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I feel like there's lots of stuff about this on writing but less related to verbal communication.
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ME: Is X true? And if it is, does that mean Y would also true?
THEM: Yes, Y would be true.
skip a beat
ME: Ok, so to be clear, X is true?
THEM: No, X isn't true.
ME IN MY HEAD: :facepalm:
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This happens all the time, and is why I've learned to simply not write multiple or compound questions per message in Slack. They have to be broken up into single questions I ask one at a time or else ~1/3 of people will only address one part of what I'm asking.
I still have no theory of why this seems necessary. My only hypothesis is that some people just glance at any given body of text and don't parse the entire thing. Understanding begins to break down as soon as a person has to read more than a single sentence.
Or perhaps my style of communication is the dysfunctional part and I just don't understand why.
How to Get Your Point Across in 30 Seconds or Less by Milo Frank
People will endlessly speculate about other options, or criticize a decision with no input on a viable path forward.
I'll let it go for a bit, but eventually its time to hold their feet to the fire: "I require positive confirmation that you accept decision X; or for you to clearly define an alternative path. If I do not receive an answer by , I will consider that acceptance of X".
Here are some altruistic reasons these events might occur: > - don't directly address the point of your question / provide a much complex answer (or even worse, a non-answer) to a simple question > - don't stay focused to the point of the discussion I often dive deeper if the question itself raises suspicions that the question asker might not fully understand the topic. For example, if someone asked: "can you unbatch…
Sure, some people are not native English speakers, but in OP's case that didn't affect the clarity of their question, even with a couple inferred missing words.
YES. Absolutely! Many people seem to totally lack the capability of understanding simple questions. I often have to ask yes/no questions, and even then I have to say "please answer yes or no". Then I have to go beating 1 bit information at the time... really frustrating, specially with people with master or even PhD degrees! Ok, where I'm now it seems a PhD can be bought around the corner for 2 cents. In my experienc…
Some people are truly bad at comminicating. The other side of this, trying to insist on yes/no answers to questions that are not yes/no questions is also a bit of a recipe for disaster. > EDIT: I see some answers referring to learning disorders, disabilities, anxiety, not knowing the issue at hand. I'm talking about people which do know the topic Some learning disorders do exhibit really good math and logic skills bu…
"will you have the project complete by Friday?" -> you may be able to state "no," but there are certainly caveats to any "yes" answer.
"will you try to have the project complete by Friday?" - in this case, "yes" is most likely an acceptable answer, but you still probably want to pull in additional context, e.g. "but I am prioritizing x, y, and z."
Good, correct conversation is rarely binary.
YES. Absolutely! Many people seem to totally lack the capability of understanding simple questions. I often have to ask yes/no questions, and even then I have to say "please answer yes or no". Then I have to go beating 1 bit information at the time... really frustrating, specially with people with master or even PhD degrees! Ok, where I'm now it seems a PhD can be bought around the corner for 2 cents. In my experienc…
Honestly, when I see this kind of story (and I do see it a lot), the confusion is typically more on the side of the person insisting on a yes or no. I had a conversation once with a customer who demanded a yes or no answer to the question of "is your system in-memory". They didn't want to talk about what was in memory - they'd just learned from Oracle marketing material that "in-memory" was faster, so they wanted to…
- We are building an embedded system, which has a data interface, which is not working properly (nothing is being received). We have to take care of the emitter, other team the receiver.
- My question: after lunch you are going to see with the oscilloscope of there is activity in the interfaces lines?
- Answer: No need, the registers in the ASIC indicate transmission is ok.
- 2nd question: but maybe there is a malfunction in the ASIC, and still there is no transmission, so we should test.
- Reply: The other team will check if there is reception or no.
- 3rd question: but the other team confirmed there is no reception, even with oscilloscope... could you test?
- Reply: what test do you want me to do?
- Me: measure with oscilloscope
- Reply: what for?
- Me: To confirm the transmission
- Reply: I dont follow...
- Me: here I start to ask, step by step:
- We have a problem of transmission, right?
- Yes!
- Registers in ASIC indicate no problem, right?
- Yes.
- The other team reported still there is nothing in the receiver, right?
- Yes.
- So it would be useful to physically test with oscilloscope if that is being send, don't you think?
- Yes, sure!
- So you are going to do it, later, after lunch?
- Yes, no problem.
Best you can do is to just redirect the person again. Don't necessarily criticize them but just say "Hey I understand but can you confirm xyz? Is that a Yes or a No" and depending on your relationship with the person, keep going or not.
I've found 1-on-1 discussions with this person to flesh issues out are much more productive than group discussions because fewer people are in on it and when I'm in the right mindset I am able to to put the effort in and help this person make the very significant contribution to the group they are capable of.
Overall, preparation is a useful tool for communicating on difficult topics. There are so many things I can talk about succinctly now that took me years of working over again and again to get where I am. Having a script, having some visual aids, etc. can help anybody be more articulate.
I know an activist who used to be notorious for ranting at public meetings who has gotten help from people in her community to prepare what she says ahead of time and she makes a much better contribution.
I'm a bit sensitive to what you say because sometimes I "think differently", particularly when it comes to what one might think is essential as opposed to what one might think is particular.
One case is that whenever the subject of "doing a calculation in parallel" comes up I will start with introducing batching because almost always the unit of work takes less time (often by 100-1000 times so this is pretty general) than a context switch regardless of what technology you use. In my mind the batching is essential and how you schedule the work is superficial.
I'd say that my approach is faster and more reliable because most people will schedule a unit of work that is too small and not get any speedup. They are going to introduce batching or give up. I've also learned the hard way that few people, particularly in a group, are going to be receptive to this, that I'm going to be accused of being obstinate or an ineffective communicator and as painful as I find it (it takes continuous mental effort to suppress) I will let people go ahead and learn about batching the hard way.
Having said that, his emails were horrible. Sometimes he would accidently put in a 'no' in the sentence, so he actually wrote the opposite of what he meant. I knew him well, so I could guess that this is the case, and followed up verbally to check what he means. At the same company the CEO also wrote pretty terrible 2-liner emails.
I personally put great value on clear and concise communication, esp. clear and concise writing. However, in my experience, having worked at ~10 companies, I'm an exception on this.
Most people seem to view the act of typing a message/email as a necessary evil, and they will just do one pass of typing, send it, and hope for the best.
Most people do not: (i) proof-read what they write (ii) care about grammar (iii) consider whether this is clear and concise (iv) don't think whether this is a good time to write this.
On the last point, eg. as a manager I never write any emails that might affect people's mood on a Friday, because I don't want to f--k with their weekends; there's no point, I can just send it at 9am on Monday and everybody had a great weekend. But, in my experience most managers aren't considerate like this.