Have you been vaccinated?

How do you feel when someone asks you ‘Have you been vaccinated?”.

Tips for responding to this and other socially delicate questions.

• Comfortable to disclose that you have or have not? 

• Anxious that your answer may not reflect the person’s view on the matter?

• Annoyed because the question is much like asking ‘how much do you earn’, its personal and not one to be asked in casual conversation. 

There are several ways we can respond to this, and other questions we may deem delicate remembering that one person’s delicate may be different to another’s. 

 Generally, I subscribe to being able to ask most questions with applied EQ, Emotional Intelligence and that it is wholly the person’s choice whether to answer or not’ but professionally in recruitment there are certain questions I am not permitted to ask and under most circumstances the vaccination question is one of them. 

Because of this and my social observations I have now entirely removed this question from my dialogue.  I have observed over recent weeks that this question has become charged with a demand for information to establish whether you are ‘in my camp’ or not.  And very often the latter brings with it the probability of correction according to the enquirers’ perspective causing it to be divisive, discriminatory, alienating, and inflammatory.  So, I’m now inclined to suggest that we all remove this question from our conversations as we have done with some other delicate social topics. 

Here are some techniques you can deploy to comfortably respond to or deflect this and any other delicate questions you may be asked.  Choose the one that works best for you and then ‘can it’ ready to roll out whenever you need it.

1. Ignore – simply move onto a new conversation as if you missed the question.

2. Dodge – excuse yourself from the conversation all together, ‘I’m sorry but I’ll have to go let’s chat again soon’.

3. Bridge – divert the conversation away from the ‘pain point’, ‘That’s a popular question.  I’ve heard there’s a trend to move away from asking it.’

4. Address – I’d rather not talk about that, but I’d love to hear about …’. 

5. Joke - ‘what do you say to the person who administers the vaccine? Good jab’. 

6. Question – ‘Have you heard that …?’

There are some very strong and even extreme opinions on this topic and my position is simply not to engage holding the firm belief that at this time at least we are all legally and morally entitled to our own opinion, choice and right to privacy.