This metaphor immediately rang true to me but the article is definitely worth the whole read. There are a bunch of linked articles too which also have some very sound advice. I really like a tactic in hard situations which was saying "What I learned..." followed by "What I'll do is...". It makes someone feel heard and that you'll follow through with some action to make someone feel like you have akin in the game with their concern. I really liked a lot of other somewhat generic but still oft-ignored advice like lean in a bit, make eye-contact, and the title which is just that if someone is making you feel off, instead of just reacting like a thermometer and also potentially aggravating the weirdness, do things that help regulate and relieve those human tendencies based on feelings of fear etc. Excellent read.

While the article has some good points about the importance of emotional intelligence and awareness, I'm skeptical about the idea that we can simply "choose" to be thermostats. Humans are complex and emotional creatures, and our emotions can be triggered by a multitude of factors beyond our control. The article's suggestions, while well-intentioned, feel like a form of emotional labor that can be exhausting and unsustainable. Can we really expect people to be constantly "on" and aware of their emotional impact on others?

> You’re being a thermometer. When they’re subtly giving off weird vibes—they’re frowning, answering your questions with fewer words than normal, etc.—you’ve noticed that their temperature is different.

And if you are doing this as a coping mechanism from having an unstable parent and you are like me (also maybe a bit of adhd): you internalize the person's chilled behavior and often assume it is your fault.

In case you need to hear it: You are not responsible for other's emotions (though you are responsible for your actions)

What I learned is that that last email didn’t do a good job explaining the changes, so what I plan to do is start a forum for folks to post their questions and our CEO will answer them every Tuesday.

I know it’s only an example, but hahahahahahahaha, ha. Start with something realistic if you do that. The worst thing you can do is to teach them you’re a bag of funny promises.

If this resonated with you, consider reading Nonviolent Communication by Rosenberg, the ultimate guide in thermostat-speak. You focus on stating unmet needs. Good stuff.

Definitely gonna borrow this language, it’s a really important aspect of social life. I’ve always been very, very thermometer-like, with a strong tendency to mirror which allows me to connect with people 1 on 1 easy, but on the flip side I absorb vibes I don’t want. My coping mechanism is to avoid bad vibes, confrontational situations, etc. Even being in a social group for long can affect me negatively if the people there have values I don’t agree with, even if I have no desire to change them. Any tips for how to manage that better?

There's an unspoken premise here and I'm going to question it. Avoiding tension, conflict, hard words and other things of the sort is not always the right choice. Sometimes letting conflicts play out gets you the best outcome with the least amount of suffering. Just like ripping off a band-aid.

There's plenty of times when wining a conflict is far better than avoiding it. And I see articles like this, books like Nonviolent Communication, ideas like "emotional intelligence" (check it out, no such thing exists) - as misguided as it always puts you in the defensive/de-escalating role even when you might be better served by letting things play out or even attacking, baiting your opponent into attacking, etc.

Violence is sometimes the right answer. When to apply it and when to avoid it is the hard question. But we didn't evolve an amygdala for nothing, and especially not for a "coach for leaders" (what the hell is that?) to tell us to always ignore it as an unquestioned premise for a promotional blog post. Because leaders should not always shy away from conflict, that much should be pretty crystal clear.

Actually the article tells be an air conditioner/heater. Because being a thermostat means just leave the awkward meeting.

> Make sure you’re squarely facing the person

Awww shit that's gonna be hard for my inner Minnesotan. All that deep listening stuff needs to be done at a 135-165 degree angle, so you're both vaguely looking in the same-ish direction but can make occasional side glance eye contact

I loved the article, but something about it felt off.

The content (good) didn't match what I would expect from the style. The writing style reminde me of a mix off business advice and aggrandizing self-help. My expectation with that is sweeping generalizations, just-so annecdotes, and not saying very much, whilst not backing up what you are saying with sound reasoning either.

Somehow this article had that writing style, without those problems. It made it a rather dissonant experience, because I was looking for the catch, what I was being sold, the anecdote that is almost certainly a lie, and the overly strong conclusion. But that never came, and instead I find myself believing.

And yet, the dissonance remains. I have a little worry that the swindle was just better this time. It's a weird feeling, and not one I had before.

