The Technology Sounding Board
The Technology Sounding Board
E3 - Connection Lost
In this episode I am joined by Jeremy Borys - AlixPartner's Chief Talent Office, to discuss why communications at work can be challenging, why this might be a particular issue at the boundary between technical departments and the rest of the business, and what tools and methods we can use to overcome these obstacles.
Introduction
Recently, I was observing a meeting between a technical group and a business group, they were discussing a change to an important project and how they would handle a difficult unforeseen circumstance, there was a lot of debate, back and forth. But by the end, they all seem to have agreed on a common plan and left a meeting happy that all would be well. When I talked to the key meeting stakeholders separately afterwards, however, it was clear that they all had a good understanding of what was decided. But each of them had a different understanding. Now, I know this isn't unique to technology and business boundaries. But it seems to me that it happens a lot here when I got to wondering if there was a systematic reason for this. And if there was, is there anything we can do about it? Let's talk about it.
Welcome to the technology sounding board. I'm your host, Michael R. Gilbert. And in this episode, we're going to examine four reasons why people with technical backgrounds may struggle to connect with, to successfully communicate with, people from a business background. First, we'll examine how personality traits might impact how we speak and how our audience listens. Next, we'll consider whether the technical nature of our knowledge domain might make it harder to communicate with those that don't share that same technical background. We'll touch on, "Expert's Syndrome", and how I need to explain my get in our own way. And finally, we'll talk about the art of the interesting story. Along the way, we'll point out various models we might be able to use to help us with each of these challenges.
I was incredibly fortunate to be able to talk about all this with our very own Jeremy Boris. Jeremy has many things including AlixPartners', Chief Talent Officer, a Doctor of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, and a good friend. Let's listen into the conversation I had with him earlier.
Discussion with Jeremy Borys
Michael R. Gilbert 1:45
Jeremy, thank you for helping me sort through all of this, as we discussed before, we have models that help to explain how certain personality types inform how each of us communicate, can you walk us through the model?
Jeremy Borys 1:57
Psychological needs are very important how we communicate. So we use this process communication model, the PCM model, it is six parts. So we all have these six parts of us that drive how we behave. So one of the parts is, is the Thinker part or we call it the Worker part. And this is the part of us that really enjoys logic, seeks clarity, wants to have structure, loves data, and in a lot of ways, is transacting, when we communicate through that part. It's like, Hey, you have information, I need it, or I have information that you need it. So that's one way our need for clarity drives our communication style, which is transactional, exchange of information, the more efficient, the more logical, the better. So as an example of that, you and I might have very strong worker parts. And so you might say, what's the agenda? How much time is it's going to take? What are the three steps and I feel like that's a great way to communicate. It's simple, it's efficient, it's organized.
Michael R. Gilbert 2:58
So a lot of consultants are going to be that way naturally, right?
Jeremy Borys 3:00
I think a lot of consultants, a lot of people in analytic professions, think of like finance, economics, accounting, engineering, it's a normal exchange of information daily. And so people with that need are drawn to those fields and then communicate in those ways. Very, it's very common,
Michael R. Gilbert 3:19
I can see that we have a lot of Workers in our organization. And as management consultants, it's easy to see why you would now from our previous conversations, I know we have a lot of Persisters, can you explain the Persister role for us?
Jeremy Borys 3:30
So the persister need is really a desire to have alignment around core values or principles. And so persister, those who have a high persister need tend to communicate around their core values, or what they believe are the right things to do. Right is an important thing they might even communicate were the wrong things to do. The style is also transactional, it's like an exchange, but it's not at the logic level. It's at the opinion or belief level. And so a persister might say, I believe this is the right thing to do. Or let's talk about why we're here. What's the real reason that we're here, let's make sure the purpose is clear. And so a persister talking to a persister might have a lot of affinity around. Yeah, we believe the same things, but they might also have a lot of conflict because if you believe something different than I believe, even though we're exchanging our beliefs, they could cause conflict because we need alignment between those beliefs to have a good conversation.
Michael R. Gilbert 4:29
Hmmm, and that makes complete sense. Now I know you have a lot of harmonizer in you, how's that play out as we see it?
