Less screaming and more listening may yield better arguments

What’s the right thing to do when you disagree with someone in public?

I’ve spoken and written before about how to discuss topics that can be charged (for example, politics, religion, baseball) calmly and productively with others. One tip I have previously offered is to turn off news programs where people with differing views resort to yelling at one another rather than listening to what one another has to say.

We should be able to have a civil discussion even if we disagree with one another. One key is not to try to convert someone over to your way of thinking. Rather, listen to his or her view, then share your own, if, for nothing else than to try to have a better understanding of why they think the way they do.

I was reminded of how to engage civilly while disagreeing when I recently visited Alex Strum’s Advanced Placement Language and Composition class at Holliston High School in Holliston, Massachusetts, via Zoom. Mr. Strum, who had been a graduate student in a course I taught years ago, had assigned his high school juniors to read four different prompts for scenarios where an ethical choice had to be made. Each student had to choose one of the four prompts and write a one-page essay in which they built an argument to support how they’d respond to the situation presented.

One had to do with social media age requirements. Another was on the appropriateness of searching online for information on an ex-partner. Still another had to do with a middle school teacher who was worried her students didn’t like her enough. The final one had to do with working for an organization whose managers expressed views you strongly oppose.

Mr. Strum hadn’t told the students that each of the questions posed to his students were drawn from some of “The Right Thing” columns I’d written over the past 25 years. None of his students knew how I’d responded nor that I’d be visiting to discuss their responses with them.

While some high school students (or even college students) can clam up in such situations and others have perfected the excruciating discontented eye roll, at least two-thirds of Mr. Strum’s students spoke for about an hour about each question. Even after Mr. Strum asked me to reveal how I’d responded, we spoke some more. Often the students disagreed with my take. Occasionally, they agreed. But they engaged by asking clarifying questions, trying to get at why I might have answered a particular way. I posed similar questions to them. They often did a great job convincing me about thinking differently than I had on a particular issue, even if I ended up with the same response that I had originally offered. (OK, some eye-rolling might have persisted.)

Listening is one of the primary things to do when you find yourself in a disagreement with someone. As long as they listen back, the chances are elevated that the conversation might be constructive even if neither of you convinces the other to change his or her mind. An hour-long conversation with Mr. Strum’s AP class convinced me such an approach continues to be the right thing to do.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of "The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice," is a senior lecturer in public policy, emeritus, at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues.

Do you have ethical questions that you need to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com. 

Follow him on Twitter @jseglin

(c) 2023 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Should an unsolicited tote bag stop donor from giving?

Should you stop giving to a charity because it sends you unsolicited gifts?

That’s a question asked by a reader we’re calling Melvin. Melvin regularly gives to a charity. He’s done so for at least a decade. But over the past year, Melvin started receiving gifts such as tote bags in mailings soliciting more donations to the group. Melvin points out that the tote bag was not a thank you gift, but a gift in anticipation of another donation.

“I don’t give to get a tote bag,” wrote Melvin. “I like the work they do.”

Melvin wrote that it’s not just this, however, that concerned him. He would like to believe that the money he donates gets used to support the work the group does, not to pay for unsolicited gifts such as tote bags or other items that are used to entice donations. “I’d rather they use the money to do their work,” wrote Melvin.

Melvin is wondering whether he should find a different group to support that doesn’t spend money on such gifts. He wondered if it is wrong to stop donating to a group whose work he admires and has supported for years because of a practice he finds objectionable.

If it’s the tote bag type gift that chiefly bothers Melvin, he could ask to be taken off the mailing list for the charity so he no longer receives solicitations. He can still donate to the charity but he’ll have to do so without the reminders that come in the mail. And it’s unlikely that the charity will stop sending tote bags to everyone.

Melvin could choose to find another charity that gives similar work and give to it instead, but there’s no guarantee that any new recipient might not engage in the same sort of preemptive gift-giving to prospective donors.

The right thing is for Melvin to decide if he supports the work of this charity enough to want to help. If he does and he would like to continue giving, he can check out how much of his donation actually goes to the work being done by looking at a site like www.CharityNavigator.org, which provides an analysis of a charity’s accountability and finance, culture and community, leadership and adaptability, and impact and results. If he wants to get into more financial specifics, he can also use the website www.guidestar.org to look up the Form 990 financial form his charity fills out each year and files with the Internal Revenue Service, but these filings typically lag a couple of years before becoming available on the GuideStar site.

Good for Melvin for wanting to support a group that does work he admires and for wanting to try to make sure his dollars get used wisely. If the charity measures up in terms of financial responsibility, then it would be good to think Melvin would keep giving and not let the unsolicited tote bag turn him off.

He might even decide to start using the tote bag when he does his grocery shopping. A fellow shopper might see the charity’s logo, strike up a conversation with Melvin, and consider donating as well.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of "The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice," is a senior lecturer in public policy, emeritus, at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues.

Do you have ethical questions that you need to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com. 

Follow him on Twitter @jseglin

(c) 2023 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Does reader need to light the way for postal worker?

