161–170 of 372 posts
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 m…
Have you effectively communicated this to those you're conversing with? Why not? This is worth some thought.
Otherwise, I have noticed the same and agree with you. I recommend the book Crucial Conversations.
Some people are bad at communication due to social anxiety.
Some people are bad at communication because they're trying to be the smartest person in the room.
Some people are bad at communication simply due to lack of practice.
There are other reasons, but those come to mind first.
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…
PM: Are we good to go live on Wednesday? (it's Monday)
Me: Feature X isn't fully ready yet. Data science needs to address a bug that I found 2 weeks ago. If they fix the bug, I'll prepare a release for Wednesday. Alternatively, we can go live without feature X.
PM: Feature X is required. Data science says they'll have the bug fix ready. So are we good to go live Wednesday?
Me: If data science implements the bug fix, I'll release on Wednesday. (I don't trust data science to be ready, but I'm not going to say that)
PM: Okay, so we're good to go live?
Context is very relevant. Yes/no questions often aren't yes/no. I didn't even include the full conversation where I tried to clarify what he means "go live" or whether the customer had signed off. In the end, customers hadn't signed off and he hadn't coordinated with other teams. The release has been put off for at least a month.
I think this is somewhat different than a yes/no informational question. In this case, it wasn't even a yes/no question, it was a yes/yes question, he wanted me to take responsibility.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> However, I wasn't referring to missing words (which can be inferred) or bad grammar. Actually I wasn't referring to written speech in particular. I was referring mostly to the way one structures their thought and expresses it to someone else. It would appear that your initial post failed to communicate that clearly to awb.
It's also possible for a person to poorly apply their reading comprehension skills. FWIW, I did get the intended meaning from OP's post.
OP never claimed perfection, nor was it ever implied.
I've had some coworkers who were particularly bad at communicating the context of what they were talking about. They'd start talking about something and I couldn't understand what they were saying because they didn't say what something was. Them: "I couldn't get it to start up correctly because the parameters weren't right. What are the right parameters?" Me: "What are you even talking about?" It got so bad at one jo…
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…
People have to plan how to break subjects down before and during speaking. Not everyone has adequate practice.
Some people have trouble with eye contact and might be fighting subconscious social anxiety while simultaneously scrambling to put their thoughts into words. If an audience wasn't present, it would be easier for them.
Some truly brilliant engineers struggle with this.
Edit: If you don't intuit this or perhaps struggle, I strongly recommend taking an improv class. It should be a fun and safe environment where you'll experience your brain lighting up all the communication pathways at once. If you want to go more subtle and read people's body language and tone, take a Meisner class. These both help tremendously for people that don't get in the daily "exercise" as a part of their normal day to day. I've also heard good things about Toastmasters.
I often have a hard time communicating. This is a hurdle I deal with on a daily basis and makes for stressful encounters with others. My train of thought often branches when asked a general question on a particularly large topic:::: -My ability to communicate during such conversations may come out very rushed because of the amount of material to cover such a topic. -My choice of words may vary depending on a particul…
Exactly this. If the questioner is experiencing these responses, he should consider the prompts he offers. Is he adequately communicating his expectations and constraints?
We cannot control how a question is answered or the communication skills of the subject. We can control the questions we ask and how we frame them.
"I'm pressed for time at the moment and was hoping you could help me. Can you give me a concise answer on [topic]? Specifically I am interested in the details of [scenario]?"
In sales this goes a bit deeper. You control the flow of dialogue to the point of engineering a conversation from open to close. I'd recommend trying commission based sales to anyone, just so they can gain some of these techniques.
I look for this kind of structure when I interview people, and it's amazing how many go breadth-first with their answers, and it turns into a hard-to-follow stream-of-consciousness.
Me: "Please describe system X"
What I want to hear: "System X is composed of major subsystems A, B, and C. I'll talk about them in order. Subsystem A is composed of attributes 1, 2, and 3, which I can describe later if needed. Subsystem B is composed of 4, 5, 6..."
What I often get is: "System X first has subsystem A. Subsystem A has a lot of attributes, like attribute 1, which itself is composed of detail alpha, the research behind detail alpha is this: ... ..., ok, now back to attribute 1, there's also detail beta, which is really cool because ... ..." and we're out of time without even getting to any of the other attributes, or to subsystems B, subsystems C, or even mentioning any of their attributes.
It's easier to go from stream-of-consciousness to depth-first, but you lose your audience. Better to take the time to structure what you're going to say, and present it breadth-first, top-down.
EDIT: Somehow switched depth and breadth :)