Jeremy Borys 4:34
Yeah. Harmonizer's a different type of need. The first two were more around tasks or getting things done the Harmonizer needed us is more that desire to connect with people. And so it affects our communication we often communicate with more than our words. We communicate with our you know, our expressiveness and our face, our eyes. We show more emotion through our the way we use our intonation and inflection we use our hands more. It's all about making a connection emotionally. So a harmonizer would say things like, I feel this is the right thing to do, or the most important thing or ask how you're feeling they might share. You know, this is really painful. This is where I'm frustrated with this. Or I'm not feeling that great or I'm sad about this. They'll use emotions as information. And they're looking for others to express the same things to feel an emotional connection. One of the one of the ways we usually describe this is that first part, the worker feels like a good day is checking 50 things off the list. A persister's good day is I've done, I have helped aline three people to the purpose of this thing. And a Harmonizer's good day as I met 10 people and we really got a chance to connect on an emotional level, it felt great.
Michael R. Gilbert 5:50
So I can identify a lot of people I know as workers will persist is one of my other favorite personality types is the reactor and I think of our good friend Jay Marshall. Every time this one comes up, he strikes me as a classic example. Tell us a little bit about the rebel in the group.
Jeremy Borys 6:03
So this reactor part also has another label, it's called the rebel part. But since that part is a bit, has a negative connotation to be a rebel. The reactor kind of does express it quite well. It's the part of us that wants to create or get a reaction with others. So the reactor often is provoking is using catchphrases is telling jokes is coming maybe on a different tangent to disrupt the discussion, almost to see the reaction of people to bring energy or to change the energy of a discussion. So the reactor is often incongruent, it's often unpredictable, it's often sporadic or igniting energy. So the reactor actually thrives on the reaction of things.
Michael R. Gilbert 6:53
And now it starts to become clear why not understanding these personality types can cause communications to break down, it's easy to see how a reactor could, from their perspective, be injecting a little humor into the room. But from a workers perspective, they might have just thrown a hangry date into the conversation completely derailing the well structured agenda that was set up to progress the work and complete the work. They aren't of course, that's just how they work. That's them filling their needs in the conversation, right?
Jeremy Borys 7:19
You brought up one of my favorite people, his name is Jay. So I have a high worker need, he has the high reactor need, they're their opposite on this model that we're talking about. So when I might come into a call, I might say, alright, I have three things we need to do, it's going to take us about 20 minutes, I've got to cover these tasks, we need to reach conclusion on the timeline. And he might say, I don't want to talk about that today, let's just do something totally different. And we both respect this and each other, that there is a point in time when the task list isn't really the value. It's not, we feel comfort in the task list as this worker or thinker, but it's all for engaging in a relationship with people. And so oftentimes the reactor is the one like Jay, challenging is do we really need to talk about a bunch of tasks here, let's not do that, let's really engage in what's most important, which is the people side. However, overdone, that kind of unpredictable, creative reaction doesn't lead to outcomes. And so he has to relent sometimes to my need for structure in order and get into this kind of task oriented execution discussion. So together, we actually can achieve things separate, we can get lost sometimes.
Michael R. Gilbert 8:38
Now, when I think of the reactor, I can't help but also think about the flip side, at least in my understanding, the dreamer. As I understand the model, these are people who need quiet space to think ideas over and will often seem withdrawn from the conversation, even if they're actually engaged in the subject. Because they're having most of the conversation internally for the dreamer we need to walk a balancing line between giving them space, they need to think and providing prompts for them to pull the information out so that we get to join in the conversation, right?
Jeremy Borys 9:09
So that's great. So by way of this discussion, you're showing a two by two model. So think of on the right side is tasks, things like worker, persister, or even this dreamer like getting things done. harmonizer and reacter are the ones we've just discussed are on the people side. So that's more of the important thing, first task. But the other distinction you have made is the proactive way we engage. So the Thinker, Persister, Harmonizers, initiating connection with people on tasks or emotion. And then there's the reactive side of us. The Reactor is actually reactive to people. The Dreamer is actually reactive to information, not proactive, and so the Dreamer or the Imaginer, as it's also called, is the need for quiet, solitude and reflection. And so there's a lot of processing. There's a lot of information, there's a lot of logic, there's a lot of task thinking going on. But it manifests by being provoked by somebody else, hey, come over here, bring those bring those ideas to me, let's come out of the reflective state. And let's, let's turn it into something. So the Dreamer in us creates often profound insight, but it needs someone else to draw it out of us to ignite us to do.
