9/13/2011: The most common thing people say to me about this blog is some variant of “It’s a public service to UO, but do you have to be so rude?”. My usual reaction is some version of “I’m not rude. Rude is wasting ten people’s time in a pointless meeting, then thanking them for their valuable input. Rude is the smile and polite chit-chat from someone who is thinking that they have no use for you at all.”
This Yale law professor’s video talks about “civil discourse”. He does not mean polite talk, he means effective talk that helps get important things done. Though he’s not opposed to polite, if it helps.
Is Civility Important? from Yale Law School on Vimeo. Link from Orin Kerr.
For some reason I’m reminded of “The Oregon Way” from those Huron consultants. UO’s civil discourse has been disfunctional for a long time:
Dog responds
But UOmatters you forget one important thing:
In a risk adverse environment, like the UO, you have to be polite first before anyone will listen to you.
If your “rude” you will immediately make them
more insecure and you will get tuned out. Indeed,
I know many UO faculty that will no longer read this blog precisely because “UOmatters is so rude”. We offend easily at this institution.
In a more secure environment (and I have been in them and my behavior is pretty environment independent) you can look some one in the eye and say “your full of shit” and the response will be “okay, prove it to me”. The UO response is simply to discount everything you have to say, after the word “shit” for the rest of time.
So yes, at the UO ‘non-rudeness really matters” but it matters in any institution that values style over substance.
I would also argue that “effective” communication rarely happens here independent of the rude factor.
Still, a 4 legged dog salute to you as at least UOmatters is trying to fuckin’ do something!
Thanks Dog. I’m trying to figure out how to be less rude and more effective. The sticking point at the moment is that when I try being polite, people then think this means they can blow off my questions. Then they feel betrayed when they realize I’m still as dogged as ever.
Dog responds:
Agreed – determining how to be effective here is
harder than it should be and requires a delicate
balance.
I do think the Huron report sums it up well with the phrase “justification for inaction” – it seems to me this is what we do, over and over again. How can anyone be effective in that kind of climate?
Maybe UO Matters needs to find a “good cop” to his “bad cop.” Let UO Matters raise a shit storm and then have an associate who is perceived as nice take up the same point in a different way. In every org, outspoken people are dismissed as rude or angry; the trick is to have someone who can take the supposed angry person’s idea and repackage it in a productive manner. This would also solve UO Matters’ other problem, which is the perception that he/she can only complain and not come up with solutions (though, to be fair to UO Matters, almost all UO faculty are tarred with this brush).
over the last century American Universities and their faculties invented much of what is now modern ‘flat’ ,cooperative, administrative structures or ‘governance’, in our academic parlance. Those in business who argue that universities should be run more like universities are typically unaware that modern management in business is run more like the older university ideal of shared governance and responsibility, Unfortunately, in the last half century, universities have grown too large and complex for old-fashioned faculty structures to work effectively. In the vacuum created, less idealistic and less responsible professional administrators ave created their own superstructures around them. Our only optimistic choice as faculty is to help reinvent faculty administrative cooperation and faculty power of oversigt. But who will, or can, do it? Takes time energy, credibility, experience, and savvy. Te union option just trades one set of bosses for another, with greater conflict thrown in. sounds pessimistic, u, but what can you expect from a 30+ year campus veteran wit battle scars to prove it.
At the risk of appearing polite, thanks for the video link. Well worth viewing.