Why Nobody Wants To Work With You — The Feedback That Changed My Professional Life
Cubicles, conference centers, and boardrooms don’t erase thousands of years of biology.
Peopleimages.com - YuriArcurs | Canva Let’s get one thing straight. Many people claim they like direct communication. “Say what you mean,” they tell me. “Get to the point.” “Let’s use our time efficiently.” “Don’t worry, it won’t hurt my feelings.” Well, actually, it does.
Slogans like “massage the message” exist for a purpose. Leadership consultants base entire corporate workshops around learning and nurturing emotional intelligence. Chances are, you have a performance category at your company related to “thriving in ambiguity.”
The reason? Cubicles, conference centers, and boardrooms don’t erase thousands of years of biology. People get defensive. People react emotionally. People don’t like to believe they’re at fault.
The feedback that changed my professional life: People don’t want you to be direct.
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Here’s an example: The next time you’re in a meeting, ask, “Why do we do it this way?” Watch what happens.
- Abdul’s upper lip curls, making a face reminiscent of the time he drank spoiled milk at the team offsite.
- Amy’s smile turns upside down, creating an expression akin to if you’d had an objection during the “speak now or forever hold your peace” portion of her wedding.
- Mei’s eyes dart to her feet, wanting to look anywhere except at you.
Interesting. “All this because I asked a question?” you might think.
No, not because you asked a question. Because you asked a question that way.
Now, picture this. Imagine the same situation. The same colleagues, the same room, the same you. But this time, you ask something like this.
- “Is there a reason we chose this method over others?”
- “Have we explored other solutions? Is this the one that’s worked the best so far?”
- “Can you help me understand the reasoning behind this approach?”
Suddenly, Abdul loses the curdled milk look, swapping it with a thoughtful grin. Amy’s smile stays right-side up, eyes softening while looking relieved and ready to respond. Mei looks at you intently, cocking her head to one side before answering your question.
The bad first reaction happened because your direct question was critical, and you implied judgment — even if you didn't mean to.
The people in the room picked up on that judgment and felt targeted, even if you thought you were targeting the issue, not them. They felt judged, so they became resentful and defensive.
But with the second variant? You expressed the same concern (Why are we doing this? ") without sounding judgmental. You communicate respect for the thought process that went into the original decision.
And you tell them you want their help to improve the future, not their justifications while you flog past decisions. When you ask questions this way, people open up to you, the bonds grow, and the team strengthens.
Why do I know about this? Because at multiple points in my career, I’ve been on the receiving end of the curdled milk looks, icy sneers, averted gazes, and feet inching towards the door.
I couldn’t read the room. I received the information I wanted, sure. But I also learned in my performance review that I “had issues developing positive relationships with my colleagues.” Which, among other things, resulted in one firm denying my promotion. I dug deeper and worked with a mentor.
It turns out that I’d built a reputation as being blunt, coming across as unnecessarily direct, even hostile, according to some feedback.
I was confused about this until she and I reviewed my Slack and email history. There it was: the proverbial writing on the digital wall.
When I answered a question in the large channels I helped administer, I dispensed with greetings and jumped directly to the answer. I didn’t use exclamation points, didn’t add emojis (where appropriate), and didn’t come off positively.
I didn’t assume positive intent — I viewed the questions as interruptions to my workflow, a low-priority task that wasn’t that important to me. After all, why didn’t the requestors use the pinned resources in the channel to help themselves?
Why ask me something I’d already answered 10 times this this week … answers they would have found had they scrolled up the page? Surely, they knew that Slack is a Searchable Log of All Communication and Knowledge? And because I felt that way, I conveyed it in my responses.
After reflecting and digging more, my mentor and I found the same patterns in my emails and in-person communication. Sure, I used professional greetings and closings, but it was clinical language, devoid of warmth. I was solely focused on the issue.
I asked questions in ways that indirectly judged the receiver or found fault with a colleague. Asking how somebody’s weekend went wasn’t a business priority. Notice a pattern here?
Much of this communication is digital. You might think you’re warm, an extrovert, a “people person.”
Which is fine — if you’re talking to people you know face-to-face in the same physical space. But what happens when you deliver the message digitally, devoid of vocal tones, context, or prior personal knowledge about each other? You become, as one of my former colleagues put it, an “energy vampire.”
People don’t enjoy your presence because you suck the energy out of the room. People don’t volunteer information to you because they don’t like the way you ask questions or respond to theirs. Instead of building trust, you build walls.
Think about your own workplace, team, or department. We all have that one person we have to deal with at work.
You know the one. You dread interacting with them. You never like how you feel after talking to them.
You’ll ask the same question of anybody else, going to this person as a last resort, even if it means taking twice as long to get your answer. Take it from me — you don’t want to be that person.
When I asked you to picture somebody asking a pointed question with a blunt tone earlier, who did you picture? Was it an intern?
The person working in the mailroom? The brand new college hire? Or was it a senior manager, director, or vice president (VP)? Chances are … it was the latter.
One of life’s great injustices is how we’re conditioned to let others treat us when they have power over us, make more money than we do, or are above us on the company totem pole. Usually, we’re supposed to let them run over us, asking us targeted questions while we thank them for the experience. And they know this.
Side note: A great way to judge somebody’s character is to watch how they treat those they have power over. Watch how your date treats the busboys, waiters, Lyft drivers, hostesses, desk staff, and valets. If they treat these people like dirt, you already know how they’re going to treat you.
Unfortunately, there’s no antidote to this behavior other than the world’s directors and VPs gaining a little self-awareness. This is why it’s not always a good idea to carbon copy what “successful” people do and say. The VP gets away with it because of her power. You don’t have that power.
The director gets away with it because he outranks you. You’re below him; thus, I don’t advise speaking to him with blunt sarcasm in your voice.
That’s the world we live in. But, thankfully, there are others to emulate at work. The folks who always have lunch buddies? The colleagues about whom somebody always has something nice to say? The person your manager speaks glowingly of because they always deliver (within reason)?
Those are the folks to model. People want to be around them because they’re reliable, they’re great teammates, and they’re not energy vampires.
No, I’m not suggesting that your pathway to promotion is adding extra exclamation points, some emojis, and a few airy greetings to every message you send. (But hey, it sure helped me.) And no, I don’t have a magic solution for that director treating you and your team like trash. (Actually, have you heard of this site called LinkedIn?)
What I'm suggesting is that you develop some emotional intelligence by thinking about how you communicate.
Think about how you can positively impact the day of the people you associate with. Be hyperaware of the impression you create by the way you talk to others.
Maya Angelou said it best: “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
Ask yourself the following questions:
- If I received this email or Slack message, how would I feel?
- Are there other ways to ask my question that keep my intended message while not implying judgment?
- Am I assuming positive intent?
- Would I want to help somebody if they talked to me this way?
We live in a world that runs on digital communication. Hybrid or remote work — in some fashion — is here to stay. This requires you to choose your words carefully. I find that a nice greeting, a little context, and some artful exclamation points go a long way.
Don’t do it if it doesn’t feel natural. But again, how would you feel if somebody didn’t say good morning and immediately hit you with an escalation to resolve at 8:06 am on a Monday? Not stoked, right?
Those few little words, those few little punctuation marks? They can make all the difference. They cost you nothing.
Alex Garoffolo is a writer whose work moves fluidly between biting cultural commentary and unexpectedly tender explorations of modern life. His essays, often balancing humor with insight, have appeared in major Medium publications and reflect on everything from grammar and late capitalism to loneliness, language, and the quiet absurdity of being alive right now.
