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Ask HN: Why do some people not communicate clearly?

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

#171

Post by grepLeigh »

I believe communication is the responsibility of the sender (not a two way street, like most people say).

When I started taking personal responsibility for all communication mishaps, things changed around me.

If I think someone is communicating poorly, I attribute it to my own ask being vague - and make sure to clarify my current goals by mapping to every else's goals. "Seek first to understand, then be understood" was the mantra I kept in mind.

People rise (or fall) to the expectations around them. If someone lacks a key skill in life, it's possible they've never had a good role model for that skill. You could be that role model!

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

#172

Post by bauble »

nmstoker wrote: post #24
willcipriano wrote: post #11

Lots of people are afraid to say "I don't know" in my experience. Although, sometimes people ask me a question where I have to work out in my head what the answer is and it feels weird to sit there in silence for 15 seconds as I do so.

It's such a shame when people aren't comfortable admitting they don't know something. Often it's way more valuable to know that, and safer in many cases too!

Usually, people asking me questions don't want to hear "I don't know.". They want me to dedicate myself to solving their issue.

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

#173

Post by hrgiger »

m_fayer wrote: post #104

I am, charitably, a pretty decent developer. I also have what I think most would agree is a pretty successful career. My career is not built on programming. Rather, it's built on my ability to communicate effectively in writing and in spontaneous speech, and to serve as a translation layer between various parts of an organization. Your frustration is my opportunity. In my experience, few people without the training o…

so you are project manager?

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

#175

Post by jahsome »

sfpotter wrote: post #4

You're clearly pretty annoyed by this. Have you considered that people at work may not want to stay rigidly on target 100% of the time, and may find your hidebound need to do so bothering as well?

Your comment could be interpreted to be condescending in tone, which I find quite ironic; the result of your rhetoric is you seem more "annoyed" than OP.

Especially in a large remote meeting, mindless dialogue is incredibly annoying, and often very costly.

I don't log in to work for small talk or personal enrichment. I'm there to accomplish work.

Meandering, unconstrained conversation and boring personal annecdotes belong at Sunday brunch, or on hackernews.

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

#176

Post by ultrasaurus »

There's a lot of ways to say the same thing: because it's hard.

- If you read original texts by great thinkers from Plato to Adam Smith, they really aren't easy to parse. If they couldn't do it, what chance do you have :)

- It's recursive: to explain idea A, you need to understand idea !A in the other person's head.

- There's infinite complexity out there: Even if you can explain idea A, you're leaving out a lot in terms of related ideas B, C, D

(Disclaimer, I make a product to fix this: https://demogorilla.com/docs/compelling-demos )

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

#177

Post by pydry »

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…

I think you are reading this from the perspective of somebody who does communicate clearly who occasionally gets misunderstood.

While it's possible the fault is with the OP, I think what the OP is complaining about is probably not that.

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

#178

Post by scruple »

In addition to what others are saying, I find a lot of communication problems, especially technical communication problems, are rooted in the Curse of Knowledge [0]. I try to work that bias into conversation on technical teams but it can be challenging. It's easy to over-correct for this bias and the over-corrections can illicit bad reactions to the conversation.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_knowledge

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

#179

Post by Izkata »

ravenstine wrote: post #72

My favorite form of poor communication: --- 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: --- 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 a…

It's also possible X isn't true right now but could be made true given extra work, and the other person has mentally skipped ahead.

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

#180

Post by eduction »

BeetleB wrote: post #123

Some years ago I decided to take communications seriously and read a bunch of books on it. It was a major shift in how I view it. Good communications isn't merely about speaking well[1], but about handling how others speak. If you are frustrated with people never giving simple answers to simple questions (as I often am), it is you who needs to adapt and change strategies. The expectation that a question that should h…

>it's not reasonable to expect all employees to understand how effective communications works

By chance did you mean "it's not unreasonable" here?

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