How to learn all that?
1a. Fewer words are more powerful than many. Attempt to reduce your word count as much as possible.
1b. Expand your vocabulary.
1c. Make your statements active, not passive (reduce or eliminate 'be' verbs).
1d. Plan your thoughts well and orderly.
1e. As much as possible write in a narrative style.
1f. Speak from facts. Clearly state when your opinions are your opinions. Leave nothing to chance. Nobody will assume your expertise and generally nobody cares.
1g. In all things execute with precise.
2. Speak like slow, clear, deliberation like your mastery of writing.
2a. Speaking is plumbing. The words that escape your mouth are sewage. You don't them back and you don't want to. Keep a solid rhythm so the plumbing does not back up.
2b. Speak from empathy.
2c. 90% of communication is non-verbal comprising tone, facial expression, and body language. Embrace this.
2d. Make all communications flow from logic, but remember all communications are emotional all the time.
1. Writing and lingustics are fundamentally different and while serve similar goals, it's important to think about them separately[1]. Basically all human groups create spoken language but we only know of 1 (I think) time a phonetic writing system appeared. There is some limit how well writing can help you communicate with spoken word, but it's probably pretty far out.
1a. I always think of Cormac McCarthy books for this tip. Don't be like Dickens -- you're not doing a serial and getting paid per word. Know where the extra detail is warranted. [2]
1b. Expand your vocabulary but always remember your audience and speak at their level. Your goal is to effectively communicate ideas or persuade not self aggrandize.
2b. empathy and EQ I think are the biggest thing most people can improve easily that will improve communication. We don't think about how much the symbols in our heads vary. Tree conjures some TX pine for me but some other tree probably for you. This doesn't stop us from communicating about trees and probably poses little problems. If we talk about the word 'freedom' you can see the variations are much bigger and more important.
I also think you can improve communication by being open and yourself. The more masks you wear, the less effective you will be with each mask due to time in seat. The more you can consolidate all the yous, and bring the primary you into your interactions, you may find you are a better communicator than you thought[3]
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-B_ONJIEcE [2]: https://www.bookbrowse.com/excerpts/index.cfm/book_number/16... [3]: https://www.amazon.com/Weekend-Language-Presenting-Stories-P...
I think the OP meant to write as a way of organizing your thoughts. Writing is a form of self-dialogue. You put words on a page and attempt to capture the concept you are thinking about. Seeing those words in front of you allows you to reflect on the thought you have produced, you can examine it, modify it, come back to it after some time, respond to it. Dialogue with others is certainly more effective for correcting and properly constructing your thoughts but writing has the advantage that you can do it alone and at any time. It allows you to practice ordered thinking more frequently than you would be able to otherwise. When you do get a chance to speak with another person, if you have spent time writing about the topic you will be speaking about, the ideas you communicate to them will be more fully formed and logical.
Thanks for sharing, good advice in here.
Someone else with clue feel free to jump in.
3a. Methods that would reach those people would again not apply to the first group or to others.
Non-violent communication is a very structured approach to guiding people through perceived difficult behaviour: https://www.clearerthinking.org/post/2019/03/06/Want-to-impr...
Gain a little understanding about the give and take of communication: https://experimentalhistory.substack.com/p/good-conversation...
If possible, try to spend more time with people who espouse these desired characteristics and less time with those who don't.
Finally, conversation should be...fun...if possible. If you hack your way to being 100% in control of things all the time, then how much fun is that going to be for others?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33090580
The right way, in my opinion, is to hang around with real people who you genuinely respect and admire. Do this for even a few weeks and you begin to absorb not only their mannerisms, tone, prosody and pace, but some of their more subtle speech devices.
If communicative kindness can be captured in any theoretical way it is probably by Jurgen Habermas's idea of communicative rationality [1].
The centrepiece is sincerity
> don't say anything that sounds demeaning or hurtful to the listener.
You cannot fully control that and shouldn't optimise for it. Especially is you choose to speak truthfully rather than tactically. People will infer what is not implied, and some will do so deliberately as an argumentative device to feign 'offence'.
The trick is to be in touch with genuine compassion and attend to the wounds you cause when speaking well.
> It also includes listening attentively to what the other person is saying.
That is the hardest skill of all in my experience. You can "listen" on many levels. If there's a trick to that it's not splitting and allowing your mind to start preparing a counter/response before the other person has finished. Eye contact and physical proximity really help.
