I have made a living by writing words for others.
To be honest, the moment it becomes my own business, I'm the type who seriously thinks "it's faster to call than to type an email"... lol. I type three lines, delete them, and press the call button. When I get a Line message that requires a long reply, I honestly get quite annoyed. A person who has made a living from other people's verbalization wants to run away when it comes to their own.
Back when I was devouring books from a manager's perspective, there was one line that still remains on my shelf. I can't remember which book it was (I'm not even sure if it was a book on verbalization or management), but it was this:
"Work with people who do not push the task of verbalization onto others."
At the time, I thought it was a phrase for choosing who to work with. Identify people who push it on you and avoid them. That was it. It took years for the meaning to flip.
To write my current understanding first...
Verbalization is not a matter of ability, but a matter of distributing the labor of putting things into words. And the conclusion is that even if the distribution is biased, it only stays unbroken as long as the other party silently accepts it.
Perhaps you, too, are someone who doesn't realize that life is running smoothly precisely because someone else is paying the bill that only comes as one sheet to the table.
By the way, the form of pushing can probably be folded into three types:
① Bringing only "What should I do?" You are passing the labor of thinking directly to the other person.
② Bringing it without presenting options. You are passing the labor of creating materials for decision-making to the other person.
③ Throwing it back with "Do it nicely." You are passing the labor of defining to the other person.
I love people with high perceptive skills.
When a drink is empty, they are the first to order.
They always report before I have to check.
When I'm busy, they naturally don't talk to me.
I have managed my business by keeping only such people around me—people who return 10 when I say 1.
As a result, without my own verbalization skills being polished at all, I felt like I was capable because of my ability to be "sensed"... that continued until my mid-20s.
It broke the moment the environment changed.
One was when I first started SNS. On a timeline where there was not a single person to "sense" me, I posted text written in the grammar of "that thing." It didn't get through. It didn't grow. No one picked it up. There was no one on the other side of the screen to supplement my subject.
Another was a new business, when I teamed up with people completely different from before. Unlike the people I gathered based on my preference, these were people I teamed up with for business reasons. I sent a chat saying, "Can you summarize this nicely?" and the next day, when it came back, I replied, "Hmm, it's a bit different." Up to the second exchange, it was still a conversation. By the third exchange, the other person's replies became shorter, and by the fourth, the honorifics increased, and "Then, please tell me specifically what you want to do" came.
To digress a bit, I think the signal that a relationship is breaking comes in honorifics before anger. That "Then" was a return of the bill disguised as a question. I did that many times. Even if I changed the person, it broke in the same place, in the same order.
That's when I finally felt I understood the meaning of that one line. I thought it was a phrase for choosing who to work with, but I realized that the one pushing it around me was me. I think I drew the line in the wrong place when I read it.
So now, I finish my homework before asking. I don't put it out as a wish like "I want to do this." I take it to "I want to do this, so I've thought of an image plan for implementation." I verbalize and design it from 1 to 10 myself—adding the purpose, with this concept, because I want to produce this result, I want it executed in this order—before passing it on. The thinking part is my homework. I only ask the other person for execution and the value-add from there.
There is one exception: only when I want to increase the other person's thinking ability, I intentionally leave the thinking part and pass it. However, only when I have decided "I want you to think about this" and have told the other person so.
And for the past few years, there are five things I check with myself before sending. If even one is missing, I consider it a signal that I am pushing the labor of verbalization onto the other side.
□ Did I include the purpose (what is it for)?
□ Did I write the definition of completion (what does it look like when it's finished)?
□ Did I assemble the procedure (in this order) myself before putting it out?
□ Did I provide decision materials (options and which one I recommend)?
□ Did I intentionally decide and pass the scope of trust (the part I want them to think about)?
Even on days when everything is ready, I still think it's faster to call than to type an email. What has changed is that after hanging up the phone, I've started to think a little bit about who held the thinking part for those 30 seconds.
People who "sense" are still around me. I write sentences that get through even if those people don't sense it first. Even so, about once a week, "that thing" comes out of my mouth, and I realize later that someone next to me is silently accepting it... and I feel despair.
...FIN
