Direct advice for not so direct Minnesotans
From everyday questions to more complex problems, we’re asking the experts to lend us a hand. Throughout the series "Professional Help," we’ll hear some direct advice, for us not-so-direct Minnesotans.
MPR News
Go Deeper.
Create an account or log in to save stories.
Like this?
Thanks for liking this story! We have added it to a list of your favorite stories.
We have a new segment we’re debuting on Minnesota Now called “Professional Help.” We all need a little help to get through life sometimes. From everyday questions to more complex problems, we’re asking the experts to lend us a hand. Throughout the series, we’ll hear some direct advice, for us not so direct Minnesotans.
Our Ask: Help me be more assertive
Our Professional: Terri Bly, PsyD, LP - Clinical Psychologist at LynLake Centers for Wellbeing in Minneapolis.
A tiny sliver of a final cupcake left in the MPR News breakroom on March 11, 2024. The photo was sent in Slack with the message "Ope."
Jeff Moores | MPR News
We had to start with something uniquely Minnesotan: Help me be more assertive. We’ve all been in the office when someone won’t take the last cookie and instead keeps cutting it into smaller pieces, or have you ever been stuck in a Minnesota goodbye? We asked a professional to help us through these situations without being typical Minnesota passive aggressive.
Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.
Subscribe to the Minnesota Now podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
We attempt to make transcripts for Minnesota Now available the next business day after a broadcast. When ready they will appear here.
Turn Up Your Support
MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all.
Audio transcript
NINA MOINI: Well, we have a new segment we're debuting on Minnesota Now called Professional Help. We all need a little to get through life sometimes. From everyday questions to more complex problems, we're asking the experts to lend us a hand. Throughout the series, we'll hear some direct advice for us not-so-direct Minnesotans. Here's Minnesota Now Producer Ellen Finn.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
ELLEN FINN: It happens nearly every time. Someone will bring cookies or donuts into the office. And as the supply of treats in the break room dwindles throughout the day, I wait with bated breath. The last donut sits for ages. Then it gets cut in half. Then it gets cut in half again. Recently, my colleague, Kyra, sent a photo in our office chat of a piece of pie about the size of my pinky finger sitting mournfully alone, up for grabs in the MPR break room. Why do we do this? "Because Minnesota," wrote another colleague.
She has a point. If you've lived in Minnesota for a while, this is probably familiar. It's a phenomenon of Minnesota politeness, even passiveness, that I default to when it comes to communication. But I've grown weary of the long-lasting Minnesota goodbye or trying to find a polite way to say no. So I've enlisted the help of a professional, a therapist who helps clients become assertive communicators.
TERRI BLY: I am very direct. I'm opinionated, and I'm direct. I'm pretty outspoken. I think people are a little surprised to find out that I'm from Fargo-Moorhead. It's always felt like a little bit of a mismatch.
ELLEN FINN: That's Terri Bly. She's a lifelong Minnesotan and psychologist in Minneapolis. She said that the classic Minnesota nice, passive-aggressive communication can feel unclear and confusing at times.
TERRI BLY: Like there's unwritten rules or expectations I'm supposed to somehow pick up on in the silence. And I don't like that because I don't necessarily know that I'm going to get it right. What are they getting at? And they're smiling and saying all the right things, but why am I picking up on maybe something underneath?
ELLEN FINN: Oftentimes, that passive communication usually doesn't help the person who is being passive either.
TERRI BLY: I think the biggest risk is that you're not going to get your needs met. If you can't directly express your thoughts or opinions or needs or wants, then there's a greater risk that how people respond to you isn't necessarily going to be the way you want it to be.
ELLEN FINN: That being said, if passiveness is the norm, assertiveness may come off as aggressive.
TERRI BLY: It's like when Minnesotans go to New York and everybody feels rude. When you're used to communicating indirectly, it's probably because you've been taught that it's rude to express those things directly. And so when someone comes along who is expressing them directly, I think it can feel rude. So I really try to not come at this from one is better than the other.
ELLEN FINN: Especially when a lot of this passiveness is baked into our way of doing things.
TERRI BLY: When I have clients who are struggling with this, I always say, look, you come by this honestly. There's a cost to going against the grain. I mean, a lot of our weird little behaviors as humans does tend to come back to the survival thing. We want to belong. Adapting to fit, at least to some extent, your surroundings is a healthy thing to do.
