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How to communicate when trust is low without digging yourself into a deeper hole

charity.wtf

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Re: How to communicate when trust is low without digging yourself into a deeper hole

#231

Post by worble »

lastangryman wrote: post #174

> Say “please” and “thank you” a lot. I remember a previous role the team leaders all went on a management training course. Everyone came back and started adding "please" to every request. I found it really patronising and felt like I was being spoken to like a 5 year old. > "Can you run the SQL update in prod?" Vs > "Can you run the SQL update in prod please?" The "please" sounds like an exasperated parent that is f…

Yeah I hate "please", but assuming I'm with a cohort that understands it, "pls" seems to work a lot better, i.e:

>can you merge that pr pls

I'm not sure why, I guess it just sounds a lot more casual when written down and read? It still gets across that it's a request, not a command, but without that patronising tone. Generally speaking I've very much gone from speaking very formally in chat with my teammates to casual chat where I no longer care for punctuation or capitalisation, makes it feel a lot friendlier I guess?

Obviously for official comms/emails/talking to someone I don't know I format properly and professionally but for day to day stuff I just like keeping casual, like you would speaking in the office I guess.

Re: How to communicate when trust is low without digging yourself into a deeper hole

#232

Post by wink »

denkmoon wrote: post #212
lastangryman wrote: post #174

> Say “please” and “thank you” a lot. I remember a previous role the team leaders all went on a management training course. Everyone came back and started adding "please" to every request. I found it really patronising and felt like I was being spoken to like a 5 year old. > "Can you run the SQL update in prod?" Vs > "Can you run the SQL update in prod please?" The "please" sounds like an exasperated parent that is f…

Never went on a management course and never been a manager, I always say please and thankyou. It's polite. Sorry you have a chip on your shoulder about it though.

I think there is no hard rule. Some people say that all the time, some never. Some have a friendly tone and don't need it, but if they add it suddenly it can appear like mentioned. No one said you should stop and I'm pretty sure it won't annoy people if it comes naturally.

It's the same as when sales people talk to me and intersperse "Well, Mr. wink, you know about this great offer, that will benefit you, Mr. wink, very much. As I said earlier, Mr. wink." - makes me want to end the call right at the 2nd mention.

Re: How to communicate when trust is low without digging yourself into a deeper hole

#233

Post by vasco »

IggleSniggle wrote: post #228
vasco wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody should be crucified either in public or in private. But correcting mistakes and making it explicit to the whole team what the problem was and how we'll minimize the chances of reocurring is best done in front of the team. Everyone learns together, and most importantly, they see how you react to mistakes. They won't be afraid to talk about their mistakes if they see your normal reaction. It'll also feel less ba…

Huh. In my schooling experience, all grades were quite private unless someone shared!

Woah! I just assumed this is how it worked everywhere. I might just need to re-think my whole stance and look this up. Thanks for sharing, I never thought to question it.

Re: How to communicate when trust is low without digging yourself into a deeper hole

#234

Post by ilyt »

lelanthran wrote: post #203
ako wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I hire someone to work on my house and they fuck up, e.g., hit a water or gas pipe, I expect them to fix it asap, with no additional pay. Fucking up is not part of the job if you’re doing the hiring…… Happened to me once, long time ago, I was cleaning up an oracle db production server, and by accident deleted to system datafile of the database. Sat there till midnight to fix it, but at least I had proof the backup…

You don't see a difference between a contractor and an employee?

...does the company do, except for the amount of paperwork ?

Re: How to communicate when trust is low without digging yourself into a deeper hole

#235

Post by ilyt »

notnaut wrote: post #164
sublinear wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not sacrifice.

Sure it is. Fucking up is part of a job. If you’re working 9-5 on the clock, you don’t have to fix shit after 5. Choosing to stick around to fix your mistake off hours without pay when you could do it the next day or take comp time later is a sacrifice of your time/money.

I think that heavily depend on severity of the fuckup.

If you comitted a bug bringing the whole site down at 16:50 then went "welp, I won't fix it in 10 minutes, sucks to be on ops team today!", your login wouldn't work tomorrow

Re: How to communicate when trust is low without digging yourself into a deeper hole

#236

Post by chownie »

denkmoon wrote: post #212
lastangryman wrote: post #174

> Say “please” and “thank you” a lot. I remember a previous role the team leaders all went on a management training course. Everyone came back and started adding "please" to every request. I found it really patronising and felt like I was being spoken to like a 5 year old. > "Can you run the SQL update in prod?" Vs > "Can you run the SQL update in prod please?" The "please" sounds like an exasperated parent that is f…

Never went on a management course and never been a manager, I always say please and thankyou. It's polite. Sorry you have a chip on your shoulder about it though.

Being patronising comes naturally to some people, don't worry about it too much.

Re: How to communicate when trust is low without digging yourself into a deeper hole

#239

Post by Aachen »

IggleSniggle wrote: post #225
Aachen wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > Online communication loses sooooo much in transit. > This is so true. I have a good friend who is, in my opinion, really bad at this. I don't think it's true at all. Most people, I can perfectly well talk to online and can occasionally have an easier time talking to than in person. The person I'd classify as my best friend, for example, I literally speak to 1-2 times a year, the rest is text conversations (at lea…

I agree. My spouse accuses me of only being able to communicate properly via text, and i think it's true. I am very uncomfortable in face to face interaction and struggle to find words, but the written word uses a different part of my brain and is easy to communicate with. It drives them nuts because they struggle to express themselves appropriately in writing. So we have important conversations that are very asynchr…

Congrats on the anniversary! That sounds like a pretty extreme form of what I meant, happy to hear you found someone who is happy to work with that system as well.

Do you find that having everything on record to look back helps you? That's one thing I mind about talking: can't look up what was said or what I/we already figured out on some topic. (Occasionally that's a feature of course, but I try to avoid both using messengers that aren't private as well as needing to say things I don't want to be on a record.)

Re: How to communicate when trust is low without digging yourself into a deeper hole

#240

Post by lelanthran »

ilyt wrote: post #234
lelanthran wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't see a difference between a contractor and an employee?

...does the company do, except for the amount of paperwork ?

Well, yes. There's a legal difference when overtime is being worked.

Companies go to court over the distinction.

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