Michael R. Gilbert 10:22
And I very much recognize that because I know that I do a lot of my work, my best work in concert with somebody who will, as you say, literally draw things out and get into a dialogue with me and sort of make me externalize the things that have been going on in my mind for some time. And sometimes I haven't even realized I haven't said, because there's such a dialogue going on there. And too many people in that tiny cranium anyway, almost the reverse of that personality wise, or certainly from the outside appearance, we have our old friend who's always about the win, right? And that can be very me focused, it can be a very sort of high energy, I don't care what who has to die to get this done. But we're gonna we're gonna win this kind of thing. Tell us about that.
Jeremy Borys 11:04
Yeah, so you're referring to the Promoter part. And on this two by two, if you're thinking these four quadrants, the Promoter's right in the center, because the Promoter actually can adapt and be like all of the others, that it's actually the part of us that is using the external world to dictate what's important. If I'm working with a Thinker, Harmonizer or a Persister, I can act like that, if I'm with a Reactor, I can act like that there's a Promoter need in us. If, if it's strong, it allows us to reflect other people.
So all these things kind of have a role to play in the world. You know, you need people who are the structured logical Worker types, the Thinkers, you need the strong willed Persisters who are driving alignment, you need those who are focused a lot on people and emotional engagement and minimizing conflict, the ones who are provoking and poking and tries, hey, we shouldn't be doing it this way. Let's let's just change it up. The real deep thinkers, the reflective solitude types of people who come up with profound ideas, and then those few Promoters like let's take all this and go win, let's really, let's really try to pull it off.
The other part of the Promoter is like, as you said, desire to win. And the winning is actually what tells me I'm successful seeing my name number one on that list. The accolades that I received, the recognition that I get validates me. And so the Promoter is really seeking external validation constantly. And so that's why winning is so important. And so the communication style of a Promoter is either give me what I need to win, or telling do these things so I can win. And so it's direct, it's not flowery or fluffy. There's not a lot of qualifiers, it's actually very action oriented. And the Promoter part of us, when we achieve things, still not enough. And so we want to pull off even bigger things. So we're always seeking the next big deal, the next big opportunity.
Michael R. Gilbert 13:07
So we got a model here, which sort of describes a universe of, of people, characteristics of people, and everybody has access to each of these personality types, we can choose to act in one of these, these roles or or another, or some blend of them. But we tend to have a predisposition to one and maybe leaning on a sort of a secondary supporting one, right. And I think we've talked about before, it's kind of like the the old idiom of know your audience, you have to know who it is you're talking to, in how they are going to act to be able to receive this information, and adapt your messaging, so that you can appeal to information to characteristics to beliefs, if necessary to relationships, so that they are ready to receive it. But you also have to take care of your own needs. And make sure that you're delivering a message in an authentic style that you're able to operate in, so that you can be an effective communicator. So it's kind of trying to blend the two or more styles that are in the room and make sure we've engaged them, you have any concrete examples of how that might play out?
Jeremy Borys 14:15
You actually really hit on an important two step process of communication. The first step is recognizing you have a preferred style that you use. And you have to know that and that preferred style is coming from your deepest needs. And you probably have one or two of these six that drive you for me, it's Persisters first, then then the Thinker/Worker's second and then Harmonizer is third. And so I know that about myself, I have a need for alignment. So every time I'm communicating, I'm trying to say are we aligned here and the purpose of this? So we've been you and I talking about this podcast like do I believe this is the right thing. Are we aligned on why? So I will communicate that way. If I'm not aware of my own needs, if I, if I don't have alignment, I find that I'm always pushing for what's right, and the principal, and I'm over overusing that way of communicating. However, if I feel my need, I own needs are met, like, I do believe that this is a good purpose. And this is the right thing to do, I'm more able to adapt to other styles of communicating. So the first step is actually knowing your own style and what you need, and being able to address that. And if you're not addressing your needs of maybe alignment, or clarity, or human connection, watch out because you're gonna probably over communicate to get it.
Once you do recognize, okay, I'm getting my needs met, have alignments or winning or provoking reactions, I feel secure enough to then migrate to other styles of communicating. And that's the second step, the second step is to be aware of what the other person's needs are.
