How to be patronising

Claire Warwick, of the Guardian Higher Education Network, has imagined a lovely piece of spoof guidance to academics, on how to give a talk.

Walk into the room – do make sure that you open the door first, or you might get a nasty bang on the nose! You might notice there are people sitting in seats in front of you. Don't be scared. They are called the audience, and they are there to listen to you. They might ask questions afterwards. You will need to think carefully about your answers: you wouldn't want to say anything silly!

Would anybody ever write anything so crass? Perhaps not. But her point was that much of the guidance to academics on how to use Twitter is just as patronising and inappropriate. And immediately after reading this article, I was looking for something helpful on work-related stress and found that the best that one major employee-assistance company could offer was "Quick fixes" (their own title) such as the following:

Don’t bottle it up
Talking to people is a good way to beat stress because it helps us see the problem more clearly – it may not be as bad as we thought, and other people may have different perspectives and solutions we hadn’t considered.

Worries? What worries?
Worrying about the ‘what ifs?’ in a situation takes a lot of time and energy, and anxiety can quickly escalate. First, find out the facts about a situation – your worries may turn out to be unfounded. If you’re still concerned, plan your strategy, with a friend if necessary, so that you feel more in control of the situation.

Take time out
Ring-fence time in your day to unwind and reflect – it will help you recharge your batteries and get things into perspective.

The problem with these suggestions isn't that they're wrong, but that anyone who has got to the point of needing help with work-related stress will almost certainly have thought of them already and tried them and still be in trouble. (One of the awful things about high-level stress being that it reduces one's ability to deal practically with the things that are causing it.) What these suggestions imply that the reader is too stupid to have thought of them for themselves. If I were suffering from stress and someone were to talk like that to me, I think I'd probably hit them - which, though very bad of course, might actually be more effective than any of these ideas in relieving my stress.

What makes these efforts to be helpful so patronising, wrong and offensive ? They tell you things that you already know (or think you know), and by making a big deal about them as though they're a great secret or revelation, they position you, the reader, as ignorant and stupid. They don't address the mistakes which you might actually be making, or tell you things you actually want to know; when it comes to areas that are difficult (responding to audience questions, dealing with weak management) they avoid them or fudge the issue completely.

How often do we do the same with the guidance we provide for students, I wonder? When they reach out to us asking for our help, all too often we ignore their actual needs (or remain ignorant of them) and just provide them with information which they most likely have already. But at least we don't usually finish, like call centre operators do, by asking - after they've completely failed to solve your problem - "Is there anything else I can help you with?"