“That’s Subtle”

Honesty does not oblige you to report every opinion, especially one that will help nobody.

Someone shows you a new haircut, a painting, their child at the school concert or a shelf they repaired themselves. The question “well, what do you think?” is not always a request for independent expertise.

Before answering it helps to work out the purpose of the conversation:

• they need support;
• they need professional criticism;
• they are choosing between options;
• the decision can still be changed;
• they are simply sharing their pleasure.

“It is not to my taste” is more honest than false delight and gentler than a verdict.

Sometimes it is enough to note a specific merit:

An interesting combination.

You can see how much work went into it.

This version is very expressive.

The all-purpose “charming” will also do, but after the tenth use the people around you may spot the system.

Tact is not the art of lying beautifully. It is the ability not to cause useless damage for the pleasure of your own directness.

The practical test is whether anything can still be changed. A presentation going out tomorrow is worth going through in detail: a remark turns into an edit. The same presentation after the meeting is discussed not for the result but for the pleasure of one’s own perceptiveness. The same goes for an apartment someone has already moved into, a haircut done an hour ago, a tattoo, and a name given to a child last week. In those cases “well, what do you think?” is not a request for a review but an invitation to share something that has already happened.

Hence a simple division: before a decision, precision is useful; after it, appropriateness. An opinion voiced when nothing can be corrected says nothing about the subject. It says something about the speaker.