I mentioned Jay. So I know my go to communications, either Persister, or Worker, this kind of principle or logic. When I feel whatever discussion I'm going to have with Jay is the right thing to do. Pretty clear, we know we're trying to achieve, I can adapt to his Reactor needs. So when he comes into a meeting, or jokes with me, or tries to take us off on a different tangent, I don't get all stressed about needing my structure and clarity and purpose. I joke with him right back, I shift right to the Reactor part, which is not that easy. I don't have a high Reactor need, but I know he does. And so I he gives me a catchphrase. I give him a catchphrase. He gets into a meeting and throws the bomb into the meeting, like, Oh, you're never on time. And I always have to wait for you. I don't get all offended and feel like it's the wrong thing. My Persister I'm like, Yes, you know, I pick right back on him and say, Yeah, you know, this the first meeting you've made in three weeks. So it's a, it's an ability to be like, I don't have to worry about my own needs here, I can really switch to their channel, we say and talk to them in their way. And it really does resonate with that when you do that.
Michael R. Gilbert 17:26
One of the reasons I think that this is relevant to the subject that we're talking about, in terms of IT communicating with the business, and vice versa, is that different departments will tend to attract people who naturally have different characteristics in the sense that IT is very analytical, it's very about thinking it's a lot of internal, it's not very much being external. If you have someone from the IT world, talking to someone, for example, from the Sales, you are much more likely to come across a Promoter, for example, in Sales, because the ability that wants to see the win is almost a requirement for the job of Sales. And so by appreciating the fact that you come from a different place, and you need to be able to meet your your audience where they are, we can get into the right mindset, and we can adjust our communication to help it land better.
Jeremy Borys 18:18
Exactly. I think there's there is enough evidence to say that certain fields, certain domains or industries even attract certain types of people. And I think that's pretty accurate, that hardcore selling, you know, really where you see your metric daily quotas and, and having to hit a certain profitability or revenue mark, that really does attract Promoters, people with high Promoter need, because they go into that knowing I'm going to get my measurement of success, and it feels good. Whereas certain health care or service industries attract a lot of Harmonizers, teaching, nursing, a lot of those fields social work. There's a lot of people that track to that because they're able to connect emotionally and they feel a purpose of building relationships. technical fields, yes, they're going to attract quite a bit of Dreamer, Worker, Persister, because they're very task oriented, execute types of things. You might get some creative organizations and even some kind of the digital world, innovation, anything around creative endeavors, art, you're gonna try to love that Reactor part people are trying to provoke be someone who's challenging assumptions and norms. So even if you just kind of just think about it for a little bit, you can understand how different professions, domains industries, would attract different people. And just by thinking of those people, you already can sense, there is a different way they communicate and I need to adapt to them.
Michael R. Gilbert 19:58
Now that's a good segue into the next idea I was having about why we don't communicate so well across these domains is because, forgive me getting just a little technical for a minute, but language... we understand we have to speak the same language, right? It's no good speaking English for someone who understand French, you just won't be understood. But language depends on context. Words have meaning because we understand more than being said in the sentence, we understand what was actually meant by all the things around it. And being an expat a Brit in the US, I've run into this so many times, two countries divided by a common language, it's an off-said joke but kind of true. And I've gotten myself into some some trouble early on, in my, my career by making some assumptions about what people mean, or vice versa.
I remember, I had a friend in the office when I was at home, we only been the country about two days, and my office mate smoked. And his boss came looking for him. And he'd gone on a smoke break. And he asked me, well, you know, where is he? And I said, just as I would normally, he's gone for a fag in the restroom. And they looked at me horrified, I had no idea that the words have different meanings in this context. Now, from the UK, what you might call the break room, the place where you sort of relax and have a meal, or what have you, is the restroom. That's where you go to rest. It is not the bathroom, right? We would call those the toilets. And if you smoke a cigarette was known as a fag. Over here, it is an immensely derogatory word for a person of a certain sexual persuasion. And they, the jaws just dropped when I said that. And I'm thinking what now I was saved by the fact that there were other expats in the organization, we were able to quickly step in. Yeah, okay, what he meant was, but you can see how something like that gets uncovered very, very quickly, because it's so you know, out there and so outrageous, or, or, hopefully gladly, everybody found the funny side of it after the fact.
But we can make lots of assumptions about the meanings of words, which are very subtly different. And those subtle differences don't turn up in the moment. And that's the real danger. And the IT related example I will give you is the use of the word backlog. And so, because we have Agile programming these days, and we have this idea of a list of things, features that we want to put into any project or program that we're developing this list of ideas, we call the backlog, which is a word we've stolen from operations. But in operations, a backlog is every piece of unfulfilled but committed order. And it's a good thing, a very large backlog is a very good thing, because that's money that we will ultimately earn. The idea is that is committed.
