Love this! I’m Harrison, an ex fine dining industry line cook. My stack "The Secret Ingredient" adapts hit restaurant recipes (mostly NYC and L.A.) for easy home cooking.
Sometimes when that happens I cut them off with something a kid being silly would say. Like,one time last year I had bubble gum. Sometimes it glitches them out of it. Correcting their propper pronunciation with a very wrong one is also fun.
Another irksome Delta/Gamma trait; when seeing someone doing a task, you barge in with, "you know, what I would do if I were you..."
You might as well put on cleets, step on their toes, slap them in the face and call them stupid. It's so abhorantly rude and narcissistic to introduce "helping" in this manner.
Realize that the majority of the time:
A). They don't want your help.
B.) They have already decided on that course of action, and an intelligent person has already though through numerous options that led them to said choice to being the best course of action.
C.) Even if they're stupid, and what they're doing is not detrimental to themselves or the overall project, just leave them be.
D.) If they didn't ask for your opinion, the STFU!
Key takeaway: Always leave them wanting more. Know your exits and entrances. Deltas and Gammas need to think about having that exit strategy. Excellent post. Thanks, Vox.
My Delta father does this all the time. Worse, he will do it to my wife about things she has no interest in. Like how to winterize a boat, as a recent example. Raise your hand if you think my wife winterizes our boat. It’s maddening.
One time he asked me why I thought so-and-so wasn’t receptive to his attempts to talk to him about Jesus. Well Dad, what are you telling him? Turns out that a verbal wall of text starting in Genesis and going book by book through the OT for two hours before even getting to Jesus is a turnoff. But he could not comprehend why someone wouldn’t want/need all that detail.
You only have to be quiet and observe people at any gathering to see that the vast majority don't actually engage in any meaningful conversation. They're simply waiting for the person speaking to shut up and let them talk. Some don't even wait for others to finish. Most people are not listening to you. They are only listening for the the break so they can begin with the thing that's rattling around inside their head. What they're really listening to while others talk is their own internal monologue. I used to think being sober amongst drunk people was an eye opener, but being quiet during group conversations is even more sobering.
I think it's also because they want to get their comment in before the conversation tree gets too far along to restart from that previous point.
Conversations not going in a direction you hoped for preventing them from being able to chime with what they want to say at particular points before it's too late
I have to catch myself from interrupting others from time to time. It is something I need to work on more.
"the main reason I am considered to be a good public speaker is because I always wrap things up quickly the moment people in the audience start showing any signs of disengagement."
This is exactly the kind of principle that my local Toastmasters club used to enforce on their members. Keeping it short was almost always considered better than long windedness.
Waiting for you to stop talking so they can talk, is how most conversations work. We may begin it thinking it’s an exchange of information, but it ends up becoming a game of one-ups-manship, like the Topper character in Dilbert.
A simple "do you know how this works" followed by "I'll leave it to you then" or "if you have any concerns come find me" are all the help you should be offering unsolicited if some context demands you be involved at all. Everyone knows what it's like to have a coworker micromanage you, so just don't be that guy to someone else, if they screw something up then that's their responsibility for interacting with systems and processes they needed help with without getting the help they needed.
After all if the job is so delicate that you need to be guiding someone else through it the whole time then why aren't you just doing it yourself? Let people do the work they've been hired to do.
Sometimes the person with high intellectual, social and material status is a Gamma. Sir Isaac Newton seems to have been an example. He was vindictive, stole credit and suppressed others, presented 'walls of text' to his peers and was extremely difficult to get along with, as well as being uninterested in women.
'The Dark Side of Isaac Newton' by Nick Kollerstrom is an interesting book
Thanks Vox! This should be posted in every lunch room
Love this! I’m Harrison, an ex fine dining industry line cook. My stack "The Secret Ingredient" adapts hit restaurant recipes (mostly NYC and L.A.) for easy home cooking.
check us out:
https://thesecretingredient.substack.com
I’m interested in a review of the song Free bird- Lynerd Skynerd
Even your job is teaching, most people only want their score on work with little concern for feedback.
Allowing them to come ask for detail will let you know.
Its roughly 1/20. The rest just want to know their math to pass, no extra detail.
Sometimes when that happens I cut them off with something a kid being silly would say. Like,one time last year I had bubble gum. Sometimes it glitches them out of it. Correcting their propper pronunciation with a very wrong one is also fun.
