Dear Jessica Brennan,
Confusion and deflection are powerful tools used chiefly by lazy or inept people in many relationships, whether personal, political or corporate. You can usually spot these deflectors by their penchant for responding to a question with an answer that has nothing to do with what was asked.
For example:
Boss: Sally, will you have the report on how many ears you have on your head submitted on time?
Sally: I can’t because Fred’s knowledge of social media is limited.
Confusion and deflection often include blame, as in the case of poor Fred, who was likely happily and effectively tweeting away while being tossed under the out-in-left-field bus by two-eared Sally.
Confusion and deflection always include watered-down facts and much wasted time.
For example:
Boss: Sally, what is the hold up on that ear report?
Sally: I’ve decided we need to form a committee to discuss the parameters of the paradigm of the visioning, actionable, tasking, and other noun-verb things. We will call a consultant to facilitate all our noun-verbingness.
In the interim, the rest of the office has no idea how many Q-tips to put on the Staples order or what number of earrings to get Sally for her Secret Santa because she won’t submit a tiny report that could fit on a mini post-it note.
Finally, when the report comes in, it is usually the size of a phone book, with graphs and pie charts and over-time due, and the results are inconclusive and require an advisory council or a change to the bylaws. In the end, we are none the wiser on the quantity of Sally’s lug’oles, but we have sure wasted a lot of time.
Sally, a simple “two” would have sufficed.
I recently read a blog post by Seth Godin where he said, ”If this is a race to be the most uninformed and the most passive, what if we win?”
Exactly.
Love,
Mum xo
Loved this! I know this ‘Sally’.