When people respond to offensive comments at work, they sometimes hear “I didn’t intend to offend! Stop being so sensitive!” or similar remarks.

This classic blame-shifting technique relies on the listener being willing to care about, or at least accept, the speaker’s good intentions.  For the most part,  though, they don’t matter as much as what comes out of the speaker’s mouth. If someone says something offensive, s/he isn’t entitled to wriggle out of criticism and correction by claiming good intentions.

Asserting good intentions serves the speaker well. S/he can claim to have meant well, and you can’t verify that s/he didn’t. It makes the listener seem too insensitive or unintelligent to understand the true meaning of the speaker’s remarks. It reinforces the speaker as authoritative – “I’m the one who can say whether you are right to be offended. I understand the reality of your position better than you do.” It asserts, in short, that the speaker’s unknowable thoughts matter more than the listener’s actual lived experience of the speaker’s words.

What crap.  When you’re already exasperated or worse, it’s often difficult to say “I don’t care what you meant. Your intentions are irrelevant, unknowable nonsense. Let’s focus on what you actually just did and said.” In my experience, the most effective way to do this is to ignore anything the speaker says about intentions and keep repeating “this is what you said: [offensive thing].” Once you get beyond their bluster, which, sadly, you might not be able to do, you can choose what’s next: “Apologize.” “What did you actually mean by that?” “Don’t ever use [that term] in this workplace again” [best for those with managerial authority over the speaker]. But hang on to the fact that your publicly experienced reality matters more than the speaker’s unknowable private brainspace.

Of course, this does not mean that when someone makes a unintentional error you cannot choose to accept their apology. You’ll generally know how sincere it is by how quickly it is offered and how mortified the speaker is. Interestingly, you generally really can tell when someone genuinely has good intentions.

Good luck!

“Now What Do I Say?”: Practical Workplace Advice for Younger Women gives women earlier in their careers practical advice about difficult verbal exchanges at work.   Many younger women report routine workplace interactions that, intentionally or unintentionally, question their authority, their competence, and their intelligence.This book provides a range of responses that might be useful in the moment, and gives some guidance about when and how to use them and what to do when the responses fail to help.  It provides guidance for thinking through, in advance, how to react in support of their longer-term interests in the workplace, including what might help prevent these situations from arising in the first place.

Available from Amazon in paperback or as an ebook and on iBooks as an iBook.

From a reviewer: “I wish this book had existed when I was just entering the workforce–I would have had a better answer to “Are you sure you understand this? It’s kind of technical,” besides retreating to my office and fuming. In this book, Krook offers advice and actual, practical responses that young women can use as they encounter the weird sexist remarks and situations that still happen in just about every office and industry. There is humor in here as well as a lot of warmth and concern. You’ll find wisdom for the workplace and also advice for things to consider out in “real life,” such as finances and what to think about if you have kids or even if you don’t have them but might someday. It’s a perfect book to send a young graduate or even an old boss–everyone can learn something from “Now What Do I Say?”