In this video, we're going to talk about two related concepts from Goffman as
well as Brown and Levinson. Politeness theory and face. These concepts will help
us as emerging leaders in the workplace have difficult conversations a little
more smoothly. So there's a lot of value in these concepts that can help us in
our leadership development. So let's get into the details.
Hello again friends I'm
Alex Lyon and if we have not met yet and you've never subscribed to this channel,
Communication Coach, is here to help you increase your impact so you can lead
the people around you to higher levels of excellence. Everything on this channel
is about communication skills or leadership skills. Snd that's why today
we're talking about politeness theory and face. These are two related ideas
that will help you have difficult conversations more smoothly so you can
solve those organizational problems that are hard to talk about. So let's start
with politeness theory. Politness theory came to us several decades ago and
essentially it says that we have a universal desire across the globe in
every culture to be treated with politeness. Now, politeness looks a little
different depending upon where you go but we all want to be treated politely.
And so when we're talking about difficult topics if we use politeness
it'll be that much easier. So that's why we have to talk about this notion of
face. Within this idea of politeness we all have a desired self-image a way
that publicly we want to be seen. When someone comes to talk to us about a
problem, one of the reasons why it's difficult to talk about sticky issues is
because we don't know how to talk to people without putting them in a bad
light, without threatening their face. Every time we come in with an issue or
make a request we have the potential to make what's called a face-threatening
act, an FTA, face-threatening act. When we talk to
people we have to have a sense for how to navigate this conversation. So face
has two parts. First the positive and then the negative. Positive face is where
we want to be esteemed and admired and looked up to and respected by the people
around us. That's how we want to be seen in a
positive light. There's also negative face and a negative sense we want to be
free from people imposing on our freedom, on our ability to make choices and on
our decisions, because if someone is able to impose on us and take our choices
away that diminishes us. That lowers our position in the group socially. So we
need both positive and negative face to be in place for us to feel like our face
needs are met. So here are some ways that we can talk about this and apply this to
professional settings to have difficult conversation. We'll start with a
really easy one. I often have to request letters of recommendation for myself.
Let's I'm going up for a promotion of some sort at work and when I ask people
for a letter of recommendation I have to think about what this means. They get
nothing out of it. So how I ask for this really matters. If I were to use
positive face (politeness) I would build them up and show them that I respect and esteem them.
I would say hey I wanted to ask you for a letter of recommendation. I'm asking
you because you're an expert in the field. You're extremely familiar with my
work. Nobody knows my material like you do and I think you'd be the perfect
person to write a letter for me. So I'm building them up. I'm showing them I
respect them and I admire that person. The other one is negative
face. I want to be sure that they know that I'm not imposing on them. I don't want to
be someone who's pushing in and trying to take away their choices, that they're
obligated to write this letter. So I would approach it like this. If I were
using negative face, I would say I wanted to ask you for a letter recommendation.
Now of course feel free to say no. I know the deadline may not work for you and
it's pretty short notice and I'm sure you're very very busy but if you have
the time and you're able to it would be amazing to get a letter of recommendation from
you. So there's an example of negative face so you can use both of these of
course but this is a way to get into a hard conversation and that's a simple
request for a letter. Let's use a more serious request. Let's say you're in a
professional setting and somebody around you is racking up the expenses when they
travel on a business trip and you're the one who has to talk about it. Now this is
a real problem that can hurt the organization. How do you have this
conversation without making it worse? Keep in mind politeness theory and both
positive and negative face and you're gonna have a easier time
doing this. Here's how it sounds talking about this with positive face. You might
say hey Brad you know you're one of our best salespeople and we know how hard
you work. We all appreciate that and respect what you do here and how you
contribute. We do have to talk about this expense report, however, because the
expenses are going above the allowed limit. And so let's make a time to go
over this. So here I built Brad up and it makes room to have a more difficult part
of that conversation a reality. Otherwise I might know how to know how to get
there. If we were his negative face we would protect Brad from feeling like
we're imposing upon him even though we have to talk about this. So we say hey
Brad we need to talk about the expense report. It's going above what's allowed
in our organization. And look. We don't have to do this now. We can do it
tomorrow if that works better for you, but we really do need to make a time to
do it. So here I'm trying to remove this sense that I'm imposing on him and he's
I'm bossing him around and I'm taking his freedoms away. You can combine
these, of course, and use both positive and negative face to reduce the chances
that you're going to deliver an intense face-threatening act. When people feel
threatened like this, they're less likely to give you what you want and so having
these concepts of politeness and face and using these in our difficult
conversations will make it much easier to talk about hard things. So question of
the day, how do you see yourself and your professional settings applying these
concepts? I would love to hear your comments in that section below.
Thanks. God bless and I will see you in the next video.