Use More Words

August 22, 2019

Joshua and Kel talk about communicating better. Spoiler: One of the best ways to better communicate is to simply use more words! Plus a bunch of other practical information, tips and suggestions.

Be sure to check out our new Slack community to meet others who are facing the same things you are and share your journeys!

• 00:04 Joshua

  Hey folks, welcome to Getting Apps Done. A mostly non-technical podcast about building software. Today we wanted to talk about communication, particularly communicating technical concepts to less technical people. It's definitely an art form, if nothing else that a lot of people will get wrong. So, uh, it seemed like an important thing to talk about.

• 00:26 Kel

  It's a good topic and we say, you know, describing technical concepts to non technical people, but we're really talking about is describing something that we have knowledge of because of our skill to someone who does not share that exact same skill. So like this is kind of a general concept. Uh, but we'll of course try to focus on technical and development stuff since we are Getting Apps Done.

• 00:51 Joshua

  Actually you're absolutely right. I was talking to a prospective client today and they came back with a comment that led me to think we should actually talk about this. They said, I actually understood everything that used to said or normally want to talk to people like you. I had no idea designers and people like that. And that was actually what clued me in there. It wasn't just that it was technical, but in this case he was talking about designers who were saying, well, it's just part of the design and trying to explain this to them, but not in a way that he understood it all. He just, it was all magic and smoke and mirrors and whatever else to him. And he left feeling less knowledgeable than he started. Which obviously if you're trying to sell somebody on a concept or you're trying to help them understand what their options are, you can't leave them more confused when you go.

• 01:42 Kel

  Yeah, that's, that's a, I mean, I don't even know where we want to start on this. I can think of a dozen different reasons of why you might have that communication problem. I mean, the important thing though is when you're trying to tell somebody you're trying to explain something to someone, you have to do it from their context. You have to do it from what they know, what their experiences and where they are today. Sometimes you're just not in that right head space to understand, you know, acronyms or whatever words that people are using. So you have to kind of get into the head of the person you're talking to and address things in a way that helps them kind of guide them to wherever you're trying to go. So don't use words that aren't helpful. That's always a great start.

• 02:25 Joshua

  Absolutely. And I think one of the ways I like to do that is I talked to them a little bit before we get involved with anything. I started to find out a little bit more about them, about their background because it's very easy to go too far the other way and start to get condescending. You're explaining things to them that clearly they should know because that's what they do every day because you're trying to explain this to them so they're not getting confused, but at the same time you weren't in the right context. I think context is absolutely the right word there because you've got to figure out where they aren't. Where do they stand? What do they know, what don't they know so that you can start to build up the right grammar for this discussion.

• 03:01 Kel

  A random callback: it's really similar to interviewing somebody. We talked about an informal interview process where you just talk and get a feel for somebody's skill level on things. It's, it's very relevant and the same thing. Like, oh, you know nothing about, I dunno, angular, I probably shouldn't start talking about, you know, dependency injection and components or something. I should have avoid, if you know nothing about that topic, I should avoid it. On the other hand, if you are familiar with that topic, that might mean, oh, I can get, you know, dive a little bit deeper into this or even use it as an analogy for a different related topic. I can, you know, connect these two things using something that you do know.

• 03:39 Joshua

  Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there are so many technical things that are based around business things that you can usually find some common ground. So you might be talking to somebody who's in marketing. They are not going to understand in the slightest what dependency injection is. Well actually no, I take this back. I was talking to somebody the other day. He's in marketing. He's learning how to program. He's actually just joined our slack community to discuss things like this, so he probably would know a little bit about dependency injection though he did say he's just starting in JavaScript so maybe not, but what they will know about is things that are relevant to them. So I might not want to talk to them about dependency injection. I might want to kind of gloss over that, explain it in a less technical manner, but then when I start to talk about SEO and things that are directly relevant to them, I can be a little bit more technical with them because they probably know better than I do.

