Ask HN: How do I learn to communicate effectively?
By communicate I mean to convey what I want to say with the appropriate style and manner so that I don't say anything that sounds demeaning or hurtful to the listener. It also includes listening attentively to what the other person is saying.
How to learn all that?
72 comments
[ 0.25 ms ] story [ 133 ms ] threadI'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.
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!
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.
(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)
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.
Here is a paper about it https://www.academia.edu/2241961/_Ancient_Egyptian_Rhetoric_...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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 y...
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.
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!
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.