Interesting fact: the word "conspiracy" comes from personal intimacy. To co-n-spire is to breath the same air as others - ie conspirators would have to be in the same room in close proximity (presumably whispering)
[1] https://healthresearchfunding.org/habermas-theory-communicat...
Aim at being nonjudgemental, honest and supportive where at all possible. If what is left offends or 'hurts' someone, bad luck to them. They'll need to figure out their own approach to dealing with their feelings.
1) Listen w/out interrupting...look for that natural pause. Also take note that if there is no natural pause, that in itself is a clue to: 1) how the person comprehends information 2) treats other ppl as they may not respect other points of view otherwise they would stop with a pause.
2) Ask if you can repeat what you heard...this forces you to become an active listener as you try to retain salient points of the conversation; lets the other person know that you are listening, which has an interesting psychological effect; and finally validates both what you heard and what they said.
Some tips that might be useful
A big learning for me was how important humility is in communicating well.
For me, How to Win Friends and Influence People made me realize that. The title may be a bit offputting, but I found the book to be the catalyst that led to a lot of positive self-change. It shone a light on things that I have not been great at. The book did it in a way that did not make me defensive, and allowed the message to hit where it was needed. In a way, that is a demonstration of what communicating effectively is.
I put off reading the book for far too long, as I heard many summaries of it. The summaries don't do it justice.
Such an environment has a horrible failure mode: when you're actually direct and just say what you mean, for example, because otherwise disaster will happen, everyone will immediately start theorizing what you could possibly have meant by being so direct. It's both ridiculous and dysfunctional, and creates paranoid spirals of backstabbing and ass-covering that burn entire companies down.
People who feel easily demeaned or hurt are generally insecure. They can't take a joke because they take themselves too seriously. They will also try to suck up to others because they hope that will curry favor and avoid negative consequences when they mess up.
It's basically a recipe for avoiding responsibility, and the last thing you should want in an environment where excellence is required to do a good job.
Having spent time in such a company, and eventually getting booted out when somebody _else_ lost their temper at me, here's the craziest part: the people in charge thought I had no filter and always spoke directly... in actuality I was constantly biting my tongue, keeping tabs on what was going on under their noses, and giving them plenty of hints and time to course correct before I spoke my mind... and even then I chose every word carefully, always staying within the bounds of decency.
They didn't even realize that what they saw as unacceptably direct, was actually another person's idea of overly constricting and two-faced, and they didn't realize what it would be like to navigate from the outside. Getting them mad was actually the only thing that _did_ work to trigger any sort of positive change. Anything else would just get rationalized away.
My advice: find people who can take a joke, who are eager to learn, and who don't define themselves purely through how others see them, and you won't need to worry about stepping on their toes. I'll even cop the heat and say your chances of finding that among a majority of female coworkers are extremely slim.
When you do find yourself worried that your communication partner needs to be handled with kid gloves, and that you can't just say what you're thinking... that's not an environment you want to be in, not among adults.
What's worse, fragility is viral. If you're involved in building company culture, you have to constantly be on guard.
If thick skin is not treated as a virtue, it will be treated as a vice. It's only a matter of time until you will be forced to celebrate bad ideas.
That's sort of what happened to society in the recent years. "I'm offended" is seen as a valid argument.
The most productive environments I worked at were extremely honest and direct. It's not even supposed to be surprising, and yet for many folks it is.
For example: if Bob sucks at SQL, and that happens to be one of your strengths, don't say stuff like "Man, these SQL scripts are trash" or "Dude, your SQL is ass, let me write it" - instead, something like "Hey, I noticed our db code is looking pretty rough, do you want some help cleaning things up?".
“Hey Bob, I need to trust that when I open a PR of yours to review, that the SQL is not going to need a high decree of scrutiny. I’ve seen some bad habits that I’m willing to explain specifically, but first I need to hear that you’re willing to spend time to improve up your SQL skills or mindset.”
“Bob, your SQL PRs tend to take longer than usual and I’ve noticed it is because of a few technical things in how the sql is written. I used to make similar mistakes. Can we review these patterns of issues tomorrow?”
Yet if I hear that someone “can’t take a joke”, I’d first wonder if they are jokes which demean the relationship between the listener and either the joker or the company.
