How honest do we have to be when asked for feedback?

Pointing out flaws in someone’s work can be challenging. Deciding how honest to be in just how flawed a piece of work is can be even more challenging. Combine these challenges with how hard it is for many of us to say “no” to a request for help and we can often find ourselves in a bit of a conundrum.

A reader we’re calling Kait recently found herself in the position of being asked to review a piece of writing from a friend of a friend. Kait’s friend knew that she had expertise in the field on which the piece of writing focused so he thought she might be a good resource for feedback.

Typically, Kait’s friend would check with her before giving out her email and suggesting someone contact her. This time he didn’t and Kait was surprised when the email from someone she didn’t know arrived seeking feedback.

“I don’t know what to do,” Kait writes. “I really don’t like it.” Kait continues that she doesn’t know the writer, but that she’s confident he’s a terrific person. “If we had some kind of relationship I would be honest.”

Kait writes that she’s tempted to make a handful of small suggestions and to tell the writer, “it’s just fine.”

“What is the right thing to do?” Kait asks.

The way Kait presents the issue, there are at least two choices facing her. The first is whether to help her friend’s friend and move on, or make it clear that she’s glad to lend a hand but would like him to check with her first or to at least give her a heads up that he’d given her name and contact information to someone.

In this situation, Kait should talk to her friend and tell him to ask her before giving her name out. That would have been the thoughtful and right thing for the friend to do on his own, but if Kait doesn’t say something it’s likely to happen again.

The second choice is how severe to be in her criticism of the piece of writing. Kait doesn’t need to engage in what Sisela Bok refers to as “truth dumping” and point out every little flaw in the writing. It would be perfectly fine for her to offer a few suggestions without going into excruciating detail of just how much she doesn’t like the piece. But the right thing is to stop short of telling the writer something that she does not believe to be true. Disingenuously saying “it’s just fine,” is not, in fact, fine.

Kait is not obligated to offer any form of criticism in response to the writer’s email if she does not feel comfortable doing so. We are all capable of saying no in response to requests of our time and expertise, even if saying no is something many of us find challenging. If Kait is comfortable and offers as much constructive criticism as she feels comfortable offering, she will be showing kindness to the writer and to her friend who sent them along.

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 and director of the communications program 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) 2021 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Soon there will be time for everything

It has been a long year. 

Schools closing, businesses shuttered, jobs lost, workplaces mostly shuttered as workers set up shop at home. Grandparents have gone months without hugging a grandchild. Lost loved ones buried from a distance with the absence of physical presence intensifying our grief.

But there have also been signs of hope. As more Americans masked and kept a physical distance from one another, the virus spread less quickly than it might have. In record-breaking time, vaccines were developed to wipe out COVID-19 and make it safe to be among one another again.

Now, we are told that all adults who want to be vaccinated will likely be vaccinated by the end of May, that those who have already been fully vaccinated can safely gather with one another. And that by July 4, it’s likely to be safer to gather together in small groups. The symbolism of the choice of Independence Day as the target for when we can again be free to gather has not been lost.

As we enter into a more hopeful stretch, how do we make sense of all the loss, all the disconnectedness and all the tragic fallout from a virulent disease? It might help to tap into some of the wisdom from those who have lived through similar circumstances.

In 1939, Katherine Anne Porter published her novella, Pale Horse, Pale Rider, one of the few pieces of fiction that has the Spanish Flu of 1918 pandemic at its heart. Katherine Anne Porter herself had survived the Spanish Flu, contracting it in 1918 and spending months in the hospital in Denver, where she had been writing for the “Rocky Mountain News.” Her experience is said to have influenced the writing of “Pale Horse, Pale Rider.” It’s an 82-page novella and widely available online, so I won’t spoil all the details for you here but a few of the key quotes of the novella can be paralleled to our feelings today.

“‘It seems to be a plague,’ said Miranda, one of the primary characters in Porter’s book, ‘something out of the Middle Ages. Did you ever see so many funerals, ever?’”

In a comment eerily reminiscent of the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Miranda’s love Adam says, “They can’t get an ambulance … and there aren’t any beds. And we can’t find a doctor or a nurse. They’re all busy. That’s all there is to it.”

As they are talking about the flu, Miranda and Adam try to recall the words of a spiritual that seems to capture the moment. “Pale horse, pale rider, done taken my lover away,” they recall and then, “Death always leaves one singer to mourn.” The latter line is an eerie foreshadowing of what’s to come in the novella.

So much mourning has beset us over these past 12 months. But with an end or at least a containment in sight, it’s the final words of Porter’s novella that ring hard: “No more war, no more plague, only the dazed silence that follows the ceasing of the heavy guns; noiseless houses with the shades drawn, empty streets, the dead cold light of tomorrow. Now there would be time for everything.”

As we mourn what we’ve lost in whatever form that might have taken, it only seems the right thing to remember to appreciate a renewed opportunity to be with one another again and embrace the possibility of, and time for, everything.

