Feedback often masks blame, triggering defensiveness. Naming the underlying value—punctuality, thoroughness, collaboration—rewires the conversation and restores connection without the judgment.
The story
When feedback turns to blame, the room catches fire
Defenses pop up fast, like some sad pretense
Name the value instead, and you’ll rewire
Connection comes back online, with actual sense
Problem solved: most “feedback” at work is really an evaluation wearing a trench coat.
“You’re late again.” “That’s sloppy.” Congrats, we just shipped blame to production and triggered instant defensiveness.
I’ve spent 20 years studying, teaching, and writing about empathy, and yes, I built EmpathyBot.net to show AI can respond in genuinely empathetic ways. The core move is cognitive empathy, or “street empathy”: spotting the *value* underneath the complaint.
Evaluations sound like character verdicts. Value statements name what matters without attacking:
“I value *punctuality*.”
“I value *thoroughness*.”
“I value *collaboration* on this project.”
Can you imagine a performance review where the manager talks in values and observable behaviors, instead of “what’s wrong with you”? Less drama, more accountability, better bandwidth.
Try a tiny metric: in meetings, how often do people express needs via values versus judgments?
If you want the full refactor, Chapter 5 of my book *A Practical EmPath: Rewire Your Mind* on Amazon breaks this down with real dialogues you can steal for your next hard conversation.
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