The idea of backlog in the software world is just a collection of ideas that maybe we'll get to and maybe we won't, and they certainly won't get done in the order, they are on the backlog, and they may never get done at all. And so when we talk to our friends in operations about oh, yeah, your your, your feature's on the backlog, we may be sending the message that yeah, you're gonna get that. And in fact, that's not necessarily going to turn up at all until six months, or even a year later, when where is this feature? Oh, well, we never actually did that. But but but but it was committed. No. No, that's not what the backlog means. And so that's what I mean by context, when we use words that other people have already got a definition of and ours is very close, but subtly different. We lead ourselves into very big problems, and IT tends to co-opt words from the business without necessarily understanding the difference of them.
Jeremy Borys 23:52
I absolutely love these examples. And it brings to my mind two critical elements of communication. The first is self awareness. And I don't mean just general self awareness like Am I happy? am I sad? I mean, self awareness regarding my choice of language or my my vernacular, I guess I would say. So just your example about backlog or restroom really allows me because the human brains very powerful to extrapolate from that scenario to like, what are the words I'm using, that might have that similar effect? That's what I love about this. The way we're challenging each other and in a global organization. There are many, many examples of these misunderstood or misconstrued or kind of different meanings of words. And what I like about our self awareness is once we have one story, or one example, like I said, we can extrapolate very quickly to other scenarios.
It's also related to things like if you're comfortable and a certain with a certain idiom, maybe it's athletic or sports oriented phrases, once you realize that you say one of those things, you know, it's got to be in their strike zone, or you know, they've got to hit, you know, they've got to hit the mark. Once you realize, oh, I tuck in these kinds of sports and idioms, you realize, oh, how many times have I do that? And how do I restate them?
So the first thing is this kind of self awareness of the words I use. And the good thing is, with examples, crystal clear examples that you gave, we can extrapolate very easily. The second thing that was the other awareness. Now you're pretty perceptive. So when you said he's going for a fag in the restroom. You probably saw jaws drop yourself, you picked up instantly, oh, that didn't land well. And you were able to course correct or someone came in quickly and course corrected. But this ability to read someone's reaction, even subtle. If I say did some of the backlog, and I saw you get a little bit like frustrated or discouraged, like, no, now, it's backlog. That is the first clue to pay attention to and say, hold on. Maybe we admit we're misunderstanding here. This what I mean by backlog, is that what you're thinking I mean, but too often, we are not really paying attention to the other person, as we're talking. We're thinking we're just exchanging information. We're thinking, for the most part, it's efficient, just to tell you what I want what I need to tell you, because that's what you're asking for, without being aware of how they're receiving what I'm saying is the age old problem of there's a difference between what I'm saying and what you're hearing.
And if we just took a pause. It sounds like it's kindergarten when we were taught this and just say, Hey, did, did you hear what I was? What repeat back to me what what you thought I just had to is this, what is this what you think I mean? We can clear up so many of these problems. And it goes back to the first part with that one time when someone says, You know what backlog doesn't sound good to me. I get it, I can learn from that and extrapolate. What we don't have to deal with is, last point, is this idea that somehow everything's got to be pointed out to us.
This is the slippery slope argument that people say with maybe diversity comments, or inclusive comments or whatever is like am I going to be held accountable for every little thing I say? And somehow someone's going to have to point it out to me. As humans, we're too smart to need somebody to point out every time we make a gaffe, or say something isn't resonating. We need to trust that we're doing the best we can all the time, when we get those examples of things that didn't land, or maybe we're off color or just didn't resonate, or translate, we're going to be okay, we're going to figure it out. And we're gonna be able to adjust going forward and all the other aspects. So I'm very confident that when we take the time to be self aware, and other aware with the way the words land, we're gonna be able to figure it out.
