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Comment by freeopinion | Hacker News Reader

So the sooner you give up and get out the better. Find an organization that isn't crippled in this way. Life is too short.

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I actually quite like my organization and the people within it. They are all decent people that are mostly try to make the project/thing good and don't fight silly fights.

The reason I wrote what I wrote is because the need to consider more of the communicative context is something inherent to all communication, not just to (bad) workplaces. Most people would profit from recognizing this, even outside work, e.g. in a relationship.

Are there any resources you’d recommend to learn this? Or is this just something you have to learn through trial and error?

For context, I’m someone who has big blind spots in this area and trying to figure out how to overcome them. Typically, I just develop a set of internal “rules” or principles and then run everything through those rules/decision tree. I’ve been able to overcome a LOT of previous blind spots in this way.

The challenge is that few people are willing and/or able to articulate the principles involved. When I find a book or person who can and will explain the principles and patterns, I’m golden. If not, I’m lost at sea.

Any resources you could recommend would be greatly appreciated!

I am afraid I cannot point you at any single resource, I read anything I got my fingers on at some point in my youth and some of those where my parents relationship/communication helper books, including books on NLP, nonviolent communication etc.

I later studied philosophy and had a look on more formal preconditions of communications, e.g. foundational models of communication, for which a good starting point is probably this wikipedia page: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Models_of_communication

I found Niklas Luhmanns system theory extremely helpful as well, as it describes very well why we tend to fall back into different communicative modes once our social frame of reference changes (e.g. relationship vs friends vs family) and how we speak and act is tied to the function we voluntarily or involuntarily assumed within that relationship.

Now don't get me wrong, I don't go around overanalyzing everything, I just think human communication is extremely fascinating and complex and there is so many ways to look at it.

Not the parent, but I recently listened to an audio book by Matt Abrahams on communication that you might find interesting. Several of the anecdotes and evidence explained really hit home for me in regards to being able to communicate ideas in a meeting room.

One of the first stories describes almost the exact situation from the top comment in this thread, where someone with a great idea in an organization needed to communicate the idea to the rest of the team.

I'm usually not a fan of self help type books, but I think stuff like this is good to listen to here and there:

https://www.amazon.com/Think-Faster-Talk-Smarter-Successfull...

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