What you don't want to hear is...

Yesterday the T2 section of The Times ran a terrific interview with Reginald D Hunter, who is one of my favourite stand-ups.  The article was another exercise in Reg cultivating his persona as the thoughtful guy who tells you the things you don't want to hear, albeit in as charming and funny a manner as possible.

His latest show, Even the Devil Sometimes Tells the Truth, is apparently an exploration of what he calls 'institutionalised female privilege', a topic which will undoubtedly leave him open to accusations of misogyny.  Given that Reg is a black man raised in Georgia whose award-winning 2006 show was called Pride and Prejudice and Niggas it's fair to say he's made a career out of courting uninformed charges of prejudice.

Like all great comics he sets out to make his audience laugh then think; in that order.  He knows he's got to tread a line to do this well and in the interview he describes part of his rehearsal routine: -

OK, today I'm going to look in the mirror and work on saying these things without them being misogynist

Reg's only way to the funny is over some very thin PC ice so he's going to have to muster all of his considerable skill, craft and charisma to get his audience where he wants to go without anyone taking offense along the way.  He wants to challenge but not offend us.  Reg Hunter is a master of the dying art of telling someone what he doesn't want to hear without him hating you when you're done.

Few politicians even bother with it.  Consider the centre-right politicians the world over who are happy to be portrayed relishing the fiscal pain they're about to inflict on their economies.  Even the most naive lefty accepts that Britain has to reduce it's public spending but George Osborne still succeeds in giving offense by not looking unhappy enough.  Or at all.  A spin doctor would argue that he's 'energising his base'; which is the most immature, counterproductive and ultimately damaging political habit to come out of America in the last twenty years.  Right now Australian political discourse is being destroyed by this puerile game playing.  The death of civility and all that.

There are plenty of unpalatable things that each of us needs to hear in various aspects of our lives.  As an external consultant I'm sometimes brought into workplaces as a messenger of sorts*.   Part of my job is to communicate to people that they need to do their job differently.  Either because times have changed or because they just weren't all that good to begin with, their current performance is no longer regarded as up to scratch.

Which is a shitty thing to have to hear.

But if I offend my audience then they'll immediately stop listening to my proposed solutions and focus on reasons why I'm wrong.  In the past I've been wrong in so, so, many ways: my analysis of the problem, my suggested solution, my personal background, my accent, my dress sense, even the colour, layout and, on one memorable day, my choice of font on my slides.  Who knew Times New Roman could vex so much?

This balance between truth-telling without giving offense sits at the heart of so many jobs.  Teachers, coaches, salepeople all have to get it right.  The discipline standing in front of a (real or metaphorical) mirror and practicing how to verbalise a fault without it being received as an attack is always worth the effort.

* At least I'm a strategist-cum-trainer so I don't get involved in the outplacement work brought to life in the film Up in the Air.  Although I suppose that if you're going to get sacked then a chat with George Clooney, a man more charming than even Reg Hunter, would possibly sweeten the pill