• 04:25 Joshua

  So starting to explain this is how you're going to get into your metadata for Google or setting up open graph that details and things like that. That's their context. They know what those things are, so I don't need to give them a lot of detail about that. I don't need to go explain to them what open graph is because they're marketers, they probably know these things and if they don't-

• 04:44 Kel

  They probably know it better than us.

• 04:45 Joshua

  Yes, they almost absolutely know it better than us, but when you're speaking to them, you can very quickly one the moment you say open graph, if the eyes light up and Oh yeah, I know what you're talking about, then you carry on. Otherwise you starting to keep an eye on. It's going to be a lot of different things, body language and the way they react to things. If they're looking at you like deer in the headlights, then obviously maybe you do need to explain what open graph is.

• 05:09 Kel

  Yes. And that is a kind of a skill. And also, I mean that another one, bouncing back to the interviewing thing, a part of this is getting people comfortable with showing their ignorance. And if you're judging people every time that they're, oh, I have no idea what that is. And you're like, oh, how could you not know that? Then they're going to be less likely to show you where they're ignorant and where they're not ignorant. So you have to be very accepting of what people know and what they don't know. I mean, this seems like a really simple concept, but it's really important when you're communicating, especially in business environments to just, people have really varied skillsets, especially in business environments. And so it's important to just run with it and pay attention and use those things.

• 05:50 Joshua

  It is kind of a simple concept, but it's actually a really difficult one to get. And it's something that you have to practice because it's not just what you say and things that you do, but it could be small, subtle things. I mean it's very easy to not realize you're rolling your eyes when they say something that you think is dumb because of course they should know that. Why don't they know that? So you have to be very conscious of how you are reacting to what they say. That is a part of making that environment safe for them so that they can give you what context they're in freely.

• 06:23 Kel

  Exactly. And then once you have that you can start kind of honing in. The more like shared skills, the more shared experiences you have, the, the more like analogies you have to work with. If nothing else, the more ways you can communicate or describe, you know, how dependency injection works. Coming from the Midwest. I have a lot of car like just baked in car analogies because that was the only shared context I had at the time of, all right, I'm going to explain this to you. Like it's a transmission. Um, and those weren't the best analogies but they were, you know, a start. And it takes practice. You, you start to kind of get like the highlights of different skills so you can make these different connections to explain things to people. Um, but it is very important to not assume that knowledge and not assume that they know what these words mean or like especially, you know, very specific words that have all of this context attached to them. Well it's probably not a safe assumption that they know what all of that means and all of the details about it.

• 07:21 Joshua

  And interestingly when you are talking to people about cars or whatever works for them, you're doing a couple things at the same time. You're also establishing a real human connection with this person. You're learning about them, you're interested in them, and that actually is something in its own that makes people feel safer to share with you the fact that you are interested in them and willing to participate in a conversation that they understand and they're interested in and they want to talk about immediately makes them want to tell you more, to trust you a little bit more because why not? I enjoy a good conversation. Who doesn't, right?

• 07:54 Kel

  Yes, exactly. I kind of wanted to applaud while you're doing that one there. That's the thing I try to talk to people about the most is open and honest communication. It's a very basic thing but it's really hard. I mean we have a, the world is not safe. People judge you for ignorance all the time. It's like it is very much a problematic thing, but at the same time when you do push past that, you really do connect with people. You make so much, so much better connections. Your communication works so much better. You learn so much more. Things happen better. You know your team works better. Like it's very helpful.

• 08:25 Joshua

  Yeah. In all relationships. I mean whether it's your best friend next door, your spouse, your children, your boss, coworkers, a new client, the big boss. It doesn't matter who it is. Establishing those real connections makes it much easier to find their context, to understand what they do and don't know so that you can be a lot clearer in your communication.

