> And this, too, was a bit of a revelation to me, that someone would not want to get straight to the point, that someone would need a nice long conversational warmup before they’d feel comfortable enough to be ready to talk about something more uncomfortable. I’m very much a get-to-the-point kind of person. I tend to say what I mean, or nothing at all.

I've worked for a boss like this once - he was the worst boss I ever worked for. There was absolutely no room for nuance in the conversations, no attempt to build rapport or a sense of shared understanding. It was his way or the highway.

Human beings are emotional, not rational actors. The "idle chit-chat" gets the foundations of emotional solidarity in place that make anything else possible. When you try to avoid it, you get an organization slinging daggers at each other because someone had the nerve - the audacity - to tell people what to do over an email without any room for them to respond and feel heard, never mind that, rationally, that's exactly what they were hired to do.

There is, of course, value in getting to the point - but only after you consistently build and assure and rebuild and reassure confidence that everyone is in the same boat together.