The Fine Line between Rudeness and Honesty

If someone were to give you honest feedback, would you consider them to be helpful or rude?

Sometimes status updates or memes have quotes in them referring to people, "saying things as they are" or "being blunt for the betterment of others" when in reality, they can be borderline rude.

The reason why rudeness and honesty cannot be correlated is because not only does it allow individuals to speak rudely using honesty as an excuse, but it can also make polite individuals seem deceptive. This especially proves to be a problem when you do not know the person well.

Allow me to elaborate.

Suppose you asked someone to participate in a survey regarding the effectiveness of a business idea you came up with. If the person pointed out valid flaws to you in a derogatory manner, you would likely correlate their brutal choice of words with the honest truth.

Demotivated, you would disregard your business idea completely. You may even think the person did you a favour by being "blunt." However, a much better option would have been for the person to provide constructive criticism. That way, you would have received honest opinions without having to compromise your self-esteem, which is how it should be.

While conveying the truth politely is important, it does not, however, indicate that the truth should be sugarcoated under the guise of politeness.

If you were to falsely appreciate a doomed business idea, the to-be-entrepreneur would suffer greater losses in the future undertaking the business venture than they would from being hurt by honest feedback. We must be honest, but not rude; polite, but not fake. In all this confusion, how can we differentiate between rudeness, sugarcoating, and honesty?

Maybe the best option would be to simply look at opinions or statements from a larger scale. In the example of the business idea, if you were to ask more than one person for their opinions, statistics could help bring out anomalies in opinions. So, if a person was offering you false feedback, chances are their opinion would be ruled out as an anomaly. The same applies to the case of individuals sugarcoating the truth so as to not come off as rude.

It may be faster to find a way around the problem, rather than tackling the actual problem itself. However, the root cause should be identified, to eliminate the issue.

In this case, giving kids constructive criticism when teaching them, say, art, while keeping in mind that their spirits should never be crushed, could be a start to not only teach ourselves how to be honest without being rude, but to also teach future generations to do so.

Maybe give medals for encouragement, but also lightly ask if they believe they could have made improvements? Perhaps this is an example of how parenting books can be helpful for both kids and adults.

If you are dealing with thick-headed people, however, then maybe using a dictionary to point out differences may work just as well.   

Bushra Zaman likes books, art, and only being contacted by email. Contact her at bushrazaman31@yahoo.com