• 08:50 Kel

  And it's really important to just reiterating this again, that accepting people's what they know and don't know. And like you may only connect on like a tiny portion of this person's personality and that's fine. Especially in a business environment. That's probably all you need to connect to. You probably don't need to know about all of their hobbies that they might want to share them to you if they start to like you. Um, but being very accepting and just, okay well that's what they know and what they don't know and not considering it any further than that. Don't worry about why. Like that's not part of this project. You know, that's not part of the communication you're trying to do right then. Can be very helpful in just really helping with that type of communication because you don't make extra assumptions. When you don't try to like think about the why this person knows or not knows. You tend not to make as many assumptions about what their actual knowledge and you don't make as many mistakes in that open and honest communication.

• 09:42 Joshua

  Yeah. It's easier to be less judging then as well because it becomes, it's not a personal thing. You're not equating them or comparing them to yourself. Then you're just looking at them for who they are, which is really, that's the way we should be communicating with people. Everybody is who they are. They may not know the things you know, but they probably know a hell of a lot of things that you don't.

• 10:04 Kel

  Exactly. And it's not just comparing to you but people like you. People similar to you. Like especially like the development community's horrible about this because we spend so much time in this space, we have like entire vocabularies and literally languages built around our knowledge sets and so we're kind of bad at at making that hop to go communicate to people who have not spent the last, I think I figured out 25 years now, programming. Yeah. Who have not spent the last 25 years doing this.

• 10:33 Joshua

  And that actually is probably what gives technical people this bad image that we're poor communicators because we have all this language and we forget. Lawyers are much the same. They have a huge lexicon around what they do and how they do it and when they talk to anybody else about what they do, I know when they talked to me, my eyes glaze over and I just hope they go away because there's no shared context in there at all for me to them and developers are much the same. Technical people in general are much the same. If there's nothing shared, then you can't really connect to that person and that's why those personal things are so much more important because you need to establish that connection. You need to start to understand that they are different, but that's okay and this is where we overlap. This is where we don't, and that's how I need to communicate with them to make that mesh because that's really what we're trying to do. We're trying to establish a connection between two people who may or may not share a common set of background but need to talk.

• 11:38 Kel

  Yeah. And you might not share any language. I mean, you can start miming. You start, you share whatever you can find that you have in common in your work your way up from there.

• 11:46 Joshua

  Absolutely. I talk with my hands all the time.

• 11:49 Kel

  Like, uh, body language is one though. That also is a thing that is different on where you're from. Like we learn body language from the people around us. Language is not a exactly a universal thing. It's whatever your shared experiences that matches. Um, but yeah, you go for whatever you can find that matches and at the same time though, you should try to avoid specific stuff until you know it's safe or you put it into a lot of context. So like if you've ever like a word that you don't know when you're reading, if there's loads of contexts around it, you can figure out what the word means and it's probably okay to continue using it. That's a helpful thing. Speaking of lawyers, they do it all the time. Right? The first thing they do is alright we're going to define some vocabulary and then we're going to go through the rest of the contract.

• 12:29 Kel

  Um, but yeah, when you're having these communications, and again, especially in the technical world, like avoiding specific terminology without definitions, don't assume people know what an acronym is. I'm actually really, really anti-acronym just as an entirety thing. Unless you're like in a team situation with people you work with constantly where you're trying to come up with shortcuts and your, your communication so you can go faster when you're just talking to anybody else, don't use them. They're very exclusionary of people who have no idea what you're talking about. All you're doing is kind of like putting a gate there

• 13:03 Joshua

  And half the time the acronyms take just as long. The same as the real thing. You didn't gain anything

• 13:08 Kel

  Exactly. And it's another thing you got to memorize. And, coming from a healthcare and manufacturing environment and a programming environments like they get reused all the time. It's like I've seen the same acronyms used for like a dozen different topics and it's like this isn't actually helpful. This is just more confusing.

• 13:25 Joshua

  And yeah, I mean even just communicating amongst other developers, there are quite a few times people ask me, do you know how to do this? And I'm thinking, Eh, you know, I'm googling it. What is [inaudible] and there's 54 different results. Um, no I don't know anything about Australian independence. No, no. This new framework. What? Acronyms are bad.

