Passive Aggressive Language: 5 Ways to Say (or Hear) “No”
- Will you guarantee its success?
(as though you could guarantee success in anything)
- Will you take personal responsibility for its success?
(as though you were not personally responsible for anything else you do)
- Will you give me daily updates on its progress?
(so frequent and detailed you won’t have time to get anything else done)
- If I let you do ‘x’, then I want your commitment to do ‘y’ also.
(and you know we don’t have the money to do both well).
- Don’t we already do that?
(I’m practicing misdirection. What were we talking about?)