Members of an online neighborhood group in the Northeast regularly contribute to the site on topics ranging from area yard sales and illegally parked cars to scant turnout at the local polling site and great local dining as well as assorted other items that might be of interest to the group.

Recently, the neighborhood’s U.S. mail deliverer, who had delivered mail and packages to the neighborhood for more than two decades, retired and a new deliverer took up the route. Neighbors noticed that it took a while for the new deliverer to get used to the route since the house numbers are a bit quirky. Packages delivered to the wrong address got redelivered. Where the veteran deliverer had always gotten mail to the boxes before noon, the new deliverer’s drop-offs were much later in the afternoon, often into the early evening hours. But the new deliverer seemed to get better at getting things to the right place as she learned the new route.

A few weeks ago, a reader we’re calling Pat wrote that he read a post on the neighborhood online group from a neighbor who reported that the new deliverer asked people to turn on their porch lights when it gets dark so she could better see their mailboxes as she delivered their mail.

Most commenters on the post readily agreed this was a simple and thoughtful task. Pat, however, wondered if it was really his responsibility to turn on the light. “If she’s concerned about the dark, why doesn’t she just deliver the mail in the morning?” Pat asked, remembering that their old mail deliverer had always had mail in boxes before noon. Pat’s not sure he will remember to turn on his porch light or to turn it off if the mail is delivered particularly late. “That’s a lot of wasted electricity,” he noted. Pat asked if he was wrong to decline to participate in the new mailbox illumination effort.

I won’t comment on why the new deliverer gets the mail in boxes much later than the former person. For all I know, something changed at the post office where she doesn’t get the mail to deliver as early as he did. Or, given that she’s still new to the route, it just might take her longer to get everything delivered. As a customer, I continue to appreciate when postal workers do their jobs well, sometimes going out of their way to ensure that mail arrives in a timely fashion.

But the answer to Pat’s question is that no, he’s not wrong by choosing not to participate. Neither are his neighbor’s wrong to turn on their porch lights to let it shine on their mailboxes.

The deliverer is doing the right thing by trying to learn the route and do her job well. Some of the neighbors are doing the right thing by trying to be thoughtful to her as she goes about doing that job.

It’s a thoughtful gesture to make the deliverer’s job a bit easier and perhaps safer by lighting the way, but there’s no ethical obligation for Pat or other neighbors to oblige if they choose not to.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of "The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice," is a senior lecturer in public policy, emeritus, at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues.

Do you have ethical questions that you need to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com. 

Follow him on Twitter @jseglin

(c) 2023 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

What’s the wisdom on clipping a neighbor’s sage?

 

Fifteen years ago, a reader from Cypress, California, wrote that on her regular walk to her local liquor store to buy a lottery ticket, she happened upon a lemon tree whose branches extended beyond the tree owner’s yard and across the sidewalk directly in her path.

“Those luscious lemons just call out to me at times,” she wrote. But she worried that picking one of the lemons directly in her path would be stealing. I responded that if the fruited branches indeed crossed her path, she would likely be in the clear since the owner had allowed his tree to grow into a public area. In fact, based on ordinances at the time in Cypress, the owner might have been in danger of being cited for allowing his tree to impede pedestrians’ ability to walk on a public sidewalk.

Nevertheless, I advised the reader that, even if it wasn’t illegal to pick lemons from the sprawling tree, the right thing might be to ask the owner.

The response to that column from some readers was that I’d bungled my advice. She had every right to pick those lemons if they crossed her path, they wrote. “The legal right of a tree owner extends to the edge of his property and no further,” one wrote. That actually was the point I was making, that the woman had a legal right to pick the overhanging fruit, but the right thing ethically would still be to let the tree owner know.

Last week, I received a question from a reader about a similar issue, but here the line between right and wrong is a bit clearer.

The reader we’re calling Rosemary wrote that a neighbor a few blocks up the street from her is growing sage, among other things, in a small border of his yard that directly abuts the public sidewalk. Rosemary noted that the first frost of the season has already hit her New England neighborhood and that it’s a matter of time before the sage dies off.

“Since it’s going to die soon anyway, is there anything wrong with picking some of the sage?” asked Rosemary.

Unless the sage has grown so wildly that it has overtaken the sidewalk, Rosemary would be wrong to simply clip some sage without asking. That it will soon die is no more justification than cutting some annual flowers since they too won’t make it through the winter. Even if it had overtaken the sidewalk and Rosemary might have more legal standing to clip a few leaves, I still believe she should ask the neighbor.

Instead of clipping away with abandon, Rosemary should take the time to do the right thing and ask her neighbor if it is OK to cut some sage from his garden. Or she can parse her words carefully to indicate that if he plans to cut the sage soon, she’d enjoy taking a few leaves. In a perfect world, the owner might offer the bounty of sage to neighbors without them having to ask. But until he does, Rosemary and her neighbors should remember him as the one who lives there.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of "The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice," is a senior lecturer in public policy, emeritus, at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues.

Do you have ethical questions that you need to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com. 

Follow him on Twitter @jseglin

(c) 2023 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Is it OK to remove books from my little free library that don’t mirror my views?