• 13:48 Kel

  I'm a big fan when you're talking about communication. I just say more words. Use more words. Like if you, you make a stab at it and you're, I don't know if that communicated well. Just try it again and it's fine. We don't like to do that because it's a very open thing. You start showing your own ignorance. The more you speak, like you've probably heard the, the, Oh, what is it? The wise person stays quiet and so you know, and while the not so wise person just says loud and shows their ignorance like we have, we're often told to avoid that situation. But when you're talking about open and honest communication, you can't, you have to show where you are as well or they can't communicate back to you. The same problem.

• 14:30 Joshua

  Which actually that's the other side of the coin here. We've been talking about you needing to figure out what their context is, but you also need to share what yours is so they can talk back to you because communication generally is a two way street unless you're on a podcast. But even then we have the community around that because we thought that actually communication should be two way. You shouldn't just to us ramble on about whatever we've decided to ramble on about and frost, everything we say, we actively want you to come in and share your context with us. Join ours, talk to us, ask us questions, challenge us. Hell yes, please challenge us. Tell us what we're doing wrong and how dumb we are about this or that. Share and let us know what's going on.

• 15:11 Kel

  And if nothing else, people talking to us more. I've been, I'm a programmer for 25 years. There are plenty of contacts I am totally missing because that's been my bucket. And so talking to people outside of that bucket is really helpful to all the, the new programmers that we've been meeting since starting this podcast have been really helpful in helping me learn to communicate even better than I was prior.

• 15:32 Joshua

  Yeah, particularly as a lot of them come from different contexts, they have had different careers before they became developers. That's really cool. That's amazing because we have that shared context of software development, but they also have something else that they can share with us that is really useful and valuable. And that's really what communication is about and why you want to be able to communicate effectively with people because there's so much that we have to share with each other. There's so much that we can communicate to make sure that we're all working together. Not just at odds because we can't be bothered to speak to each other or at least not to share anything real.

• 16:08 Kel

  A little tangential. One of my favorite things to do once you can have this kind of communication is to give a tour of something that I know enough about them and what they're interested in, to give them a tour of something that I know about that they would be interested in, and here's some highlights. So you can imagine like sharing jokes or something from the community in jokes or whatever it is that's interesting about a topic with somebody else. And that's something you can only really do by getting to know them first and then you show them this cool new thing that they'll probably enjoy and it takes a little more effort from you. But then they have the new highlights of a new context. This new thing that they can use to communicate and, you know, this new insight into the community they knew nothing about. So like I said tangential, but.

• 16:51 Joshua

  We need more inside jokes apparently.

• 16:54 Kel

  So we should probably talk a little bit with that specific things. I mean we brought up, you know, I like avoiding acronyms. I like using more words. We talk about, we've said, you know, be open and honest is kind of your only way to, don't make any assumptions about what they know or don't know, just kinda plow forward. Um, other things you can do. Math is almost always a shared context. If you can keep it simplistic. Like risks. Like what do you think the odds of are on this? Like we all have a pretty okay ish internal gambler. But that's like a great way of describing things. Especially, I mean, part of this discussion also kind of came up because we were talking about uh, agile stuff. You know, part of being in a team as a developer is discussing things like timelines to your boss or what are the odds that this is actually going to succeed within specific timelines and being able to get a good feel for what those odds are. And statistics can give you kind of a shared, like really it can give you a shared language that's a little bit more specific than the fuzzy words we normally use.

• 17:54 Joshua

  Yeah, like tee-shirt sizes. Though. I think actually tee-shirt sizes work. Most people have one tee shirt at some stage. It's a shared context that we have that I know what a small tee-shirt is compared to an extra large one.

• 18:05 Kel

  Well a tee shirt is. When we talk about t-shirts, eyes to do, you're usually like writing it on a five star system, which is okay well each of these are point values and those could be assigned between zero and 100% and oh look it's stats. You know, it's what are the, how relative sizes and things and so like it can take a while, especially when we're talking about these things, because the numbers are all really arbitrary in agile, but it can take a while to come up with a shared language that actually is shared, shared.

