Mark Johnson

April 29, 2023

Specifics matter - Friday Thing #16

Warren Buffett says "praise by name, criticize by group". This means when something goes well, name the individuals that made it a success, e.g., "Bob did an amazing job", and when something goes badly, refer to the group, e.g., "Our company made poor investment choices", and keep people's name's out of it.

I think this is great advice, and it's made even better by praising specifics. I shared a colleague's article on LinkedIn and when I told him it was a great article, it was greeted well, but when I followed up privately on how the analogy that he'd included throughout the article helped me understand the content, I could tell the compliment meant much more.

Building on this, it's amazing how getting more specific when you ask a question can get a much better response. Last week a group of us were celebrating a friend's birthday, and to reminisce on the past year of her life we asked her a few questions:

  1. What were your highlights from the past year?
  2. What were your lowlights from the past year?
  3. What are you most excited for in the next year of your life?

She answered her highlights were having spent time with friends and having got into triathlon, lowlights were how she's not currently enjoying their job and is demotivated, and how she's most excited for finding a job she's passionate about in the coming year. They were interesting responses. They were honest and true. But they were safe.

Then I asked:

"What have you learned in the past year?"

She paused and reflected. We spoke amongst ourselves to fill the space for half a minute. 

Then she shared:

"In the past year I learnt what dealing with loss looks like"

She spoke about how a family friend that's practically a member of the family had recently died of a drug overdose, how she'd flown home to spend time with family and saw half of the house celebrating their life and the other half mourning, how everyone came together to support each other through this tragedy. She shared her experience dealing with loss.

It was this subtle shift from asking about highlights and lowlights to asking what she'd learned that took us from an engaging conversation to a deep moment of vulnerability and bonding. It's made me reflect on where there's been other conversations in my life where if I'd asked a more specific question, I would've opened the door to learning much more about someone.

Specifics matter.

About Mark Johnson

Hey, I'm Mark, and I'm passionate about sport and personal finance. If you'd like to read more of my writing, check out financewithmark.com.