𝐏𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨 𝐏𝐨𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠: 𝐀 𝐒𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐘𝐞𝐬, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐋𝐚𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐅𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐬 𝐓𝐫𝐮𝐭𝐡

This morning, while getting ready for the day before I even had my coffee and had a chance to sit on the patio and begin pondering, I had two thoughts. These are thoughts that I've had over the years but I've never really shared.

First, why do we feel we cannot simply give a yes/no answer when the answer needs to be yes or no? I have an appointment with one of our suppliers this morning, and they sent a text asking if we could change the time to accommodate an appointment he forgot about. The response I sent was "yes," but when I hit the send button, I felt like I should have added to it: "yes, of course, anything to make this work" or "yes, don't worry about it." But in reality, the simple "yes" was what was needed.

The other thing that I've been thinking about over the years is why do we, and this seems to particularly occur in women, feel the need to laugh when we say something important? I saw this past weekend when, in conversations or listening to people talk about an important item, they said something that was controversial. I don't remember what the conversation was, but what I do remember was a really important comment being made and then followed with a "hahaha." What is the mechanism in us that wants to trivialize or add humor to serious comments? Are we trying to trivialize it?

Are we trying to soften the blow with the laugh? And am I seeing it correctly that it seems to be a response in women more than men?

I know these topics aren't important to leadership in a company. They don't affect how an employee feels about their boss, but they're thoughts that I've had here on the patio. And after all, what's the patio for but pondering?