• 18:33 Kel

  Like my five point is not your five points is not your boss's five points. And so it can take time to come up with what is five points actually and the more accurate you can make that with actual metrics, too, so everybody's on the same page because that's what reality is. That's a really helpful way of building up like a shared communication language with people who don't share anything else.

• 18:55 Joshua

  Agreed. And it is a lot about building that context again, with that group that you're working with, one that I love and hate at the same time, MoSCoW for priorities, the name MoSCoW itself is completely broken because it's an acronym and nobody has any clue what you're talking about. But most people understand the concept of, you must have this, you should have this, you could have this, and we're not doing this.

• 19:18 Joshua

  There's simple concepts that most people can get, but the moment they wrap it up in Moscow, everybody's like, did you mascot that? Uh, no, I didn't take it to Russia. Did you?

• 19:27 Kel

  Yeah, yeah, that's totally back into the acronym thing. Where I'm just like, just just use more words. You're not saving that much time unless it's in your own team and you've built this like internal language for your team and you can totally import words from other like communities into your team, but you need to all be on the same page if you're going to have good fast, efficient communication.

• 19:50 Joshua

  Which is also again, part of it, it's being aware of that. So if your team has decided that yes, you work with the MoSCoW system, you understand what that is, everybody knows what it is, but you get a new person, you need a process for saying, okay, so we're going to talk about MoSCoW now and I'm going to explain what that is.

• 20:06 Kel

  I'm a big fan of the new people writing down the things that they needed explained for the next new person. Because once you've been in the system for awhile, onboarding new people is almost impossible. We're not even speaking the same language. You're just telling me what you don't get and we'll work our way up. Like let's just, just, it's fine. You can be ignorant of whatever I'm talking about. And again, we talk about safety, this is why you want them to be able to tell you the things they don't understand so you can explain it to them.

• 20:34 Joshua

  Yeah, absolutely. I actually had somebody at one stage, this is another one that I really hate. It's in fact buzzwords in general. I don't really like because they end up losing all meaning. I had somebody actually come up to me and say, okay, I know you guys said You do cloud stuff. What is the cloud? And they were absolutely right. First off, I don't know what the hell the cloud is anymore because people have made up so many meanings for it that it's lost all meaning.

• 21:02 Kel

  It depends entirely on context.

• 21:04 Joshua

  Yes, absolutely. So you know, we sat down and then I explained, okay, so what we're actually talking about here is this and this and this and this. To a point that he said, oh, okay, I know exactly what you're talking about now, but just because there was a buzzword, somebody, I think it was in marketing used this because you know everybody has to have cloud stuff now and they just had no clue what we were talking about. And you know, I sat down, I don't actually know cloud is anymore, but this is what we're talking about. And buzzwords are really bad for that because people start to pick things up and they keep reusing them and re-purposing them and it just gets to the stage that it's extremely poor for communication. Again, you have to have the full context, you need to use more words to explain it because cloud does not cover all the stuff that cloud covers.

• 21:55 Kel

  Yeah. And sometimes you introduce a concept like that that's like a really well known one. And depending on what you talking about, cloud might be good enough to get everybody on the same-ish page to continue your conversation. But if you make it, if you make it really obvious that it's okay for somebody to go, you know, I don't know what this means in this context. Can you explain it? Then they will say that and ask and then communication gets better and understanding gets better and we work better together. It's amazing.

• 22:23 Joshua

  Now on the flip side, if you are the person on the other side and the person isn't being clear enough to you, that's actually a very good point. Tell them. Say explain that. And just make it clear that they are not communicating while you are not understanding, you are not on the same page and you need to be,

• 22:42 Kel

  it's important when you, it's important when you do that, because not everybody has this internalized concept of safety. You know, we're talking to people right now, like telling them how to act and like other people are not going to do that. Yeah. And so when you do this, it's important to, it's important when you say that to express it, like it's a totally normal thing because it is totally a normal thing. But we tend to hide that. We tend to get angry because the person's a poor communicator or we get, you know, we get shy and act like, oh, I'm so embarrassed. I should totally know this. Right. But no, no, it's totally normal not to know something. Be okay with that. Internalize that. It's, it's fine that that is fine. That you don't know something as well. Like we've said that other people are valid. You are valid too.