I still think I have a responsibility to choose my words with care — care for the mutual trust and respect which constitute a healthy working relationship. The times when I failed to give someone clear constructive feedback, I failed to respect the other person’s emotional maturity. The times when I failed to speak an unpleasant truth directly, I failed to equip them with the knowledge to be trustworthy. The times when I failed to risk escalating a conflict, I failed to defend the constitution of the relationship.
https://www.radicalcandor.com/
Summary: https://review.firstround.com/radical-candor-the-surprising-... Bypass sign-in wall: https://archive.ph/l2WNK
https://mastersofcreativity.stanford.edu/archive/radicalcand...
Open questions are used to gain knowledge, and are phrased so that an answer can be anything. They can start with words like: Who, what, when, where, and why. However be extremely careful using "why" because it forces someone to justify a position.
Closed questions are used to drive a decision. They are phrased so that only specific answers are acceptable. They can start with words like: Can, will, should, do, don't. They frequently force the respondent into a commitment.
My personal pet peeve is closed negative questions like "Don't you like it?". That forces a respondent to defend against a negative assumption you've placed on them! Better to ask, "What do you think of it?"
(disclosure: author of the note. I've been managing large software engineering teams for a long time and I think the investment in improving communication skills pays off incredible dividends for the both the individual and their team mates)
That being said, I don't think abrasiveness correlates as strongly to authenticity as you seem to imply. You do not need to be obsequious or to grovel for your coworkers' approval or to follow all of their norms, but you should treat them with respect in as much as you would want them to treat you with respect.
It's also an incredibly common and lazy copout, for downright mean/dickish/asshole people to claim their abrasiveness is "just who they are" and others need to "get used to them" or "grow a thicker skin". These people are generally toxic, and make it impossible to build a healthy workplace or team culture.
I don't believe you are one of those people, and I certainly hope you don't become one.
1) the hardest to change is talking. You tend to run at the limit of your capacity, taking shortcuts to speed up. This leaves little time for planning or introspection. However that's not to say its impossible. My first step would be to "develop" empathy.
What I mean by empathy is understanding how people feel, not feeling how they feel. there is no need to project their feelings onto you. To do this you need to be around other people. You need to listen in to their conversations and work out what each side is feeling, and figure out what their reaction would be to the words are being said.
Long in person meetings are good practice, You are allowed to stare vacantly, and listen intently.
2) For written communication, you are running at your own speed. Look at the blurb that comes with high end advertising, try and pull apart the facts from the spin. Those words have been chosen to illicit a specific emotion.
As a practice, try writing a complaint, instruction, or direction that fits into one paragraph. write the same thing three time, but targeting different emotions you want to get across, something simple, like joy, respectful annoyance, disappointment. put them asside for a week, come back and see how they make you feel.
Iterate and improve.
I'm guilty of all that at times. What works for me:
- Priorities. I pick my fights. Not everything needs to be a conversation. Sometimes I prefer email over conversations, because editing. You can't take back a half thought-through sentence in a conversation.
- Tone. Sticking to facts sometimes comes across as lack of empathy, but I find it's the best compromise of all available options. Minimising mean squared error etc.
> It also includes listening attentively to what the other person is saying.
I think this requires some serious self-hacking and patience. I worked in cultures where you don't interrupt others, which occasionally leads to people going on pointless rants. I think active listening where you steer the conversation might help generate genuine interest.
> How to learn all that?
Practice in your head, in front of a mirror, with friends and at work. Pick your fights: prepare a conversation, limit the scope (topic and time) and limit the training session to that one conversation.
There's Circling Anywhere based in Texas or Circling Europe based in Amsterdam. Both offer online stuff as well as in person stuff. There are also lots of local facilitators all over the world.
We work together on your writing as you’re writing. You send me your work in progress, I'll respond promptly with feedback and advice. I'll ask questions, flag awkward sentences, and help find the right language to get your point across. My focus is less on grammar and syntax, more on structure and framing, and even more on the content of the argument itself.
We'll exchange a bunch of email back-and-forths until you have a well-written message. It's free, email is in my profile if you're interested.
When we have stressful events at work I pay attention to what our manager says and note what's effective. You can even write down useful phrases and try to incorporate them into your vocabulary. Pay attention to how people respond...if it's effective, keep it, if it's awkward, keep trying.
The vocal cords vibrate when reading. So the advice may be to read more. Interesting!
I used to think something like, "If I can just get them to see that I didn't mean to hurt/mean it that way, they clearly won't be hurt!" This is not at all true for many (most?), and like many matters of emotion that's ok. I was not originally aware of the phrase "intent is not impact" but this idea is what I'm trying to describe above.
