Communication skills vary wildly.
Ask HN: Why do some people not communicate clearly?
261–270 of 372 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why do some people not communicate clearly?
#262A crucial point not mentioned yet: cross cultural issues. In an American culture, it is "self-evident" that clear communication is about being direct and to the point. But this is far from universal. More generally, western cultures tend to conflate earnest and truth. "Telling it like it is" is valued. We don't realize our own "phoniness". I have witnessed countless times people hitting a wall in meetings and other s…
I'd say this is a solid portion of the reason. Ideally, we could talk about software in a completely neutral and dispassionate way without worrying about how the recipient will receive the information, or what the potential implications on ourselves are; this is the idea behind no-blame retros and psychological safety, etc. The fact is that a lot of work cultures are not in a state where this works, so even if people might be naturally inclined to do this, they may have been trained not to.
The other big piece of it is... communicating is a messy activity. I'm always amazed how often you can think people are aligned on something, then dig in a little farther and realize that people have wildly divergent ideas of what's going on. It's exacerbated when you have folks who are operating in a second language (this isn't a slight on them, I have nothing but admiration for anybody working as a software dev in a second language - I don't know if I could do it TBH).
Re: Ask HN: Why do some people not communicate clearly?
#263Communication skills vary wildly.
Re: Ask HN: Why do some people not communicate clearly?
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hm. I am an American, but maybe that American optimism stuff explains some friction I have had at work. I find that being optimistic when important things aren't working is stupid and increases risk.
Us frenchmen, on a world scale, tend to be direct, realist and pessimist. So american optimism is really jarring at first until you get used to it.
I went on a cruise and met some Canadians (they told me). I noticed they were speaking French and said “Is that French you’re speaking?” “Yes.” “That’s really cool! What part of Canada are you from?”
“The part that speaks French.”
I just frowned and walked off as it was meant to be a polite question. An educated guess would have said that they were from “the French speaking part of Canada,” but I guess they didn’t like small talk.
In hindsight, I find that interaction funny.
Re: Ask HN: Why do some people not communicate clearly?
#265seems like you are also not communicating clearly, what is SWE?
Re: Ask HN: Why do some people not communicate clearly?
#266I think your edit indicates the answer beautifully. It's a damn hard problem!
Re: Ask HN: Why do some people not communicate clearly?
#267Some 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…
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Re: Ask HN: Why do some people not communicate clearly?
#268>- don't directly address the point of your question / provide a much complex answer (or even worse, a non-answer) to a simple question
Are you sure you've clearly communicated to them the point of your question and all relevant context?
>- don't stay focused to the point of the discussion
Are you sure everyone in the room entirely agrees on what the point of the discussion is?
>- don't have some level of clarity in their train of thought and speech
Surely there must be some level of clarity.
>- generally over-complicate matters by wandering off to other related subjects and extending the scope of the discussion
If they're related subjects, are you sure that they're entirely irrelevant to the discussion? Why are you the only one who gets to determine the appropriate scope for the discussion?
Re: Ask HN: Why do some people not communicate clearly?
#269A crucial point not mentioned yet: cross cultural issues. In an American culture, it is "self-evident" that clear communication is about being direct and to the point. But this is far from universal. More generally, western cultures tend to conflate earnest and truth. "Telling it like it is" is valued. We don't realize our own "phoniness". I have witnessed countless times people hitting a wall in meetings and other s…
I'm an American and I think one mistake we Americans make is that we think we are very direct, but there is a lot of indirectness in some of our communication habits. This is particularly true in other parts of the country. As a native born midwestern, there are some indirect habits there and I'd say the west coast as its own too. So we're mostly direct, but there is some indirectness that we are at times blind to.
Re: Ask HN: Why do some people not communicate clearly?
#270TL;DR: Communicating clearly is HARD. It requires effort and training. Not everyone has had the training or is willing to put in the effort. Some people don't realize it. It's not something that comes naturally to most engineers (or people).
Though it has a terrible misnomer of a name, the art of "Business Writing" is basically about reducing the number of useless words you use in emails/conversations.
Some good resources:
* The 2-page "Business Writing" section in Scott Adams' "How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big"
* https://www.coursera.org/lecture/management-leadership-english/4-8-business-communication-concise-language-PfBKs