There are more than 90,000 Little Free Libraries in the United States and around the world. These little boxes that typically appear on top of a post in a neighborhood began appearing in 2009, the brainchild of Todd Bol, who began his effort in Wisconsin. Little Free Libraries became an official 501(c)(3) nonprofit in 2012. Bol died six years later, but the libraries live on.

These little containers are meant as a vehicle for people to share books. The builder of the library stocks the library after it’s built and then people take and leave as they see fit. The builder, whom Little Free Library calls a “steward,” can curate the collection, restock when inventory gets low, or remove books that don’t seem to attract the interest of borrowers. The steward acts as a curator. There are no rules about how or what to curate. The goal is to share books.

Occasionally, the Little Free Library nonprofit will encourage stewards to engage in a particular effort. During the first week of October, for example, during Banned Books Week, the nonprofit put out a call encouraging stewards to include at least one banned book.

But mostly, these collections take on a personality of their own, defined mostly by those who happen to borrow and give books.

One steward recently asked my opinion about whether it was OK to pull books from her Little Free Library she might find objectionable. No title had appeared yet raising concern, but her question was piqued after seeing that someone had left a copy of the Vietnamese Buddhist monk and writer, Thích Nhất Hạnh. Hanh who died in 2022 has written more than 100 books. Some of his most popular are “Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life” and “The Art of Living.” (His short “How to Fight” is a good read as well, as are others.

It was a copy of the 20th anniversary edition of “Living Buddha, Living Christ” that raised the curator’s curiosity. While she is an opponent of banning any books, she does not want her library to become a collection of religious books, particularly the type of religious tracts that are sometimes left in her mailbox. The curator would like to know the best way to proceed.

It’s her library, so she gets to make any rules she wants to make about what to keep in the library and what not to keep. But if she is truly an opponent of banning books, then it strikes me that the right thing to do is to continue running her library how she told me she always has run it.

She makes sure the library is well stocked and easy for passersby to access. She removes any copies of books that appear to be waterlogged, ripped or otherwise damaged. She adds books when inventory seems low and removes books if her library is getting too crowded. But she also removes books from her library that don’t seem to attract any interest after a month or two. Part of the joy of having the library is the activity it creates among neighborhood readers.

If her library is overrun by religious tracts after someone has removed all the books, then she would be right to restock. But if one book appears that seems like it might not be her cup of tea, then the right thing might be to let circulation take its course.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of "The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice," is a senior lecturer in public policy, emeritus, at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues.

Do you have ethical questions that you need to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com. 

Follow him on Twitter @jseglin

(c) 2023 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

 

 

How honest should you be when someone asks for help?

There are times when telling the whole truth is simply cruel, as when a doctor can choose whether to tell a dying patient in clinical detail how his health will decay, I wrote 25 years ago in a column about how high-profile figures had been caught in a lie. “There’s great room for discretion, for knowing when not to speak,” Sissela Bok, the author of Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life (Vintage Books, 1989) told me back then.

But how honest should you be when someone asks you for their opinion on something on which they’ve been working hard and about which they are clearly quite proud? If a friend or colleague has, for example, been working on a cover letter for a job, a letter to the editor of a publication, a grant proposal, an opinion column, a book, or other similar efforts and he, she or they asks you for your feedback, how honest should you be?

Presumably, if the person is asking you for feedback they want your feedback so they can make whatever they are working on as strong and clear as it can possibly be. There are times, however, where some people asking for feedback simply want confirmation of the brilliance of their existing effort. In the latter case, the result of offering constructive criticism may result in a bit of a rift between the asker and the respondent.

I get asked regularly to review work for people. When it’s work done by a student for class, the expectation is that they will receive as many constructive comments as I can muster and I try to deliver. But often it’s a friend or colleague. I have no way of knowing at the outset if they are simply looking for confirmation of their brilliant effort or if they truly want comments that I believe might make what they’ve done stronger. (A hint of the latter is often when the request to me is prefaced by a comment like: “All of my friends love this. What do you think?”

What’s the right thing to do in such situations?

For those asking for feedback: If you really don’t want feedback and might resent any feedback you receive, the right thing is not to bother asking. It would be better if you truly thought that feedback might improve what you’ve done, recognizing that you don’t have to take all or any of the suggestions someone offers. But if you are incapable of accepting feedback and really only want a sign off on your existing brilliance, don’t waste the other person’s time.

For those giving feedback: The right thing is to be honest, but to be clear and specific in your comments. Stay focused on the work itself and how it might be improved rather than judging the person because he doesn’t know how to use a reflexive pronoun correctly. Whatever the project is, it’s good to remember that it’s the other person’s work, not yours. In giving feedback, your role is to try to assist them in making their work as strong and clear as it can be.

For readers of my column: I continue to appreciate the feedback some of you regularly send, often about how I might do better. I will continue to try.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of "The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice," is a senior lecturer in public policy, emeritus, at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues.

Do you have ethical questions that you need to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com. 

Follow him on Twitter @jseglin

(c) 2023 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.