One of the many places I see soft language hurt is in feedback. “Our project is late” and “xyzelement failed to prioritize well” might refer to the same event but one is more likely to “sting” me in a way that causes change.
In my value system change and improvement are worth the sting in the short term, but often that is prevented by soft language.
Eg I’ve seen developers/ managers / teams come out on the other side of a “blameless” postmortem without realizing they fucked something up.
There's some arguments behind why you might want to not lay blame plainly (and especially publicly) on an individual, within a business team setting.
- Laying direct blame on someone may lead them to trying to hide problems to avoid the pain/shame in the future.
- Related - everyone makes honest mistakes. Creating and environment where people feel ok admitting to these is a lot more ideal than the alternative.
- Teams should be encouraged to take collective ownership, such that if someone who works with xyzelement sees them failing to prioritize, they need to do something about it, even if it's just raising a concern early in the project with those who need to hear said concern.
That all said, sometimes people do need direct feedback (in private), especially when they are struggling in general with their job.
In my value system change and improvement are worth the sting in the short term, but often that is prevented by soft language.
Eg I’ve seen developers/ managers / teams come out on the other side of a “blameless” postmortem without realizing they fucked something up.