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The original was posted on /r/sysadmin by /u/General_Importance17 on 2024-01-21 11:55:03+00:00.
EDIT: TLDR for all you poor "reading-is-hard" people, courtesy of u/themastermatt: "People who cant communicate work for people who can."
EDIT2: Another nice TLDR from u/SlapcoFudd: "Work on your soft skills, you smelly nerds."
DISCLAIMER
I want to rant about communication. Most IT professionals can’t communicate for shit, so here it goes. This is a rant so I won’t sound very friendly, and obviously these words don’t apply to every single one of you here. So just pretend I’m u/crankysysadmin and you’ll be fine ;-)
INTRODUCTION
In many cases, people go into IT because it’s what they were doing in their youth anyway, which in turn is because they had a hard time dealing with people. It’s a self-reinforcing feedback loop, a vicious circle which leads to your being today what I like to term a “professional autist”, someone who lives in the corporate world despite the absence of social skills. So there are a couple of things that I want you to understand.
First, communication is a learned skill. You heard that right. It’s not something some people were magically gifted with and others just weren’t. It’s something you learn and understand and practice. You’re constantly figuring things out on the fly and getting proficient with new technology, so there is absolutely no reason for you to not become good at this.
Second, communication is an important skill. Possibly the most important skill you could ever learn in your life. It’s universally useful no matter what you’re currently doing, and it will drastically improve the QoL for yourself and for everyone around you.
Third, communication is only superficially about exchanging information, and is actually much more about understanding perspectives and viewpoints. You might think what your interlocutor thinks is stupid, but his thoughts are the result of a reasoning, which is the result of the presence (and lack) of specific information. How can you address his concerns if you don’t understand where they’re coming from?
So, here’s a couple of things for you to take with you, maybe mull over, and start actively paying attention to.
ON SMALLTALK
You might consider smalltalk as this pointless waste of time people do. Start viewing it as the useful tool that it is. The reason every interaction must start by exchanging meaningless pleasantries is because it allows you to gauge your interlocutor’s mood and frame of mind. It will allow you to see whether he is happy or angry and everything inbetween, which is invaluable for tailoring your subsequent speech when discussing the thing you’re here to talk about.
Learn to conduct the kind of superficial and meaningless smalltalk you so despise. Have a 30-60 second conversation with everyone you encounter. Ask them if those are new shoes they’re wearing, complain about how hot/cold it is, I really don’t care and neither do they. Get your practice in until you sound natural.
ON CONTEXT
Anything we say is stated within a specific context, context which is usually fully implicit. Certain things matter, others don’t. Some things you know, and some you don’t. You consider some things a given, and others not. Only in the rarest cases will you share this implicit context with your interlocutor.
So what does this mean for you? Figure out where the other person is coming from, and adapt your speech accordingly. Simplify areas that aren’t relevant. Elaborate on areas that are. Make an effort to understand the other person’s perspective, where their priorities are coming from, what they are worried about, what are their view on, and understanding of, the matter at hand. Then, make an effort to bridge this gap between your perspective and his, by helping him understand yours aswell. Only then can you come to a fruitful exchange with a mutually satisfying conclusion.
ON CONTENT
You might be tempted to give people any and all information in your posession. That is a mistake, and I can tell you from experience that it is very tiring. I don’t care about how you found the problem, but I can’t tune out your droning either in case some actually important piece of information is buried in the middle of it.
You might think that you’re giving them the full picture, but what you’re actually doing is infodumping them without any regard to their priorities, their worries, their issues, etc, and requiring them to spend significant effort just parsing this waterfall of TLDR you’re currently spamming them with. Stop it. Focus. What is important to them? Which information matters and which doesn’t?
ON EXPECTATIONS
Since you might now be tempted to explain DNS to your project manager since “you said he needs to understand my perspective”: You are one of the company’s SMEs. You are being paid to understand and deal with $thething, so that other people don’t have to. They don’t want to deal with $thething, and they shouldn’t have to, because that’s your job. They don’t even need to understand $thething. That again is your job, understanding it and presenting it to them in a way that makes sense.
So when they come to you about $thething, what you will not do is expect them to develop the same level of insight and expertise that you have. Rather you will help them make the right decisions for their own situation, by giving them rundowns and abstracting things away. These are the options, these are their consequences. This is the good, this is the bad, these are the risks and their potential fallouts. They don’t give a fuck about the intricacies of MDM and never will, and they’re not supposed to anyway.
ON PROVIDING SOLUTIONS
Sometimes people will come to you with requests that can’t be fulfilled. What they want might be technologically stupid. It might be organizationally impossible. Or it might simply require way more time and effort than you could spare. So you reject their request, and snicker to your colleagues about “that dumbass wanting something stupid again”. Except the dumbass here is you.
Why did they ask for this thing that is stupid? What made them think that was the right solution to their problem? What in fact is their problem in the first place? What are alternative, more sensible approaches that they could pursue? You let your users run against walls and then wonder why you have a reputation for being unhelpful. Start solving problems instead of addressing things at face-value. See also: XY problem.
ON REPUTATION
Speaking about reputation, it might just be the most precious thing in your professional life, it is the lens through which people view you and your actions, and the frame of reference in which they will approach you. Any contrast between your reputation and your actual actions is automatically mentally justified by those you interact with.
If you are reputed to be an unhelpful prick, then that is who you are. And even if you’re not, they will think your boss is forcing you to be nice to them, or some other thing along those lines. Similarly, if you are reputed to be kind and helpful, the justifications for your not having been any help will flow aswell: maybe you’re just having a bad day.
CLOSING WORDS
There are a litany of other aspects one could touch on, all I’ve done here is barely scratch the surface. If you continue to let your communication skills atrophy, you will always be left by the wayside, excluded from decision-making and other such meetings, and will always feel underappreciated. All this for the simple reason that there is more to life than just systems and networks.
Also AmA about communication and human relations and soft-skills and such I guess.