If the author reads this, I'd like to suggest a change in font. At certain scales, the website's font puts emphasis on the cross-bar in the letter 'e', and the letter 'g'. It's incredibly distracting, and only seems to happen at certain scales, as I could 'fix' it by increasing/decreasing the font size.

I'd message this directly, but she doesn't provide a method of contact on the site (reasonable).

i prefer to be a cat. if that makes sense.

I just hate this kind of stuff. Good for you if you can create a consulting business out of stating the obvious I suppose. It is a drain on the economy however.

I am going to be downvoted to hell for this, but... After reading halfway through the article, I had to check the gender of the author. Because, I feel, this is a rather female POV. A lot of what she says feels touchy-feely to me and doesnt resonate with me at all. Maybe because I am way more inerested in the topic of the meeting then the personal feelings and emotions of the participants. To the point where I might noticed them, but I they mostly dont concern me at all.

things you can't really do on zoom meetings...

Back in the days of slatestarcodex, the comment policy [1] was you can comment if your post is at least two of these three things: true, necessary, or kind.

This post is all three: what they're describing is true (these dynamics in meetings do exist, very often), it is kind (in the sense they're giving you a skill to help both yourself and others), and I'll give it necessary in the sense it's used in the original definition (if you want to get ahead in an organization with a nontrivial amount of internal politics - which is most places - you need to have at least some of this skill).

And yet, something about this post gives me "weird vibes".

Basically, with a bit of sarcasm you could sum it up as "DON'T BE AUTISTIC", and if you are then at least get therapy until you can act normal.

When the author says "We [humans] are wired to spidey sense this [vibes] stuff", it turns out some humans are above and some below the mean in this skill distribution. [2]

And sometimes, in a meeting to decide about how you're going to set up your database sharding, it helps the business' bottom line if you pay more attention to the database specialist than the soft-eye-contact specialist.

(Don't you want to hire people who are good at both? Yes, but unless you're really, really lucky, you're going to hit Berkson's paradox [3]. And then if you want your databases to run smoothly, you're going to have to compromise.)

[1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/02/the-comment-policy-is-... [2] However, the latest research suggest that autistic people are perfectly wired to read the room and sense vibes if the room is full of other autistic people. It's just one autist in a room of neurotypicals, or vice versa, that doesn't go too well. [3] https://www.allendowney.com/blog/2021/04/07/berkson-goes-to-...

I support the goals of the article and I understand that social interaction doesn't come natural to all people, but if someone would lean in an nod to me like described in the second part I would freak out because that feels like sociopathic behavior.

> Noticing a change in someone’s behavior

Well I guess I'll just excuse my ADHD having self outa this one.

Generally speaking terrible advice for anyone in such a situation in a professional group setting.

If you can sense that someone is tense or "off vibe" in a group meeting, you should be able to reasonably determine why. If it's not immediately evident and they are not alluding to it in the meeting - then you should table the discussion until you are able to chat 1:1 with the person.

Not downplaying any of the strategies for being chipper and staying positive and being a good vibe... which seems obvious... but to push it back on the "bad viber" and dice roll on whether you'll be charismatic enough to do it without causing even more bad/awkward vibes, I think is unnecessarily risky.

I've been in many meetings where someone seemed "off" but after conferring with others more familiar with the situation found it it's quite usual and not a sign of anything wrong. Had someone intervened there and tried to "discover" the case of the bad vibes, it would have amounted to "why are you like this" which is not the kind of thermometer input required.

Likewise if someone is being openly confrontational in the meeting because they feel strongly about something, the right course is for someone else to step up and discuss it without any ambiguity or levity - ruling out irrelevant emotions not related to the discussion - if the stakes were high enough to merit losing face in a meeting, they should generally be high enough to discuss and resolve.

My experience has been, in many board meetings and conference rooms with C-levels, that the norm for these discussions is someone "off vibe" and it's rarely koombayah when there is something at stake being discussed. Bringing unnecessary levity to a serious and often uncomfortable meeting is taken as a bit of an insult to the topic or the opinions being tabled. You can read accounts of an Jeff Besoz or Steve Jobs executive meeting and glare into this first hand.