreeable and energetic. The less animated are viewed as logical, cold and analytical.

Hand gestures are healthy and normal

We collect information from others' body language. We naturally feel that passionate people will be more animated and look more enthusiastic. When their gestures are bigger, we process that they must be really passionate about their topic.
This is mostly because body language is vital in helping to communicate our emotions and motivations.

Gesturing helps you understand other people

Hand motions often reveal information that is absent from our talk. It might signal that a point is more important, or that the speaker is still trying to understand an idea.
According to a study published, children that use hand gestures early in life is likely to develop a strong vocabulary and other skills related to sentence structure and better storytelling.

Benefits of hand gestures

A mismatch occurs when we signal something with our hands that is different from our words. It may be a sign that you're learning.
Adults are less likely to trust people who display a mismatch between speech and body language.

Gesture-speech mismatch

The Fascinating Science Behind 'Talking' With Your Hands

A keyboard&#39;s arrangement could have an impact on how we think about the words we type.
The QWERTY keyboard may attach more positive meanings to words with more letters on the right side of the layout. Letter combinations that fall on the right side of the keyboard are easier to type, lending a positive meaning.

The impact of the QWERTY keyboard

Early typewriters frequently jammed. When letters were typed in rapid succession, they sometimes stuck together.
The QWERTY layout was invented in 1878 as a response to this problem. The layout has stuck ever since. With the transition from typewriters to personal computers, it became widespread.

How the QWERTY layout appeared

It should be noted that the literal meanings of words certainly outweigh their QWERTY inflected association.
In several languages, there are keyboard variations with unique punctuation keys located in different places. There are also more letters on the right than the left. In the future, researchers plan to study the effects of other kinds of keyboards.

Keyboard variations

A keyboard's arrangement could have a small but significant impact to how we perceive the meaning of words we type.

The QWERTY Effect: How Typing May Shape the Meaning of Words

Many people decry how awful email is. They feel that messages keep on appearing in their inbox as if they have no control over them. The first step to a controllable inbox is to slow down the messages.
<ul>
<li>Unsubscribe to all the blogs and newsletters you subscribed to or set up a separate email account for it.</li>
<li>Be selective on marketing.</li>
<li>Kill all non-essential email notifications.</li>
<li>Be a ruthless unsubscriber.</li>
</ul>

Creating a controllable inbox

Emails from unknown people are like strangers who show up at your office without an appointment. If you pay attention to them, you have to break your commitment to others.
Consider keeping your email notifications off. You will not forget about your inbox.

Don't feel obligated to respond to everything

<ul>
<li>Use an email service with a great search tool so you can find archived messages with ease.</li>
<li>Delete all those folders. If you use an email service with a great search function, you don't need many folders. Instead, create one big archive and use the search function.</li>
<li>Get a to-do app. Many people use email as a to-do list, but then have to re-read the emails and reinterpret what they need to do.</li>
</ul>

Making email work in your favor: upgrade your tools

Sales pitches are personal emails without unsubscribe links. But if you don't respond, you can often get more email from them.
Set up text replacements. For example:
noint = Not interested but thanks; please remove.
nove - I'm sorry; I have a bunch of initiatives and don't have time for a call right now. Maybe in a few months.
nocant = I'm sorry; I've already made commitments I'd have to break if I tried to make a call or meeting work right now.
These won't work everywhere but are a good starting point that can be edited.

Set up Text Macros

Once you've got the flow of email reduced to messages that matter, it's time to clear the non-urgent out of your inbox.
<ul>
<li>Reply if a very quick reply is possible, like Thanks or Great or On it.</li>
<li>Reply with a macro if one of your pre-written replies works.</li>
<li>Forward/Delegate emails that others can handle.</li>
<li>Process later. The "to process" is the second folder.</li>
<li>Archive or delete if no further action is needed.</li>
</ul>
Once this is done, only the deeply urgent things are left.

Managing email: determine the priority

Actions you might take while processing:
<ul>
<li>Unsubscribe or block.</li>
<li>Reply where longer or more substantive replies are needed.</li>
<li>Forward/delegate things that need more substantive thought and context.</li>
<li>Task. Theses emails require action that can't get done in two or three minutes while processing.</li>
</ul>

Process your emails

It’s quite fashionable to hate email. Countless articles have been written decrying how awful it is. Billions of dollars have been spent trying to reinvent it. And the latest fad is just to give up —…

How I’ve Made Email my Secret Weapon

<div><ul><li>DH0. Name-calling: the lowest level of argument.</li><li>DH1. Ad hominem: attackung the person rather than the point they are making.</li><li>DH2. Responding to tone: The lowest form of responding to writing is disagreeing with the author’s tone. </li><li>DH3. Contradiction: you offer an opposing case but very little evidence. </li><li>DH4. Counterargument: a contradiction with evidence and reasoning. </li><li>DH5. Refutation:  quote someone back to themselves and pick a hole in that quote to expose a flaw.</li><li>DH6. Refuting the central point: The most powerful form of disagreement.</li></ul></div>

Paul Graham's disagreement hierarchy

Many find themselves arguing with someone on the Internet, especially in these days fraught with political tensions. A great tool, the web also seems to drive dispute. It is also a reflection of the larger reality, where divisiveness has spread throughout our society.

Bite-sized knowledge
to upgrade
your career

Emma
@emmm

How to Complain About Bad Service Without Being an Asshole

The Culture Map

Inside Naples' World-Famous Pizza Culture

Want to build someone’s confidence? Ask for their advice

These phrases can help you sound more powerful at work

Bite-sized knowledgeto upgradeyour career

Emma @emmm

How to Complain About Bad Service Without Being an Asshole

The Culture Map

Inside Naples' World-Famous Pizza Culture

Want to build someone’s confidence? Ask for their advice

These phrases can help you sound more powerful at work

Bite-sized knowledge
to upgrade
your career

Emma
@emmm