The vocabulary of a working life
Eight terms. Match each to what it means.
Four ways of grading the past
Four texts about work that did not go as planned. Read for what happened, then read again counting one thing: how many times somebody grades somebody else’s conduct, and whether the person graded is in the room.
A · From a career podcast
— So you turned it down.
— I turned it down, and for about four years I thought I must have been mad. Everybody I knew said the same thing, which was that I could have been running that team by thirty. And they might have been right. I still do not know.
— What changed?
— The company folded. Not dramatically — it simply ran out of money in 2019, and about eleven people I would have been managing were out of work inside a fortnight. So the thing I should have taken turned out to be the thing I would have had to close down. Which does not make my decision a good one. It just means the evidence I had been using to beat myself up with was rubbish.
— Does that change how you think about the other decisions?
— It should have. It has not, particularly.
B · From a professional memoir
I have never been able to say honestly whether leaving was right, and I have come to think the question is badly formed. What I can say is what I knew on the day, which was a good deal less than I have since told people I knew.
I did not know that the funding had already been withdrawn. I could have found out — either of two people would have told me if I had asked — and I did not ask, because I did not want an answer that would have made the decision for me.
That is the part I would change. Not the leaving. The not asking. And I notice that when I tell the story at dinner I always tell it as a decision, which is a more flattering shape than the truth.
C · An email from a manager
Hi Tomás — three things from the review, none of them urgent.
The first is that the Q3 figures went out without a second pair of eyes on them. It would have helped if somebody else had read them. I am not asking you to explain that; I am asking us to change the process, and I have added a step to the checklist this morning.
The second is that the client meeting went well and I have said so upstairs.
The third is the one I would rather talk about than write about. There was a version of the October decision in which we told the team a week earlier, and I think that version was available to us. Ten minutes on Thursday?
D · From a forum thread
honestly they should have seen this coming, everyone else did
He should of left two years ago tbh
They must had known about the funding, no way they didn’t
She could have warned the team at least. That’s just basic decency
you should have asked for more money at the start, you can’t complain now
I mean they might have told people before putting it on LinkedIn
Eight statements. Decide which text each is true of. A text may be the answer more than once.
A The podcast
B The memoir
C The manager’s email
D The forum thread
1. Rejects the question as badly formed rather than answering it.
2. Contains two errors of form as well as a series of verdicts.
3. Separates a change to the process from a judgement about the person.
4. Says the evidence used for years of self-criticism turned out to be worthless.
5. Locates the regret in a failure to ask rather than a failure to decide.
6. Delivers a verdict on the person being addressed.
7. Names something that would have helped without saying whose fault it was.
8. Admits that a lesson which ought to have changed something has not.
Count the verdicts. Text D grades six people and five of them are not in the room. Text C describes exactly the same kind of failure — something that went out without being checked — and grades nobody: it would have helped if somebody else had read them, I am asking us to change the process, there was a version in which….
Those three frames are the whole repair, and you will use them for the rest of the unit. Text C is not being kinder than text D. It is being more useful, because a process can be changed and a verdict cannot be acted on at all.
A fifth text, with four sentences missing
Four sentences have been removed. Put each one back where it belongs.
I took a promotion in 2016 that I did not really want, for a reason I have never told anybody at work: the person who offered it to me was leaving in six weeks, and I did not know that. [1]
He must have known when he made the offer. The dates make it impossible for him not to have, and I have never asked him, which is its own kind of answer. [2]
[3] What I have stopped saying is that he should have told me. He probably should have. But it is a sentence that ends a conversation rather than starting one, and I would rather have had the conversation.
What would have helped is a single line in the offer letter about the reporting change. [4]
And I now write that line into every offer I make, which is either a small professional improvement or a nine-year grudge with a process attached.
Nine years, one line in a letter
Eight gaps. Choose the form that fits what the writer means.
She left in the March and told nobody until the Friday. She for weeks — you do not arrange a move to another country over a weekend — and two people in the office claim they guessed, which they , because they said nothing at the time and they say everything. I the signs, in fairness: she had stopped taking the long projects. What I keep coming back to is that it if she had said one sentence in the January, and I am careful to phrase it that way rather than the other way, because is not a sentence anybody can do anything with. Her manager thinks she about the restructure before she resigned, and I am fairly sure she could not have — the announcement went out ten days after her last day. She apologised to me at all, and she did, twice, which was more than the situation needed. If I am honest, the thing I is ask her, in the January, whether she was all right.
Eight sentences. Seven need work; one is correct as written.
1. He should of left two years ago.
2. They must had known about the funding.
3. I should have went to the meeting.
4. She can’t have forget — it was in her calendar.
5. You didn’t need to send the second email. — you sent it, and it turned out to be unnecessary
6. You should have told the team earlier. — said to a colleague, meant as an observation about the process
7. I could have asked her in the January, and I did not. — correct as written
8. They must have not known about it.
Rewrite the thread
Task card · Speaking and writing · Pairs · 12 minutes
The six comments in text D, and the three frames from text C. Every verdict in the thread is about somebody who is not there to answer it.
Rewrite four of them so that they say the same thing to somebody who could act on it.
- The three frames: it would have helped if… · what would have made a difference is… · there was a version in which…, and I think that version was available.
- 6 minutes: rewrite four comments from D. Keep the content — you are not softening the criticism, you are making it actionable.
- 3 minutes: read each pair aloud, original then rewrite. Say which one you would rather receive, and — separately — which one would actually change anything.
- 3 minutes: find one verdict in the thread that survives rewriting, because it genuinely is about a person’s conduct and there is no process behind it. Say why.
The last bullet matters. The point of this unit is not that criticism is always wrong — some conduct is conduct, and a verdict is the correct sentence for it. The point is that the modal perfect hands out verdicts by default, including in the great majority of cases where a process, a document or an unasked question is the real answer.
What the rewrites changed
Two questions.
1. What did the rewrites lose, and what did they gain?
2. How many of the six survived as genuine verdicts?
Three frames
Two questions. Twenty seconds.
1. What is the difference between text C and text D?
2. What does needn’t have mean?
Next. The whole range taken apart — the certainty scale, the conduct set, and what happens to have when any of it is said aloud at ordinary speed.