IT Communication Breakdown: “Honey, that’s not how people have a conversation.”
My colleague told me a story the other day that made my jaw drop. We were talking about IT people’s tendency to monologue—to just state their opinion on a problem over and over again without really listening to their stakeholders—when he said to me:
“The other day I had breakfast with some friends. One of them was a computer programmer I didn’t know so well. We were talking about something trivial, but she was being really aggressive with her points. She wasn’t even listening to me—whenever I finished talking she hammered back with her perspective, without acknowledging anything I said to her. We weren’t talking about anything important here… it was just a normal small-talk conversation. But she just wasn’t listening.
After a few rounds of this, her boyfriend put a hand on her shoulder and said “Honey, that’s not how people have a conversation.”
The computer programmer bolted upright and said “Oh, right, sorry!” She then turned back to me and said, robotically: “That’s an interesting view. Here is my opinion on the subject.”
I had already checked out of the conversation by that point so I just dropped it and started talking to someone else.”
Could you ask for a better example of just how far-reaching these communication problems are for IT people? This didn’t happen in a board room…it happened over breakfast! Yet this sort of monologuing occurs every single day between IT and the people they interact with. And even in a professional context this communication issue will force your stakeholders to “check out.”
Now, before you think I’m setting too high a standard for conversational skills here, let me point out this computer programmer’s real mistake—it’s not that she tried to correct course, it’s that she tried to correct course too late.
It’s ok she was a little wooden. You don’t need to be Oprah to communicate effectively. She just needed to use her “That’s an interesting perspective. Here’s my opinion.” script early enough in the conversation so that it registered as a genuine attempt to listen and communicate—and not as a way to cover her butt when she felt like she got caught.
The Takeaway: If you use communication scripts to be more engaged…use them proactively, not reactively.