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 and director of the communications program 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) 2021 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

I will embrace ubuntu and wait my vaccine turn

A former colleague spent weeks trying to book an appointment to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. He had become eligible under Massachusetts guidelines to receive a vaccine, but searching online for an actual appointment proved quite challenging. Ultimately, he found an appointment for both him and for his spouse, but their appointments were on the same date at different sites in different cities which presented a logistics challenge. They met the challenge and received their first vaccine.

Dr. Tamara Rodenberg, the president of Bethany College, a small liberal arts college in West Virginia, told me that because her faculty is teaching students in person, the state arranged to have vaccines for college faculty and staff shipped to her campus where they were each vaccinated at the college’s health center. The few remaining vaccines were offered to eligible residents of the small village where the college is located.

News reports are full of stories of those who are frustrated by not yet being eligible for a vaccine especially when they’d be eligible if they’d lived in a nearby state. If the overarching goal is to get as many people vaccinated as soon as possible and there is still a limited supply of vaccine available, it seems wise to prioritize getting shots in the arms of the most vulnerable portions of the population first, whether vulnerability is determined by age, health, professions or other criteria.

My wife who sees mental health clients through a neighborhood health clinic in Boston is vaccinated. My son who teaches high school English in Virginia is vaccinated. My brother-in-law in Minnesota is vaccinated. My oldest grandson who is contracted through University of Maine’s ROTC program to be commissioned as an officer the day before he graduates in May is also vaccinated.

I am not vaccinated because my age and health do not yet meet Massachusetts guidelines to receive a vaccine. I am fine with having to wait my turn. When the moment comes for me to be eligible, I will seize the opportunity.

Our current president tells us that any of us who want to be vaccinated will be able to get a shot by the end of May. I hope he is right. That would provide plenty of time for it to feel safer for me to visit with others who have been vaccinated or to return to campus to teach in person this fall.

As long as others are being vaccinated and increasing the chances that the numbers of deaths from COVID-19 dramatically fall, I will patiently wait. The more people get vaccinated, the less likely it is that going out in public will lead to me or someone else getting sick. Many people think of this as herd immunity but it speaks to another concept — widely embraced in south Saharan Africa — “Ubuntu.”

The word “Ubuntu” has been roughly translated in English to “I am because you are,” which basically holds that we are all in this together. I am able to be who I am because you are who you are. It cherishes a sense of community. Now seems a time for each of us to avoid cynicism and embrace the idea of Ubuntu.

If you get a vaccine that increases the likelihood that I can continue to be who I am.

In the spirit of Ubuntu, I will wait my turn without grousing, without trying to jump in line, without moving to at least 12 different states where I’d be able to sign up now. It seems 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 and director of the communications program 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) 2021 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Thanks for the coffee, Stanley Tucci. The next one's on me.

In the first episode of Stanley Tucci's new show Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy on CNN, the actor traveled to Naples. He and his crew somehow managed to find a time to film during the pandemic when a lockdown wasn't in place throughout the country. 

During the show, Tucci visited restaurants and the farms that supply them, explored how food sustained people in an impoverished area of the city, sampled food, and talked - most frequently in Italian - to people. One of the people Tucci spoke with was the local head of police. As they were talking, they approached a coffee stand where the policeman ordered "due caffe e un caffe sospeso" which translates to "two coffees and a suspended coffee."

The tradition of the suspended coffee, where a customer pays for one more coffee than he or she plans to consume reportedly began in Naples ages ago. It was seen as a charitable act by those who could afford to pay for a coffee now that could be claimed later by someone who couldn't afford a cup. The person simply approaches the coffee seller and asks if he or she has any sospeso available. If it is, it's poured without charge.

Why can't caffe sospeso or anything else "sospeso" become a local tradition in our own neighborhoods whether we live in a big city,  a small town or a village?

Occasionally, local news stories in the United States pick up random acts of similar kindness after someone in a drive-through coffee line pays ahead for the next person in line. But that's a bit different, of course. Those people presumably could have afforded to pay for their own coffee or they wouldn't have queued up in the first place. It's an act of kindness, to be sure. But the Neapolitan tradition, which has spread to other countries, has as its core mission the effort to provide a bit of support for those who might be in need.

I've written before about efforts like the Boston Community Fridge where neighbors donate food to various refrigerators and pantries open round the clock in various parts of the city. Anyone who needs food can pick from whatever's available whenever they arrive. There are also restaurants that have begun to provide meals at deep discounts to customers if food is left over at closing time. Customers call ahead or use an app to see what's available and the restaurant avoids wasting any food while providing good food well below the typical price. Other similar efforts exist.

But the caffe sospeso tradition seems something different. It seems like more of a mindset. It's the idea that if I'm doing OK, wouldn't it be nice to do something for someone who might not be quite as OK?

Granted, we would need to trust the merchants to keep track of the sospeso availability, but that hardly seems too much to ask. If my local hardware store can track the loyalty points it gives me for every purchase, I'm hopeful it could track me buying one hammer and one "hammer sospeso" for someone who might need it. Perhaps there's an app waiting to be built for that.

Whether it's coffee, groceries, fuel, clothing, hardware or whatever you choose, if every once in a while we embraced our good fortune by spreading it around, that would seem a good and 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 and director of the communications program 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) 2021 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.