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Comment by Tainnor | Hacker News Reader

> If you try to give a structured, academic presentation to that executive, they will be bored, and you will waste most of your time presenting information they won’t consume. Other executives will disregard anything you say that you don’t connect to a specific piece of data or dataset.

And here I thought people become managers because they're actually great with people. So why does that imply that they should stop listening to their staff unless the staff can intuit their idiosyncratic communication preferences?

IOW, the advice is probably right given current realities, and I agree in general that giving an outline before going into excessive detail is a good practice, but I also feel that if an executive wants something from their staff, they should tell them exactly what they need and be prepared to listen to the experts. It should be in their interest after all.

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I have found more than one executive whose style is idiosyncratic but you don’t have to intuit it. They will interrupt, ask pointed questions, mansplain* and etc. to control the conversation so you fit to how they want to consume it. The problem I find is when in that mode they are unlikely to get the point because they don’t want to hear. They want you to say what they already want to hear.

* not a pc word but it sums up perfectly the communication style I can’t think of a better one. Maybe condescending?

I think condescendingly explain is what you're looking for.

> not a pc word but it sums up perfectly the communication style I can’t think of a better one. Maybe condescending?

As long as you’re insulting men, heterosexuals, white people or cis people you’re perfectly ok with the pc brigade. No need to apologize as long as you’re intersectional.

I feel like this is a reality when communicating across any two domains. People have their own problems their mind is busy with, you have to optimize for the least attentive person. That said, this sales-pitch style communication is exhausting.

Sure, but why is it solely the responsibility of the domain expert to adjust their communication style to the executive, instead of the executive - who after all hired the domain expert, at least indirectly, and who stands to gain more from the company performing well - learning to communicate with domain experts?

> Sure, but why is it solely the responsibility of the domain expert to adjust their communication style to the executive, instead of the executive - who after all hired the domain expert, at least indirectly, and who stands to gain more from the company performing well - learning to communicate with domain experts?

While in principle (as a non-executive who gets endlessly frustrated with these sorts of constraints) I wholeheartedly agree with your point, it's probably more reasonable to expect domain experts to learn one general "communicating with executives" style than to expect executives to learn countless "communicating with domain experts" styles.

Is it though? I think what will happen is that people who have big career ambitions will learn this style in order to please their superiors. But plenty of "regular" people, who don't feel a need for the career treadmill, will refuse to play along because after all - what's in it for them?

In ignoring those people (who may be technically brilliant or huge experts in their domain), the executives miss out more than the domain experts do, since the latter don't necessarily have a stake in the company's success.

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