Michael R. Gilbert 27:54
Going back to our good friend, Jay, he taught me something quite recently, or maybe taught is the wrong word. Because we all know this, right? It's, as you say, kindergarten sometimes. But sometimes we have to take a moment to think about that actually put it into practice. But we tend to deliver a speech or a presentation all the way through this content that we had in mind and wait to get to the end to get some feedback. And if instead, we try to structure what we're doing as an interactive dialogue, a lot of these miscommunications will get clarified in the moment very, very quickly. But a lot of what you're seeing where we're not really paying attention to the audience, is because we're so focused on trying to get through the content, that that's where all our brain processing is. That's where our mind is about. What's on the next slide. What's on the next point, what am I did I cover off everything I needed to on this thing, instead of just relaxing a little bit and saying, Hey, there's two people and I say two people, some number of people in this dialog here that are trying to share some understanding and trying to relate and can communicate with each other. Let's just take it piece by piece and see where it goes.
Jeremy Borys 29:06
And what's really happening in a lot of those cases where people are just trying to communicate and get through what they want to say, is often this kind of Worker and Persister part that's pretty prevalent in our profession, especially with the Worker part. The deep need that we have is to be smart, and others to see how prepared and thoughtful we are. And if we don't feel that way, we're going to do everything we can to get it. And so sometimes in these meetings, we feel our job is to show you how smart I am. And so I want to tell you as much as I can,
Instead of coming into a meeting going, You know what I'm prepared. I'm very logical and very thoughtful and my job is for you to understand what you want to know. And to be selfless in that regard and say okay, I know what I need to say. But let me focus more on what you want to know or what you what you need to know. Then the dialogue can go in a different way, which leads to this kind of layered.
I always tell people we should communicate on layers. I've been two different versions of this. The first layer is, let's start with kind of like a higher level. Here's what we're trying to achieve. Here's what trying to communicate, we all lined with this, then we can decide, okay, yes, good. Is this enough information? Yeah, it's enough alright then, let's move on. Or if it's not enough, okay, let's go down to the next layer. Let's talk about the details. Is this resonating? What are you hearing? What am I saying? Is this enough? Yeah, okay, move on. If not, okay, let's go down to another layer. Let's go more detail. And then do that back and forth, is this enough. So I'm always encouraging people, when there's highly technical or complex concepts to convey, is to communicate in these layers and check for alignment, and then check that it's landing or resonating, and then go down or move on depending on what they need.
So that's one way of communicating layers. A second way you can communicate in layers, is by trying to add multiple psychological needs, into the way you communicate. So for example, I might say to you, I want to make sure we agree on the principles of this, but make sure we have the key points that are logical and organized, something that we can communicate and engage with and really relate to, that allows us to take action quickly, but not be restricted by rules, but also allows us time to maybe have a little time to reflect if we need to, that's what we're going to try and do here. I just went through all six personality parts in that framing of a discussion.
And so in our firm, and you know, this, we have a lot of Worker/Persister/Harmonizer, a lot of proactive, get stuff done, be people oriented. And I'm always encouraging everybody to communicate and those three domains with everything we say. So I think communicating and layers, once you're aware of your own needs, and not trying to satisfy them, but try to satisfy the other people's needs, it's a very effective way to communicate.
Michael R. Gilbert 32:04
That's great. That's great. I love that, I'm actually going to pick up on something you said at the beginning, because that's an excellent segue to the next idea I had was this needing to validate our own expertise, I call this, "Expert Syndrome", that the more we know about a space, and the more we're an expert in the space, the more we feel the need to explain it to other people. And it's just not necessary, because no one cares.
I'm going to use an example from long ago when we were talking about upgrading firewalls. And we had an excellent fella from the network operations group talking about why we need to spend, I don't know how many millions of dollars and replacing Cisco 94E/WV something or others with some other 869-4/Os, because they had Stateful Packet Inspection and ours didn't. And that was going to be a real big problem. And we needed and he went into some enormous detail about the internal workings of these machineries and why they were different. And and I just thought, oh, please, please stop.
And if we replayed that conversation, the way I think it should have been, is something along the lines of: you will have seen in the news recently, an uptick in attacks of a certain variety, where large companies that we know have been taken over by rogue organizations, through their API's, because they were holes in them. And we analyze our own systems based on these, and we're exposed to that same threat. And the good news is, there's some hardware that's been released recently by Cisco that will bridge that gap. And we believe we should invest this much money in closing that gap. And it'll take us about this long. And we'd like your approval to proceed. And that's it, right? There's a risk of something horrible that you've seen in the news. And we're vulnerable to that same horrible thing. And here's the fix. And we think we should go ahead and do that.
