Back To Basics: Deep Dive Part 10

The Forgotten Art of Communication - How

Bottom line, you need to master the art of good communication.

Much of a software analyst’s work involves communication. Here’s a few practical hits to consider as you embark on this journey.

Acknowledge

An important part of communication is simply acknowledging that you have received the message. It can be a quick email reply or a few words like “I hear you”. Acknowledgement sends a message that you are listening and are interested.

Explore

Have a hidden agenda: To explore what someone is telling me. Explore to really understand their world. Explore to really understand how they view things, what they are struggling with, what’s working well, what motivates them, the user’s work ethic and process of thinking.

Listen, listen, listen

Do not listen merely to reply, but listen to understand and know what to ask next. This requires intentional self-control.

Messaging

In my mid 20’s I attended an industry exhibition in Switzerland (Telecom 99). I had to present the findings to our 50 – 100 person company back in South Africa. I was so excited. I wanted to impress everyone.

I’ve built many slides for each software product I discovered, including detailed features, advantages, disadvantages, etc.

After 3 slides into my presentation, I saw that I’ve lost the audience. I wrestled through my super boring presentation and got handed such a valuable lesson:

Tailor the message for the audience.

You send out a message when you write a specification, email, presentation or have a meeting.

In preparing your message, tailor it for the audience by asking these questions:

What is their level of technical understanding?
How well do they understand the business?
What background is needed to give context?
Are they executives who need a high-level view and decision-making info only?
Will they really understand what I’m saying, or will I lose them in 2 sentences?

Meetings

Meetings can be costly. Just calculating the numbers based on each person’s hourly rate can be pretty shocking.

Meetings are an important part of the process of analysis and therefore must happen. Just two points of value here:

Be clear what you want out of the meeting? What objective / decisions must be achieved and, tailor your agenda and message accordingly.
Be careful inviting people. Always keep the audience as small as possible.

In-person vs virtual meetings

Virtual meetings work very well where the attendees know each other well, the agenda is straightforward, such as project check-ins or clarifying simple matters. When the meeting’s objective is to understand or communicate involved or complicated matters, virtual meetings will delay you. One in-person meeting will replace 2 or 3 virtual meetings.

If unsure – always opt for in-person meetings. Think about these advantages:

In face-to-face meetings, you’ll see on the audience’s faces whether they understand you or not.
In-person meetings are great for building good relationships.
Most productive place to explore and understand the world of others.

In closing, consider the following quote from Dr John C Maxwell:

Educators take something simple and make it complicated. Communicators take something complicated and make it simple. - John C. Maxwell

You can download the whitepaper from https://jalia.co.za/services/

Author: Henk Maritz (jalia.co.za)

No part of this publication may be copied or used in any form without prior written permission from the author.