• 23:26 Joshua

  Yeah. Right. I love telling my mechanics that and they say, well, you need a new this, dohickey, dobob whatever call it thing. And I look at them like, yeah, that sounds important. What does it do? And you know, they always, they look at you, oh yeah, well it does this, you know, they just, it didn't even occur to them, they're not trying to be rude. They're not trying to make me feel like an idiot or small or anything else. They just have no idea that I wouldn't know what to do-hickey thing-a-ma-jig is and and the moment you point it out they explain it and it's no big deal.

• 23:59 Kel

  Absolutely. And if you can, you can kind of show it. It takes a little bit of practice and a little bit of effort to be able to show, I think this is a perfectly normal thing to do when I don't know, something is to just ask and express my ignorance and kind of show that I think it should be, like it is a safe thing to do, even though I know it isn't always. And people who appreciate that we'll join in on it like that and explain it to you.

• 24:23 Joshua

  Yeah. I think most people at the worst, you might get a little quizzical look like they asked a question. Nobody ever asks questions. Why did they ask it? I should answer that question. It was a little bit of a delay, but it's not too awkward. But it's never, I don't think I've ever had anybody who wasn't completely insecure and not somebody I wanted to work with anyway, come back with anything other than an answer that might not have been the right answer. But it was an answer. They tried. And that's really what we need.

• 24:55 Kel

  Speaking of words that get used a lot that most people don't have like a quite fir understanding of. Toxic, we talk about being like toxicity or somebody being toxic. This is like a really good example of a really common way that we are accidentally toxic of how could you not know that? How could, that so absurd? Like not knowing that whatever it is is such an absurd concept to me because I've been soaking in it for 20 something years. It's funny. And that can make feel bad. Other people feel bad because it's like you're, you're saying they're absurd and that's bad and, but that's a really internalized concept and avoiding that is good, it takes practice and what we're talking about today basically.

• 25:34 Joshua

  Yeah. And we've mentioned that before about interviews, things like being asked to do a bubble sort and not knowing what the hell they're talking about, because you've probably been doing this forever and you don't even remember what it's called. Or you might never have known the name, but you've been using them for 20 years because you figured it out because they're fairly common. It's not exactly,

• 25:54 Kel

  Or you may never have used it at all. Who knows?

• 25:56 Joshua

  Absolutely, but there's this instant judgment and that is very hard for somebody who's being interviewed to deal with because you're already nervous as hell. You're not really wanting to sit there and say, I have no idea what a bubble sort is. Could you please explain that to me? But that's what you need to do. You actually just need to say, can you explain that one a little bit to me? I'm not sure the context of that. Just make it clear that you may well know the answer, but you don't know that phrase.

• 26:25 Kel

  Yeah. And it's, it is kind of important to realize that there are toxic people in the world who will not take it well and will be whatever about it. In which case, don't take it personally, move on with your life. You are still valid. Again. Ignorance is an acceptable thing. It's a normal thing. You can use that as a guide to go, okay, so if I want to deal with this person, I probably am going to have to research topic B, but you know, I'm going to have to look up all the sorting algorithms and figure them all out again. But don't take that a personal thing. Like it might be an attack from them, but they're just being toxic and it's, you know, whatever.

• 27:02 Joshua

  Yeah. And yeah, there's two sides to that. You could see that as a red flag. I don't want to work with somebody who's like that. The other side is, as Kel says, exactly that you just, you start to learn what you need to prepare for. The other thing to keep in mind is, again, as we've said before, some people are just really bad at communicating. This may will never come up again. Once you get past that hurdle, they may never think about it again and be perfectly fine because they were just not in the right context for them. They may just not be used to interviewing people. They're used to solving problems at their desk in front of a laptop screen and suddenly being put in front of a total stranger and told, find out if this person is any good or not. Put them in a position where they just, they couldn't communicate effectively and that may have no reflection at all on you.