Another irksome Delta/Gamma trait; when seeing someone doing a task, you barge in with, "you know, what I would do if I were you..."
You might as well put on cleets, step on their toes, slap them in the face and call them stupid. It's so abhorantly rude and narcissistic to introduce "helping" in this manner.
Realize that the majority of the time:
A). They don't want your help.
B.) They have already decided on that course of action, and an intelligent person has already though through numerous options that led them to said choice to being the best course of action.
C.) Even if they're stupid, and what they're doing is not detrimental to themselves or the overall project, just leave them be.
D.) If they didn't ask for your opinion, the STFU!
"you know, what I would do if I were you..."
I'm happy that I inherited my parents' murder-eyes.
Key takeaway: Always leave them wanting more. Know your exits and entrances. Deltas and Gammas need to think about having that exit strategy. Excellent post. Thanks, Vox.
I'll add a trick I learned about public speaking. Talk about the audience and they will never get bored.
On-point observation. Tangential, but Trump does this well, and that's one of many reasons why audiences love him.
Vox,
Your insight has been invaluable to me navigating my converged workplace as a recovering gamma.
I am training folks and I use your insight to curb over explanation, from a lot to a little.
Thanks!
My Delta father does this all the time. Worse, he will do it to my wife about things she has no interest in. Like how to winterize a boat, as a recent example. Raise your hand if you think my wife winterizes our boat. It’s maddening.
One time he asked me why I thought so-and-so wasn’t receptive to his attempts to talk to him about Jesus. Well Dad, what are you telling him? Turns out that a verbal wall of text starting in Genesis and going book by book through the OT for two hours before even getting to Jesus is a turnoff. But he could not comprehend why someone wouldn’t want/need all that detail.
You only have to be quiet and observe people at any gathering to see that the vast majority don't actually engage in any meaningful conversation. They're simply waiting for the person speaking to shut up and let them talk. Some don't even wait for others to finish. Most people are not listening to you. They are only listening for the the break so they can begin with the thing that's rattling around inside their head. What they're really listening to while others talk is their own internal monologue. I used to think being sober amongst drunk people was an eye opener, but being quiet during group conversations is even more sobering.
I think it's also because they want to get their comment in before the conversation tree gets too far along to restart from that previous point.
Conversations not going in a direction you hoped for preventing them from being able to chime with what they want to say at particular points before it's too late
I have to catch myself from interrupting others from time to time. It is something I need to work on more.
"the main reason I am considered to be a good public speaker is because I always wrap things up quickly the moment people in the audience start showing any signs of disengagement."
This is exactly the kind of principle that my local Toastmasters club used to enforce on their members. Keeping it short was almost always considered better than long windedness.
Waiting for you to stop talking so they can talk, is how most conversations work. We may begin it thinking it’s an exchange of information, but it ends up becoming a game of one-ups-manship, like the Topper character in Dilbert.
Thanks for the reminder to enjoy the one-up game.
A simple "do you know how this works" followed by "I'll leave it to you then" or "if you have any concerns come find me" are all the help you should be offering unsolicited if some context demands you be involved at all. Everyone knows what it's like to have a coworker micromanage you, so just don't be that guy to someone else, if they screw something up then that's their responsibility for interacting with systems and processes they needed help with without getting the help they needed.
After all if the job is so delicate that you need to be guiding someone else through it the whole time then why aren't you just doing it yourself? Let people do the work they've been hired to do.
One of the things that makes this blog an enjoyable read is that there isn’t any self-indulgent fluff.
Sometimes the person with high intellectual, social and material status is a Gamma. Sir Isaac Newton seems to have been an example. He was vindictive, stole credit and suppressed others, presented 'walls of text' to his peers and was extremely difficult to get along with, as well as being uninterested in women.
'The Dark Side of Isaac Newton' by Nick Kollerstrom is an interesting book
"as well as being uninterested in women."
That doesn't tell us enough. "Gammas tend to have have a worship/hate relationship with women" - so apathy is more indicative of a different rank.
How did the women feel about him?
I think Vox addressed this and said he was a sigma based on his patterns.
Newton was a loner.
No wife. No children.
I could easily be wrong. It's difficult to accurately determine historical figures.