Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Why do some people not communicate clearly?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 372 posts

Re: Ask HN: Why do some people not communicate clearly?

#111

Post by throoooooowa »

f1shy wrote: post #77
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

To be clear about the yes/no, let me tell you an example from yesterday: - 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…

Ah, this feels like it came out of my mind. It's a perfect example that illustrates some of my own experiences lately. So frustrating...

Re: Ask HN: Why do some people not communicate clearly?

#112

Post by Mo3 »

In my case it is simply (unmedicated) ADHD. I can communicate in writing well in most cases, but am not able to communicate clearly in real-time because my mind is running faster and in more directions than I can speak. On medication I am suddenly 100x more eloquent and structured in my communication and can convey even complex problems with relative ease.

It is literally a difference between night and day. Without medication, I stumble over my words, have problems finding words, and it's very hard to not get distracted by 10 concurrent trains of thought. It's a source of great frustration and pain in my life because I do not like being medicated.

Re: Ask HN: Why do some people not communicate clearly?

#114

Post by jahsome »

frontman1988 wrote: post #3

Many reasons can be there which are probably out of there control like anxiety/adhd/autism etc.

In my experience, especially in a business context, it's flat out laziness and an inability to recognize others process information differently. Most importantly, people who are perpetually "busy" seem to lack the awareness that one must contextualize their message, and don't bother to take the time. The result is low effort and rushed.

Re: Ask HN: Why do some people not communicate clearly?

#115

Post by Izkata »

throoooooowa wrote: post #84
awb wrote: post #27

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…

> You yourself are missing words in your communication like the word "have" in the quote above. Also, I don't know enough linguistic rules to correct you, but colloquially at least your title is better understood if you write it as "Why do some people not communicate clearly?" Thanks, corrected the mistakes. However, I wasn't referring to missing words (which can be inferred) or bad grammar. Actually I wasn't referri…

> I'm not an English native speaker myself

So your posts don't really give this away to me, except for the dropped "have"/"has" that GP pointed out (I've seen this a lot from people who learned English as a second language, though I'm not confident enough to guess what your first language is). But it does give me two additional ideas that from a quick scroll downwards I don't think others have suggested: Language or culture.

Language is unlikely but I do want to mention it as a possibility because I have a concrete example in English speakers learning Japanese: Implied subject. It's a common point of confusion with beginners that usually doesn't get a whole lot of explanation, other than "you have to infer it from the context" [0]. Maybe something similar is going on here, a piece of context that would be made more explicit in your first language that we usually skip or just imply in English?

Culture is a possibility because I've seen it mentioned on here many times in the past, and I'm guessing if English isn't your first language and English speakers are confusing, you probably grew up in a (slightly?) different culture than you work in now, in addition to the language difference. I don't have good examples here, but what I remember is people talking about how people from some countries are very direct and in other countries that comes off as rude, and in the opposite direction the people trying to be polite sound like they're trying to avoid direct answers and it's hard to get them to say what they mean. That second one kind-of sounds like what you're describing here.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/japanese/comments/b8bae7/questions_...

Edit: Some people are posting links to culture-style differences further down: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33657314

Re: Ask HN: Why do some people not communicate clearly?

#116

Post by lightbendover »

layer8 wrote: post #102
lightbendover wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they may wander off to topics they feel more comfortable with Or they intentionally want to steer the group towards discussing those topics either for their own benefit or because they believe it is the right problem to bring into focus. If they are successful in doing so without coming across as rude, that could be viewed as great communication even if it leaves some questioning communication skills; it really dep…

Right, but at least in the nonpolitical context I wouldn’t assume conscious intent without very clear evidence of it. The greatest fallacy is assuming to know what people are actually thinking, without them saying it. People tend to vastly overestimate their insight into other people’s minds.

> nonpolitical context

Humans talking to each other in a business setting (I'm assuming nobody in this thread is talking about casual conversations that happen outside of work) is inherently political. You are either positioning or being a passive onlooker. If a conversation is only filled with the latter then nothing can possibly get accomplished (which, to be fair, is not an uncommon outcome for a meeting).

> The greatest fallacy is assuming to know what people are actually thinking, without them saying it

Assuming everything people say is what they think seems to be an even greater fallacy, but I am going to choose not to turn it into a superlative.

Re: Ask HN: Why do some people not communicate clearly?

#117

Post by udev »

If I sense lack of clarity and focus in your question, I will tend to provide extra context with my answer just to make sure you are not about to make a mistake.

If I sense you come with a very pointed, clear, relevant question or request, and I have a history of clear communication with you, I can trust a short/tight answer is enough.

But I agree with you on one thing, all things being equal, people who think and speak more clearly tend to also write (code, documentation, emails) clearly.

Re: Ask HN: Why do some people not communicate clearly?

#118

Post by bfung »

There are certainly other points, but I think a big reason is practice/training.

The process of translating thought into a language (written or spoken - also picking a language, being multilingual), and then into concise language, at least for myself, is a multi step process.

A younger version of myself would be “too lazy” to keep that process hidden in my brain and would verbalize the whole algorithm with all its complexities and dimensions until getting to the point.

It took trial and error and practice for me to realize people just wanted the point and fill in the details afterwards if necessary. Or that the other person wanted to find the reasons themselves as a way of confirming our thoughts are synchronized.

It takes quite a bit of computational brain power to do all that well, whereas it’s easier to ramble and and brain dump.

Re: Ask HN: Why do some people not communicate clearly?

#119

Post by f1shy »

bjornlouser wrote: post #103
f1shy wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear about the yes/no, let me tell you an example from yesterday: - 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…

You imply that the other PhD is being difficult but I think you're being difficult. In my opinion you should start with an open-ended question "How do we determine if there is a malfunction in the ASIC?". Unless this is your subordinate and you are convinced of a plan of action. In that case don't ask, just be direct and tell them what you want to test.

In this case is my subordinate. The idea of doing the measurement was discussed with other people, I have 20+ years doing such debugging. I already had asked him to do the measurement. My question started more to be sure he actually is going to do it, because I have experience with not doing what he is supposed to. Not a bad guy, but sometimes seems to just don’t understand.

Btw: at the end the test confirmed the suspicion.

Re: Ask HN: Why do some people not communicate clearly?

#120

Post by TrevorJ »

Communication is extremely complicated. It's also not a solo sport. There are at least two people involved at all times. There are some specific skills that you can practice which I have found have helped me a lot with this problem.

-Empathy/Respect: recognize that people generally are doing the best they can, and try to meet them where they are at/assume good intentions.

-Ask clarifying questions like "What I am hearing you say is x". or "I'm having a tough time understanding how this relates to the problem we are trying to solve, can you break it down for me?" or "Just to confirm my understanding here, it sounds like you are suggesting...."

To the specific points in your post - I find that the difficulty in clear, concise communication rises considerably when it's a live, realtime discussion vs. when it is asynchronous. Compact and precise language takes a lot of time to formulate (I didn't have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one).

>generally over-complicate matters by wandering off to other related subjects and extending the scope of the discussion

This one is a tough one. Sometimes this happens when the structure of the meeting is wrong, or there's not someone who's empowered to say "let's set that aside and focus on x". Sometimes though, exploring the possibility space verbally, even when it's a dead end is just how some people synthesize the problem and internalize it so they can understand it better. Sometimes it's necessary work that needs done before everyone can effectively 'play' with the problem you are trying to solve.

Post reply on HN