It is very important to approach this from a place of humility and non-defensiveness. Be eager to apologize for the hurt you caused. I'm sure you're a great person who doesn't wish to hurt people; apologizing doesn't mean that you're sorry you tried to hurt them but that you're sorry that you did. Think of it as the equivalent of apologizing for accidentally elbowing someone in the head. It's not like you meant to, but their head still hurts where you elbowed it.
Actually caring helps a lot; it helps remind you to think before you speak or write, and to pay attention to reactions. If you care, you tend to get better over time.
This is half in jest, but I did find that when I did some amateur comedy on Twitter I focused more on making my tweets concise. Comedy is an economy of words and Twitter applies an upper bound. It was kinda fun, really.
I wonder if a similar approach is helpful? Learn to say what you need to say in few words, which might help avoid unintentional tone. …just be careful not to sound blunt.
You can call it the User's Manual for the English language.
While debate clubs practice "combative speech" | structured disagreement etc. the good ones also talk about the elements of speech, attacking weaknesses in ideas without attacking or belittling a person, and have exercises to practice various facets of speech - the public speaking, the framing of ideas, the time taken to compose and restructure a reply on the fly, and so forth.
If you're talking tech/dev and they're a dev as well, then use lingo.
If they aren't, then make sure to say you don't know how much they know and they should interject if it's too basic. Then adjust the level until the listener gets your language and doesn't need to constantly get clarification.
But honestly, I think you'll just need to accept that, sometimes, you will sound demeaning, and constantly adjust yourself to find the optimum for each person.
Read "Non Violent Communication" it will help utilize logic to change how you talk to a more empathetic way.
And don't just read it - keep t he book by your side always.
comes with practice
> so that I don't say anything that sounds demeaning or hurtful to the listener.
Learn to put yourself in their position. Imagine someone's saying it to you, how would you feel hearing it? Takes practice. I still have to do it.
> It also includes listening attentively to what the other person is saying.
Practice, and believing they have something valuable to say. If you really can't concentrate, that may be a medical thing.
Good luck!
How can we develop empathy? It’s just the mental exercise of putting yourself in someone else’s shoes and trying to see the world through their eyes.
The key, therefore, to meaningful communication is to use empathy to listen to others as if you were in their position trying to be understood."
To communicate implies not only verbally but also listening in which there is a sharing, a thinking together, not accepting something that you or I say, but sharing together, thinking together, creating together, all that is involved in that word 'communicate'. And in that word is implied also the art of listening. The art of listening demands a quality of attention in which there is real listening, real sense of having an insight as we go along, each second, not at the end, but at the beginning.
Communication implies there must be at the same level, at the same time, with the same intensity, we are walking together, we are thinking together, we are observing together, sharing together.
Also, in communication there is not only a verbal communication, but there is a non-verbal communication, really which comes into being, or which happens when one has the art of really listening to somebody, in which there is no acceptance, no denial, or comparison, or judgement, just the act of listening.
We - both of us - must understand this question, because it is one of the most difficult things to communicate with another.
Most of us do not listen at all; we naturally have ideas - our own opinions, prejudices, conclusions - and these become a barrier and prevent us from listening. After all, if one is to listen, one must be attentive. And there is no attention if one is occupied with one's own thoughts, conclusions, opinions, and evaluations - then all communication ceases. This is an obvious fact, but unfortunately, though it is a fact, we rarely are aware of this fact. One has to put aside one's own thoughts, conclusions, and opinions, and listen - only then is communication possible.
Communication implies responsibility - responsibility on the part of the listener as well as on the part of the speaker. The speaker wishes to convey something, and the listener must partake, share, in what is being said. It is not a one-sided affair. Both you and the speaker must be in communication with each other; that is, the words the speaker uses must have the same meaning for you also. There must be not only a verbal communication but also an intellectual understanding of the words and also of the nature and significance of the words and the sentences. There must also be an emotional contact. You may be intellectually very aware of agreeing or disagreeing, rejecting or accepting; but that will not lead us far. Whereas if there were an intellectual awareness of what is being said, of what is implied, and also an emotional contact, then communication with each other would be possible.
