Say It Out Loud Archives - understand-culture

Spell It Out

Spell it out for me. The speaker wants it said in full, with nothing left to guess.

I’m not a mind reader. The speaker refuses responsibility for what was never said.

Don’t assume. It is often followed by the joke When you assume, you make an ass out of u and me.

Let me be clear. Just to be clear. The speaker restates the point so that nobody leaves with a different version.

Put it on the calendar. An agreement to meet becomes real when it has a time slot.

Over-communicate. Managers use this word as advice, not as a warning.

Speak Up

Use your words. Parents and preschool teachers say this to a small child who cries, points or grabs instead of saying what is wrong.

There are no stupid questions. Teachers and managers say this to invite questions.

Closed mouths don’t get fed. If you do not ask, nobody knows what you want or need.

Speak now or forever hold your peace. This line from the wedding ceremony gives one moment to object, and only one.

A favorite baseball story comes from the 1962 New York Mets. The outfielder Richie Ashburn shouted “I got it!” to call for fly balls. But he kept running into Elio Chacón, who spoke only Spanish. So Ashburn learned the Spanish for “I’ve got it.” In one telling it was ¡La tengo!, in another ¡Yo la tengo!

In one game Chacón stayed back as planned. Then the left fielder Frank Thomas, who spoke no Spanish, ran into Ashburn. Thomas reportedly asked, “What the hell is a Yellow Tango?” The story is told as an anecdote, and the versions differ in their details. The band Yo La Tengo took its name from it.

Psychological Safety

In 2016 Google described what it had learned from Project Aristotle, a study of more than 100 of its own teams. It called psychological safety “the most important factor to building a successful team.”

Amy Edmondson of Harvard Business School studied the idea. Her 1999 study found that psychological safety improved the performance of teams. One account puts the test into a single question: “Did you feel like you could ask what the goal was without the risk of sounding like you’re the only one out of the loop?”

Without Objection

In the US Congress, a routine step can be approved without a vote. The chair asks whether there is any objection. If no member objects, the matter is agreed. For something as routine as inserting an article into the Congressional Record, the chair may say only four words: “Without objection, so ordered.”

Here silence counts as agreement. But the question is asked out loud first, and the result is announced.

Silence Does Not Mean Consent

In 2014 California added Section 67386 to its Education Code. The law applies to colleges and universities that receive state funds for student financial aid. Their policies on sexual assault must use a standard of “affirmative consent.”

The law defines this as “affirmative, conscious, and voluntary agreement to engage in sexual activity.” It then states: “Lack of protest or resistance does not mean consent, nor does silence mean consent.” Consent “must be ongoing” and “can be revoked at any time.”

Silence Is Not Acceptance

In American contract law, a person who does not reply to an offer has, in most cases, not accepted it. New Mexico’s standard jury instruction states the rule plainly: “Silence is acceptance only under [one or more of] the following condition[s].”

The conditions are narrow. In the first, the person took the benefits of the offer and knew that payment was expected. In the second, the offer gave the person reason to understand that silence could count, and the person meant to accept. In the third, past dealings between the two sides made silence a reasonable way to accept.

“You Have the Flight Controls”

When a flight instructor hands the airplane to a student, the exchange takes three steps. The instructor says, “You have the flight controls.” The student answers, “I have the flight controls.” The instructor repeats, “You have the flight controls.”

Pilots also repeat what air traffic control tells them. The FAA’s Aeronautical Information Manual asks them to read back the parts of a clearance that contain altitude assignments, vectors or runway assignments. The readback lets both sides check each other.

The Surgical Time-Out

Before an operation begins, a designated member of the team calls a time-out. The team confirms the correct patient, the correct side and the correct site. The Joint Commission has required this since 2004. Its Universal Protocol calls for “active communication among all members” of the team. The protocol is designed so that the procedure does not start if a member of the team has concerns.

The Joint Commission’s patient safety goals for 2004 also covered orders given by voice or by telephone. The nurse who receives the order writes it down. Then the nurse reads the whole order back to the physician.

Go or No Go

Before major events such as a launch, the flight director in Mission Control goes “around the room.” Each flight controller is polled in turn and calls out an answer. If everything is good, the call is “go.” If there is a problem that requires a hold or an abort, the call is “no go.”

The procedure is called a launch status check, or a go/no go poll. In the Apollo program, the flight director started it.