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Welcome to Long Way Home 🏡, a weekly newsletter where I explore creativity and emotional intelligence.
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In this week’s issue:
💫 - Are You an Asker or a Guesser? by Vandan Jhaveri
🎙 - Decode by Kayo Chingonyi (Spotify Studios)
Are You an Asker or a Guesser?
That One Annoying Friend
Most of us have a relative or friend that asks for leftovers or snacks every time they come over. Usually, it's shortly after arriving. It can feel as though they were hungry when they left their own home, just to ask for food at ours.
There are people who read that situation and see nothing wrong. Somebody's hungry and they ask for food, and if food can't be provided, it's no big deal. Maybe it's even a plus that they feel comfortable enough to ask. Then there are others who see that situation and grow irritated at the asker for putting us in the awkward situation of either having to say no or putting the effort in to prepare a snack.
For some of us, making a request is purely exploring an option and getting a definite answer. For others, asking presumes permission and can be heard as more of a command than a genuine inquiry. "Is there anything to eat?" can sound a lot like "Please make me something to eat." to our ears.
Where does this difference in interpretation come from?
Ask vs. Guess Culture
An obscure comment from 2007 on a now defunct online forum called Ask MetaFilter helps us understand the dynamics at play. It explains:
This is a classic case of Ask Culture meets Guess Culture. In some families, you grow up with the expectation that it's OK to ask for anything at all, but you gotta realize you might get no for an answer. This is Ask Culture.
In Guess Culture, you avoid putting a request into words unless you're pretty sure the answer will be yes. Guess Culture depends on a tight net of shared expectations. A key skill is putting out delicate feelers. If you do this with enough subtlety, you won't even have to make the request directly; you'll get an offer. Even then, the offer may be genuine or pro forma; it takes yet more skill and delicacy to discern whether you should accept.
"Culture" generally comprises two components: micro-culture (family dynamics and upbringing) and macro-culture (broader society in which we were raised). Which micro-culture and macro-culture features affect whether we will develop into an Asker or Guesser?
Macro-Culture
In every social psychology class, students learn of Hofstede's Culture Dimensions, a framework that assesses countries on six dimensions: power distance, individualism, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, long-term orientation, and indulgence.
Of the six dimensions, I think power distance is acutely relevant in the context of macro-level predictors of Ask and Guess Culture. In cultures with high power distance, citizens expect power to be distributed unevenly. Corporate and social hierarchies are rigid and ingrained, and titles are deeply respected. These cultures also tend to be more formal, with linguistic signposts to imply respect and subservience.
Cultures with high power distance also tend to be more nuanced. Much is implied through the social context and it is expected that everybody understands and behaves according to their social role. In a high power distance culture (e.g., Japan, Philippines, and India) people are expected to know what is "appropriate" and "inappropriate" at all times. Misreading a social situation and behaving inappropriately can have dire consequences, like offending somebody in a position of power. These cultures breed masterful guessers who are trained to spot social nuance and assess whether it's appropriate to make requests or not.
In low power distance cultures (e.g., United States, Germany, and UK) expectations are made explicit. Assuming tends to be frowned upon and misunderstandings are constantly clarified. These cultures generally believe rigid hierarchy is "old fashioned" and obsolete, and regulation and best practices protect common folks, de-risking the process of making requests and offending people in power. The expectations to be explicit tend to generate Askers.
Micro-Culture
In addition to national cultures, family dynamics also play a major role in developing an Asker or a Guesser.
If asking to play outside or go to a friend's house is routinely met with anger, children develop an intuition for when the request is going to spark an incendiary response and when it's going to be no big deal at all. Either they learn to architect situations in which it's unlikely for their parents to say no, or they forego asking for permission or making requests altogether. This intuition develops them into successful Guessers.
Conversely, when children are met with positive reactions and thoughtful conversations when making requests from a young age, they become conditioned to associate positive emotions with making requests, increasing the likelihood they take this behaviour with them further into adulthood. Requests in households with rules rooted in child-friendly logic sparks conversation, debate, and compromise. Foregoing the request results in foregoing the learning opportunity. Those that learn to see the opportunity in requests grow to be Askers.
Night and Day
Askers and Guessers develop into people who appraise identical situations completely differently. How heavily they weigh the possibility of offending somebody in their decision-making criteria is a tell-tale sign that somebody is a Guesser vs an Asker. Really worried what you might rub somebody the wrong way? Probably a Guesser. Not really your problem if somebody gets offended if you meant no harm? Probably an Asker.
For a Guesser, asking a boss for a raise is an extremely awkward and challenging conversation because they don't want to put their boss in the uncomfortable position of having to reject their request. It also risks coming off as presumptuous, giving the impression that they believe they deserve a raise, and can potentially compromise their relationship with their boss.
For an Asker, asking a boss for a raise is an opportunity to make clear the value they bring to the organization and to have a discussion around how the company values their contributions. It's an opportunity to connect, understand their boss on a deeper level, and build a stronger relationship.
Night and day.
The Immigrant Tension
What happens when a child is raised in a household where the request is encouraged and lives in a culture with a low power distance? What about a household filled with nuance in a culture with a high power distance?
We can imagine that the child in the first household will grow up to see absolutely no issue with making requests and challenging authority. In the second household, a child will develop a sensitive intuition around when and where and to whom it would be appropriate to make certain requests. In both cases, there is home-culture alignment. Their societal culture and family culture reinforce one another.
What if a child is raised in a household that encourages the discussion but lives in a culture with a high power distance, or vice versa? A cognitive dissonance develops. They may develop a habit of asking questions in the home that gets them labelled as abrasive and obnoxious in other social or professional contexts. Or they have to leverage a carefully honed intuition to avoid offending their parents at home and then have to work doubly hard to overcome their reluctance and explicitly ask for what they want to in other circumstances.
This cognitive dissonance, one way or another, is the lived experience of most immigrants. The South Asian immigrant story, the only one I can credibly speak to, is one of knowing when to defer to intuition and knowing when to intentionally override intuition and do the uncomfortable opposite.
The Water In Which We All Swim
Whether you're an Asker or a Guesser, it feels beyond reason that the opposite group exists. Like most cultural residue, it's the water in which we all swim. True inclusivity is keeping the other group in mind at work, in our friend circles, in our relationships, and in our families.
For Askers, let's remember to cultivate some empathy for the position we can put people in by simply making requests. For Guessers, let's recognize the missed opportunity when we forego the request and the subsequent conversation.
And last, let's remember that most people mean no harm when they ask or withhold questions. They likely just come from a different family or national culture that has taught them different social scripts. That reminder is probably most valuable of all.
Still Guessing,
Vandan🏡
@vandan_jhaveri
🎙 - Dissect, But Different
If we’ve spoken about podcasts, you’ve likely heard me ramble about how Dissect. It’s a show about long-form musical analysis, broken into episodes where each season is dedicated to album, and each episode is dedicated to a specific song on that album. The creator of the series, Cole Kushna, does a brilliant job writing the episodes and analyzing the music and lyrics. It’s binge-worthy in the best way.
Meet Dissect’s younger brother Decode, its UK spin-off hosted by Kayo Chingonyi. Each season is still dedicated to an album, but the focus is going to be on UK hip-hop instead of American hip-hop. The first season of this new show is dedicated to Dave’s 2019 album Psychodrama.
I’m not sure if it has the same charm and punch of the original, but I really enjoy musical deep dives, and this is currently scratching my itch.
The worst part of Decode is the weekly episode releases. It reminds me of early 2010s TV where you needed to wait for the new episode of Prison Break every Monday night. It’s painful. But I keep coming back, every week.