• 27:49 Kel

  Definitely, I know at the start of my career, I was pretty rough though. Though I also started on a help desk, so I had to get better pretty fast. But not everybody goes through that. I'm actually kind of a fan of shoving poor brand new developer on the support desk for awhile just to learn that, you know, but I also feel bad for everybody has to call the support desk while they're learning that.

• 28:11 Joshua

  Yeah, I think, certainly I started in support as well and I learned a huge amount about working with people, communicating things that I don't think I would have picked up if I hadn't started that way. So, while I can't say I want to come back and do that and ever, ever, ever again, I am extremely grateful for that opportunity because it did teach me a huge amount and I still use those things every single day.

• 28:37 Kel

  And there is a, oh I was gonna mention, crucial communications (Crucial Conversations), lovely book on that, had a lot of comments on things like that where a lot of, you know, people that are perceived as being very high performers are usually really good at communicating these types of things and have learned and ingrained these skillsets. So there's a lot of, there's a lot of pretty big bonuses to getting good at this. This is a really useful skill to have to practice beyond just, you know, being a good human and communicating well with others. But like this is a really good just general career skill that being able to explain things to a boss will raise your value to this other person, because you can explain things to them that they do not understand. Like that increases your value to the company, to your boss, to all of these people. And so even if you're not quite as effective at something else, being a good communicator can make you, like help prop up things. In other words, get better raises, get paid more, you know, all the things useful for not starving.

• 29:33 Joshua

  Yes, absolutely. And I can 100% guarantee you my career is where it is because of that skill.

• 29:39 Kel

  Yeah. That's kind of why I brought it up was I absolutely succeeded because I could explain things well to my bosses.

• 29:46 Joshua

  I know I have walked into some interesting interviews taken control of the room, communicated with everybody there effectively, and everybody just kind of looks at you like, wow, okay. Yeah. And it is, it's an immediate effect on other people. People respect that they want that because most of us would like to be able to communicate with other people and when they run into somebody who does communicate well, they notice it. There's no missing it.

• 30:13 Kel

  Translators are really helpful.

• 30:15 Joshua

  Yeah, absolutely. It was a joke in a office space about that. What does the analyst do. They're explaining, you know, I talked to these people and then I go talk to these people and why don't they just talk together? And it was kind of left as though, you know, that was silly. But actually it's an effective thing because a lot of people do not communicate well and if you have somebody who can talk to both sides and help them efficiently communicate, that is an extremely valuable thing. And if you can do that personally and communicate everywhere, that makes you an extremely valuable person.

• 30:51 Kel

  The first meeting I attended with a really good facilitator was kind of eye opening, because that's what they did was facilitate communications. And they did it amazingly well and it was kind of interesting because they, they were a bit of a coach of actually getting two people to communicate together. They weren't necessarily translating. So it was like even better than.

• 31:10 Joshua

  That's even better. Yeah, it's a step up.

• 31:13 Kel

  Upgrade. Exactly. But they still had to translate a lot and that was really kind of fascinating the first time I saw that happen in action with a room full of folks who did not communicate well.

• 31:23 Joshua

  A bunch of developers.

• 31:24 Kel

  It really made me appreciate a skill I didn't know much about before.

• 31:27 Joshua

  All right. I will put some transcripts up at https://gettingappsdone.com. Please be sure to check out my website at joshuagraham.info and Kel's website at piffner.com, which they have just completely redesigned and uh, it looks pretty damn cool. So make sure you do check it out.

• 31:43 Kel

  It matches my business cards now.

• 31:44 Joshua

  Matches the very, very cool business cards. Minimal, but very cool. All right. So if you have any great stories about miscommunications or excellent communications or anybody who's shared anything with you in a novel way that you thought actually helped you understand something better than you did before, please let us know. You can tell us about those on our slack channel https://gettingappsdone.com/slack and otherwise we will see you next Thursday. We post every Thursday, so be sure to tune in again.

• 32:12 Kel

  Cheers.