It's when we do it to the extent where it's compromising our own wellbeing. To me, that's when it bears examination is when you're being so nice that you're overextending yourself, that you're ending up in relationships you don't want to be in. Where there's a cost to you, that's when it's time to change.
ELLEN FINN: I've noticed it's really hard to say no directly to people sometimes. It feels easier just to tiptoe around telling them no or passive aggressively giving excuses or something. How can I get myself to just directly tell someone no?
TERRI BLY: I think we have a hard time with immediate negative reactions. I don't think a lot of times we successfully avoid people being upset with us. I think we either delay it, or they're upset with us later when we don't have to see the reaction. So if you say to somebody, yeah, I'm not coming to your party or whatever, if you say that right away, you're going to get their emotional response or whatever, their anger, their sadness right away. It's really uncomfortable. Sometimes I think people just want to delay the inevitable. And so they're just kicking that can down the road.
But I also think that as women, I mean, women are definitely taught that it's not OK to hurt other people's feelings. We're supposed to be nice, right? Women are supposed to be nice. And Minnesotans are supposed to be nice. So that's why Minnesota women are so good at this. I think there are ways to be honest without being brutal. That's the part that people struggle with.
If I say I can't come and they get sad, well, that must mean I did it wrong. And I think that is an error right there. We can't control other people's emotions. We can't control their reactions. We can only figure out how to present things that are in line with the kind of person we want to be. And if we want to be thoughtful but also genuine, I do think people appreciate when someone is honest with them.
ELLEN FINN: Since moving to Minnesota, I've learned about this thing called the "Minnesota goodbye." Are you familiar?
TERRI BLY: Oh, very much so, yeah.
ELLEN FINN: And I can see applying what you're saying to that prolonged 15-minute goodbye.
TERRI BLY: I mean, 15 minutes, that's pretty fast. If you can get out in 15 minutes, you are ahead of the game in a lot of these situations. I wish I had some brilliant insight on why Minnesotans take an hour to go from I need to get going to actually walking out the door. I've taken to just saying, I'm an early to bed kind of person, so I need to get going-- and not apologizing for it.
That's the other thing Minnesotans do. My goodness. We apologize for existing. So apologizing for leaving. Oh, I'm really sorry. I know it's only midnight, but I need to get going. Sorry to leave so soon. But I don't apologize for taking care of myself like that.
ELLEN FINN: And as for taking the last cookie in the office kitchen.
TERRI BLY: Maybe the unwritten rule, the unspoken rule is the person who brought the cookies then needs to go in and take the last cookie. And then they took the last cookie that they brought, and then nobody's rude.
ELLEN FINN: As a note, my conversation with Terri was not a passive-aggressive ploy to get my coworkers to stop leaving a sliver of a donut in the box. But let me be direct, MPR and Minnesota. Let's try Terri's solution and take the last donut. For NPR News, I'm Ellen Finn.
NINA MOINI: That was MPR Producer Ellen Finn. You can hear our new series called Professional Help every other Thursday here on Minnesota Now. Or if you missed one, find the whole collection on mprnews.org.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
ELLEN FINN: It happens nearly every time. Someone will bring cookies or donuts into the office. And as the supply of treats in the break room dwindles throughout the day, I wait with bated breath. The last donut sits for ages. Then it gets cut in half. Then it gets cut in half again. Recently, my colleague, Kyra, sent a photo in our office chat of a piece of pie about the size of my pinky finger sitting mournfully alone, up for grabs in the MPR break room. Why do we do this? "Because Minnesota," wrote another colleague.
She has a point. If you've lived in Minnesota for a while, this is probably familiar. It's a phenomenon of Minnesota politeness, even passiveness, that I default to when it comes to communication. But I've grown weary of the long-lasting Minnesota goodbye or trying to find a polite way to say no. So I've enlisted the help of a professional, a therapist who helps clients become assertive communicators.
TERRI BLY: I am very direct. I'm opinionated, and I'm direct. I'm pretty outspoken. I think people are a little surprised to find out that I'm from Fargo-Moorhead. It's always felt like a little bit of a mismatch.
ELLEN FINN: That's Terri Bly. She's a lifelong Minnesotan and psychologist in Minneapolis. She said that the classic Minnesota nice, passive-aggressive communication can feel unclear and confusing at times.
