- The actual words I used. (And the cultural context around those words, that I may or may not be aware of).
- The impact of the words I use.
Like others have said, if you care about the people who are hearing your words, and they say "hey, the words you used had a negative impact" than it makes a lot of sense and is really not hard to say "oh, I'm sorry, I'll change my words because I don't want to make you feel that way" and then move on.
Or you can spend all day debating the intention of your words and how you didn't mean it that way and completely ignore the actual impact, and leave people feeling like you don't care about their feelings.
In particular, in your personal relationships I highly encourage you focus on your impact rather than what you meant to say, especially when apologizing.
I fully agree that there are often clear distinctions between intent and impact, and that people should become more aware of this distinction and of the impact of their words.
> In particular, in your personal relationships I highly encourage you focus on your impact rather than what you meant to say, especially when apologizing.
I’d be more careful with this though. Ideally, this needs to look more like mutual respect/trust, and both parties are ideally:
1. Considering the impact of what they’re saying
2. Giving the other person the benefit of the doubt when something doesn’t sound right, and talking about it when things seem misaligned
Caring about impact is important. There’s also a failure mode here that results in complete communication breakdown as one party tries not to upset the other.
Communication is intrinsically a shared experience, and both parties bear some responsibility for how things are interpreted. As long as both parties engage in good faith and communicate about confusion, everyone learns/grows and it’s a self solving problem.
- What I meant to say.
- The actual words I used. (And the cultural context around those words, that I may or may not be aware of).
- The impact of the words I use.
Like others have said, if you care about the people who are hearing your words, and they say "hey, the words you used had a negative impact" than it makes a lot of sense and is really not hard to say "oh, I'm sorry, I'll change my words because I don't want to make you feel that way" and then move on.
Or you can spend all day debating the intention of your words and how you didn't mean it that way and completely ignore the actual impact, and leave people feeling like you don't care about their feelings.
In particular, in your personal relationships I highly encourage you focus on your impact rather than what you meant to say, especially when apologizing.