Merely to listen to a talk of this kind intellectually has very little meaning. But if you could listen intellectually, emotionally, and physically - that is, if you could give your own total attention to what is being said - then communication would become an extraordinarily interesting affair. We rarely communicate anything to another directly. You have your conclusions, your experiences, your knowledge, your information, your tradition, the society, the culture in which you have been brought up; and if the speaker does not belong to the same category, the same tradition, the same culture, and if the speaker denies the whole structure of that culture, of that narrow, limited conditioning of mind, then communication between you and the speaker will be nil. So to communicate with each other, there must be not only an intellectual, rational, clear thought but also an open attention; and then only is it possible to understand very deeply what is being said - not agreeing or disagreeing but seeing the validity and the truth of what is being said. Therefore, it is responsibility on your part as well as on the part of the speaker.
We are going to share together, and sharing essentially is communication. If you merely hear what is being said and do not partake in what is being stated, then communication is not possible. Therefore, communication has significance only when both of us are in relationship, sharing the same problem and trying to find out not only the solution but also the full implications of the problem that one has. Then only, it seems to me, will ''communication'' and these talks have some meaning - which means really that one has to listen.
To listen, several things are required. First, one's own mind must be quiet; otherwise, it cannot listen. If your mind is chattering, opposing, agreeing or disagreeing, then you are not listening. But if you are quiet, if you are silent, and if in that silence there is attention, then there is the act of learning. And all communication is learning - not a repetition of what has been said - to a person who would understand, who would listen, who would really grapple with the many problems of life into which we are going.
One has to listen, one has to be in communion with the problem. And you cannot be in communication with the problem if you do not listen to it, if you do not learn the whole significance of that problem; and you cannot learn if there is no quietness, if there is no attention. And you have more or less to establish a relationship between the speaker and yourself: not a relationship which is based on words, on ideological conclusions, but a relationship that intends to investigate together the problem of existence - investigate together - not that you listen and the speaker investigates or explains, but both you and the speaker are going to take a journey together, a journey of exploration, a journey of investigation, a journey to understand this extraordinary thing called life. This means an active sharing on your part, not a dull, indifferent attention, but an active sharing on the part of the listener who is taking the journey with the speaker.
This guy randomly appeared on my Instagram feed, and since then, he has become a must follow for me, because his content about communication is just amazing.
Clear and to the point.
I covers great tips and different scenarios.
Here is a paper about it https://www.academia.edu/2241961/_Ancient_Egyptian_Rhetoric_...
Write stuff.
Speak often.
Listen more than you speak. (two ears, one mouth)
Beyond the cheap rhetorical trick, if one takes the effectiveness of communication to it's extreme they will reach what the French call "langue de bois", wooden language, as can be seen in the annals of parliamentary speeches of yesteryear or in the buzzwords-filled tech articles of today. And by aiming for pure effectiveness you can only achieve a wooden language since only there, in the dried-out forest of semantical nothingness and nonsense, you can reach a general consensus: we all know what "artificial intelligence blockchain-driven cloud-computing" means: close the article and move on.
This implies that the effectiveness of communication should only be one of the means to reach a goal. What could that goal be? Simply put: the goal of any communication should only be that of emerging out of it as a truth-teller. How to be a truth-teller? Use only the public reason.
Two rather heavy concepts above. The first, the truth-teller (parrhesiastes in Greek [1]) is a concept developed by Michel Foucault in the final lectures held at Collège de France [2], especially in 'The Courage of Truth', the Second Hour from February 1, 1984 speaks of "the truth-telling of the technician". And being a truth-teller you would never worry about being demeaning or hurtful because sometimes you would simply have to be so and you will only care about the courage of being a truth-teller, when calling the murderous naked king a murderous naked king.
The second concept is a dichotomy developed by Immanuel Kant between private and public use of reason [3]. For Kant 'private' does not mean that which I do in solitude, but that which belongs to my self-interest. We often hear the phrase "free speech" and all the phraseology surrounding it. But we never ask, free of what should the speech be? Kant answers: free of your own self-interests, perceived as such or surreptitiously attached by others. By using the public reason, one is indeed free, a truth-teller on the way to enlightenment, on the way to "emerge out of the self-imposed nonage".
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parrhesia
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foucault%27s_lectures_at_the_C...
[3] 1784, Kant, Immanuel, What is Enlightenment? http://www.columbia.edu/acis/ets/CCREAD/etscc/kant.html and in the beautiful language of the Romanticism, German, "Aufklärung ist der Ausgang des Menschen aus seiner selbstverschuldeten Unmündigkeit", https://www.rosalux.de/fileadmin/rls_uploads/pdfs/159_kant.p...