TERRI BLY: Like there's unwritten rules or expectations I'm supposed to somehow pick up on in the silence. And I don't like that because I don't necessarily know that I'm going to get it right. What are they getting at? And they're smiling and saying all the right things, but why am I picking up on maybe something underneath?
ELLEN FINN: Oftentimes, that passive communication usually doesn't help the person who is being passive either.
TERRI BLY: I think the biggest risk is that you're not going to get your needs met. If you can't directly express your thoughts or opinions or needs or wants, then there's a greater risk that how people respond to you isn't necessarily going to be the way you want it to be.
ELLEN FINN: That being said, if passiveness is the norm, assertiveness may come off as aggressive.
TERRI BLY: It's like when Minnesotans go to New York and everybody feels rude. When you're used to communicating indirectly, it's probably because you've been taught that it's rude to express those things directly. And so when someone comes along who is expressing them directly, I think it can feel rude. So I really try to not come at this from one is better than the other.
ELLEN FINN: Especially when a lot of this passiveness is baked into our way of doing things.
TERRI BLY: When I have clients who are struggling with this, I always say, look, you come by this honestly. There's a cost to going against the grain. I mean, a lot of our weird little behaviors as humans does tend to come back to the survival thing. We want to belong. Adapting to fit, at least to some extent, your surroundings is a healthy thing to do.
It's when we do it to the extent where it's compromising our own wellbeing. To me, that's when it bears examination is when you're being so nice that you're overextending yourself, that you're ending up in relationships you don't want to be in. Where there's a cost to you, that's when it's time to change.
ELLEN FINN: I've noticed it's really hard to say no directly to people sometimes. It feels easier just to tiptoe around telling them no or passive aggressively giving excuses or something. How can I get myself to just directly tell someone no?
TERRI BLY: I think we have a hard time with immediate negative reactions. I don't think a lot of times we successfully avoid people being upset with us. I think we either delay it, or they're upset with us later when we don't have to see the reaction. So if you say to somebody, yeah, I'm not coming to your party or whatever, if you say that right away, you're going to get their emotional response or whatever, their anger, their sadness right away. It's really uncomfortable. Sometimes I think people just want to delay the inevitable. And so they're just kicking that can down the road.
But I also think that as women, I mean, women are definitely taught that it's not OK to hurt other people's feelings. We're supposed to be nice, right? Women are supposed to be nice. And Minnesotans are supposed to be nice. So that's why Minnesota women are so good at this. I think there are ways to be honest without being brutal. That's the part that people struggle with.
If I say I can't come and they get sad, well, that must mean I did it wrong. And I think that is an error right there. We can't control other people's emotions. We can't control their reactions. We can only figure out how to present things that are in line with the kind of person we want to be. And if we want to be thoughtful but also genuine, I do think people appreciate when someone is honest with them.
ELLEN FINN: Since moving to Minnesota, I've learned about this thing called the "Minnesota goodbye." Are you familiar?
TERRI BLY: Oh, very much so, yeah.
ELLEN FINN: And I can see applying what you're saying to that prolonged 15-minute goodbye.
TERRI BLY: I mean, 15 minutes, that's pretty fast. If you can get out in 15 minutes, you are ahead of the game in a lot of these situations. I wish I had some brilliant insight on why Minnesotans take an hour to go from I need to get going to actually walking out the door. I've taken to just saying, I'm an early to bed kind of person, so I need to get going-- and not apologizing for it.
That's the other thing Minnesotans do. My goodness. We apologize for existing. So apologizing for leaving. Oh, I'm really sorry. I know it's only midnight, but I need to get going. Sorry to leave so soon. But I don't apologize for taking care of myself like that.
ELLEN FINN: And as for taking the last cookie in the office kitchen.
TERRI BLY: Maybe the unwritten rule, the unspoken rule is the person who brought the cookies then needs to go in and take the last cookie. And then they took the last cookie that they brought, and then nobody's rude.
ELLEN FINN: As a note, my conversation with Terri was not a passive-aggressive ploy to get my coworkers to stop leaving a sliver of a donut in the box. But let me be direct, MPR and Minnesota. Let's try Terri's solution and take the last donut. For NPR News, I'm Ellen Finn.
NINA MOINI: That was MPR Producer Ellen Finn. You can hear our new series called Professional Help every other Thursday here on Minnesota Now. Or if you missed one, find the whole collection on mprnews.org.
Download transcript (PDF)
Transcription services provided by 3Play Media.