I wanted to write a little take on developing tact for beginners. That said, I am not an expert on this topic so I'm writing it as a student sharing what I've learned rather than a master.
Yet I've seen people treat subjects like there are only two approaches to a delicate scenario: harshest truth or white lies. There's a middle ground here in speaking truths while being careful not to upset people, and that's tactfulness.
So I'll cover some scenarios and how we might deal with them in a tactful way.
Horrible Haircut
Say a colleague enters the workplace sporting a brand new haircut that looks absolutely awful in your eyes. She seems to be proud of it and asks you what you think about her haircut.
Now we have to place ourselves in her shoes and imagine how she feels. She just got a new haircut and it's going to take a long time to regrow all that hair. The last thing she probably wants is to think it looks horrible, even if it does to most people. Of course, letting her know this harsh truth might be good for her in the long run in avoiding this haircut, but is it worth the cost of having a colleague who absolutely despises you in the workplace?
So what I recommend in this situation is to try to find something truthful to say that won't make her hate her new haircut. For example, let's say you think she has a very unappealing and ugly personality. In that case, you can just say:
I think your haircut really matches your personality!
And voila, it's that easy.
"What are three things you like about me?"
Say a girl you're dating in between a passionate round of making out and fondling each other, "What are three things you like about me?"
I don't know about you guys, but in this specific context, there's this part of my brain which dominates about 98% of it which just wants to shout, "Boobs!" But we have to be careful listening to that 98% of our brain and pay attention to the 2% as well that is saying like, "Wait a minute. Let's think this through."
So let's try to project ourselves in a woman's shoes and imagine how she feels like. This takes quite a bit of concentration.
Wow, look at me, I'm a girl! I have boobs! Look at them bounce and jiggle! They jiggle when I'm jumping! Every guy is looking at my boobs! Let's jump up and down! I like fragrances and stuff! OMG, what's this blood coming out of my crotch? OMMGGGG WTF I'M GONNA DIE!!!!!!!! I'M COVERED IN BLOOD EVERYWHERE!!!!
This is called "empathy". I had to stop doing that because it was becoming horrific, but what did we learn in this context being a woman? I didn't learn all that much actually except that I have breasts and every guy seems to like my breasts. But imagine if every guy likes our breasts, how do we find Mr. Right who not only likes the twins but the whole bundle? I mean we probably want to show off the twins a bit to attract Mr. Right, but we don't want him to only like that. There are other things about us to appreciate besides our boobs.
So now that we understand this, we have to be careful here to make sure we don't make the girl think we only like her boobs. So perhaps we can say like:
I like every part of you. You know, everything. There are so many things I like that I can't even begin to list the things I like. It's like everything. All of it.
Then if the girl presses us and asks like, "Yeah, but what three things do you like most?"
You know, like all that stuff. Your whole you. Everything. I like the whole package.
If the girl is still like, "Just name three things you really like about me!" Now we can let that 98% of our brain loose:
I love your boobs!!!
That covers two of them and all you have to do is think up one more on the spot using the 2% part of our brain. Of course, she will probably be upset for a few days at least, but at least we emphasized the whole package many times before we let the 98% of our brain say what it wanted to say the whole time. And voila, it's that easy!
This concludes the first part of the tutorial on tactfulness for beginners. I will try to cover more scenarios in the future. The first step is to project ourselves in the shoes of the person, then imagine how they feel and what they want to hear, and then we tailor our responses accordingly.
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