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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

#261

Post by pxc »

nickjj wrote: post #226
pxc wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hey, I ran your solution and it's working nicely. Thanks a lot! By the way, recently I've been working on profiling our code so performance is on the top of my mind. I ran the profiler against this PR and noticed a dip in performance in one of the functions. Do you want to hop on a call sometime to explore a few ways we can refactor xyz function? Really curious to hear what you think and after thinking about this f…

> But that's making a PR comment into a meeting, which is something I'd kinda dread and want to avoid. Even if it's a new hire that you may not have met yet beyond a hello in Slack?

Yeah, for me at least. I feel like that would make a meeting more awkward, not less. Also, if I were in the new hire's shoes, scheduling a meeting that's essentially about criticism would make me more anxious, not less. And the time gap between the scheduling of the meeting and the start of the meeting might be pretty fretful. If someone just lays out what they want changed in 1 or 2 sentences, I can immediately know that it's not some big problem they want to meet about.

At the same time, I would feel bad if I found out that I had really distressed a new hire in a code review. And I do try to soften things when I say something that I anticipate might be perceived as harsh in a way that I don't intend. (I use emoji a lot, I DM people, and I tend not to use standalone sentences that end in periods except in email. I use parentheticals and qualifiers, make jokes, etc.) I do schedule meetings to go over things including criticisms/problems/objections, but only when I feel like it would be faster and more natural, or I think it's really essential that I make a realtime demand on someone's attention to get their input.

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

#263

Post by tamimio »

sethammons wrote: post #207
tamimio wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In my experience, men, engineers, and especially engineers who are men tend to think of Not necessarily, I’ve worked with engineers/men who used emojis as a passive aggressive response, goes like “oh no, not like that, it’s XYZ :)”

Can you expand on that? Why is that passive aggression?

Probably I should’ve added more context, but it usually come through the conversation in a “dismissive” manner or a way to signal “you were wrong and idiot”, and I also noticed it’s different among the age (older people don’t care or notice) and culture (Chinese for example take it as an insult), I don’t have an example but goes like this:

Person A: I turned on the PC and have a blue screen.

Person B: No you can’t do that, you have to plug Y first then turn it on :)!

Or something along the lines, I can’t remember an example right now but I’ve seen it firsthand, give a look at this it might gives you some more context

https://www.wbez.org/stories/the-rundown-since-when-are-smil...

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

#264

Post by cf141q5325 »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #211
efangs wrote: post #63

I feel like this is missing a "know when it's time to call it quits" section.

The POV of this article is a founder / co-founder though; calling it quits in those cases means possibly leaving a LOT of money on the table, or having to buy the other party out. It's not so much a human relationship as it's a business relationship with high stakes. Human relationships can pass, business relationships become expensive. How many people stay in a married relationship because of factors outside of them…

You still might have to call it quits some time. Stakes just make it more difficult.

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

#265

Post by notnaut »

ako wrote: post #171
notnaut wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

Sounds like you sacrificed your time to make things right! Good on you!

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

#266

Post by sethammons »

tamimio wrote: post #263
sethammons wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you expand on that? Why is that passive aggression?

Probably I should’ve added more context, but it usually come through the conversation in a “dismissive” manner or a way to signal “you were wrong and idiot”, and I also noticed it’s different among the age (older people don’t care or notice) and culture (Chinese for example take it as an insult), I don’t have an example but goes like this: Person A: I turned on the PC and have a blue screen. Person B: No you can’t do…

gotcha, I can see where you are coming from. fwiw, I tend to end potentially negatively received comments with a smile to let the person know I'm not angry or anything, just happy to be helping :)

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

#267

Post by notnaut »

ilyt wrote: post #235
notnaut wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yes, but I assure you the pink slip won’t mention anything about how the employee should have worked free overtime to fix their mistake. These things all vary considerably based on the type of employment. The only thing I’m arguing is semantic, but an important distinction in terms of recognizing the dignity in choosing to work for free in regards to the original point about giving alms.

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

#268

Post by cf141q5325 »

jongjong wrote: post #79

I tend to have this problem but only with certain people... Ironically though, I find that people who distrust me are often themselves untrustworthy and they are projecting. I think maybe it's because I have an unusual personality with high confidence but without status-seeking which makes certain people distrust me and doubt my motives. I often talk myself down and openly criticize my own decisions when they were su…

It might help you to know that a lot of people are living predominantly via creating identities through social learning with a high focus on their ego (and the resulting reactions). Joscha Bach referenced it in his recent Lex Fridman appearance (#392) if you are curious. "Stages of Life", "Identity", "Enlightenment" and "How we think" are the relevant segments if i recall correctly.

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

#269

Post by cf141q5325 »

smackeyacky wrote: post #250

So many trusting people here. I am sorry but trusting shitheels is always a mistake. Always. Cut that relationsip off at the root and walk away. No second chances, ever.

>No second chances, ever.

I find this to be an unrealistic standard. We all have lapses given the right moment (attention, tiredness, distraction). The question is do people comprehend the problem and are willing to work on it/ adjust for it?

Differently put, the issue isnt just one of detecting problems but detecting those that cant be fixed/adjusted for. Which means putting resources into debugging how they appear for which reasons. Seeing as walking away is costly, that can often be a worth while investment.

This is less about trusting and more about valuing functioning team relationships. Benefit of the doubt is a good strategy for team building, at the very least for information gathering.

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

#270

Post by zestyping »

stefandesu wrote: post #172
Seattle3503 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is interesting you mention interruption, because the original NVC book endorses certain kinds of interruptions. "Would you rather have someone pretend to listen, or to interrupt?"

> "Would you rather have someone pretend to listen, or to interrupt?" This is very interesting. In my experience, it applies especially to people who just can't. stop. talking. When someone gives you literally no chance to say anything (not even a few words), it's really hard to actually keep listening. So I have to either pretend to listen (but my thoughts are drifting off) or start interrupting, which I hate doing.

Deciding when you need to interrupt, and interrupting in a way that shows you care about what the other person is saying, is a really important skill. I didn't realize the value of it until I took an NVC class, because I had previously assumed interrupting was always bad. But, when done well, it can be extremely helpful, not only for improving your understanding but also building connection with the other person.
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