I sat in mediation for almost 3 hours for a deal gone bad at work.
The customer had exchanged a smaller product for a larger one and he wasn’t willing to pay the difference. The point of mediation was to help us negotiate a deal and keep the matter out of court.
Neither of us were willing to move, so we both sat there justifying our position and sticking to our guns while the mediator was flushing out the details of the disputed by asking us questions.
At one point I said, “obviously the one he ended up taking costs more”.
She interrupted me and said, “it’s not helpful to say it is obvious. What is obvious to you, is not always obvious to someone else. A lot of matters would never make it to me if everyone understood this… please explain to us exactly why that one would cost more”.
She had a rock solid point.
Believing that something that is obvious to you is also obvious to someone else is nothing more than an assumption. And it has a condescending undertone to it.
I have since tried very hard to remove “obviously” from my vocabulary.
The more I have paid attention to when it comes out of someone else’s mouth, the more I have noticed that it’s a bizarre thing to say… I have yet to agree with someone who claims that something is obvious. It is never obvious.
Obviously we can’t all see what you see, and know what you know.?