I _don’t_ think that empathy has anything to do with it though.
Behaviour modification yes, but that is “stop talking so critically”. Or “don’t be so harsh” or “give this person special treatment”. WHEN to do that might be key here—perhaps the colleague’s husband has cancer, or their child missed school 3 days this week with the flu, or their project wasn’t productionalized/their new to the role/etc—and so a blanket “don’t talk so harshly” isn’t called for—instead what is really desired is social calibration.
But instead it seems everyone is getting caught up on the literal interpretation of this figure of speech instead.
Behaviour modification yes, but that is “stop talking so critically”. Or “don’t be so harsh” or “give this person special treatment”. WHEN to do that might be key here—perhaps the colleague’s husband has cancer, or their child missed school 3 days this week with the flu, or their project wasn’t productionalized/their new to the role/etc—and so a blanket “don’t talk so harshly” isn’t called for—instead what is really desired is social calibration.
But instead it seems everyone is getting caught up on the literal interpretation of this figure of speech instead.