I trust that you're a security guy and a network guy, and that you know, what you're talking about, and I don't care, that's what I pay you for. You just gave me You see what I'm getting with where we're going with the conversation there?
Jeremy Borys 34:20
I would even say, you communicated at two levels right there. The second way you described it was probably the way that would resonate with a CEO. Where you say, you've got a big problem with attacks, and we have found the best way to solve it, we'll close the gap and make it work for you.
The second, the first way you communicate it was I think more for the an operator where you said something you know about the API, which a lot of us kind of know, but I'm not in your domain. API could I mean, right away it makes me feel like do I know what that is? Yeah, I know what that is. But it's very easy for you to see that and Cisco. Yeah, I know what Cisco is. I see them when they comercials, but you know, you know what Cisco really is. So we always have to, as you said, as you're saying, we have to think, what's the value to me, versus what's the value to them.
And I think us talking about all the detail is really serving our own pride, our own desire for, you know, demonstrating expertise, we can do that in many ways we can write, we can post, we can blog, on how expert we are. But if you want to influence somebody, us communicating was valuable to them. Otherwise, it's not gonna do anything.
Michael R. Gilbert 35:36
Exactly. And it's kind of a subset of a larger idea of telling interesting stories, we get that a lot. And as we grow up, we sort of learn this right? When we're younger, we will often talk to people our, our parents and our grandparents and anyone who listened about whatever it was that excited us that day, you know, the being parents and grandparents, they all look thrilled and excited by every detail that we've gone into, but they don't care about, they care about us, they don't care about the story. And then we're we're sort of shocked and surprised. And we take that same kind of conversation out into the wild space. And people sometimes don't even react at all. And sometimes this will walk off in the middle of a conversation.
Most of us learn very quickly to read into the room of okay, this is not resonating. It's something we can avoid by thinking about what's the domain that our audience is in? And what would be interesting to them? And let's talk about interesting things in their world. Not interesting things in our world. Difficult to do, right? I mean, it's not like it's easy not like we know, I guess the analogy I would use here is, if you have to buy a Christmas present, for a distant relative, that you haven't seen in 15 years, it's really hard to pick a present that has any meaning to their life, because you don't really know who they are. You might know their name and address, but you don't know them. And the more we invest in knowing them, and what's going on in their world, the more we can talk about things that matter to them. And the more then we will get an invitation to start talking a little bit about what's going on in ours.
Jeremy Borys 37:19
I think that's a great way to think about a higher level way of communicating. And I'll add another thought on the storytelling. There's a lot of research on storytelling. There are things that happen in our brains, that associate factors information through a story, the very, a lot of power in analogy and metaphor.
It, it allows us to visualize storytelling allows us to visualize and personalize. So there's tons of value in storytelling. And the best storytellers are able to relate complex concepts into kind of interdependent things, maybe the personal experience that they've had, and telling the story of a journey of somebody, a story of triumph, a story of how things were unexpected. And it was unanticipated, that led to led to an outcome, stories of tragedy, these things resonate with people because they can see themselves in it. And the story of, of a person or someone navigating something has so much richness in terms of how things actually affect us. And so those who can tell a story about a firewall, or an API, or something technical, is really this art, of raising the level of importance and how things actually work in a way that will help the person see oh, this is how I see the journey is going to happen, or how this could affect me, or how powerful this is without having to get into any detail. It's a incredibly skillful way to influence somebody.
Michael R. Gilbert 39:07
Since I started putting together this Podcast, I've had plenty of opportunity to reflect on just how hard it can be to get complex ideas across in simple, non technical terms to a diverse audience. Particularly if you don't have the opportunity to read room to be able to make an interactive dialogue, as we suggested earlier, you really have to start thinking about the meaning of what you're trying to say the core points, what really matters to your audience? What will make a difference to them? What actions can they take? What changes can they make if they do agree with your central points? Most of what I do is actually taking things out of what I plan to say. So yeah, that's interesting and it's valuable. But if I take it away, have I made the overall message less valuable? Or have I just made it clearer and taking things out? Sometimes a very hard thing to do, particularly when we pursue we invested in the effort we put into creating it in the first place. And the fact we're very proud of what it was that we did. And we want to tell everybody about it. We want them to be as excited about it as we are. And then to say, Yeah, but no one cares. I mean, not really, no one cares. And don't ask your mum whether she's whether whether they're going to she's gonna tell you Yeah, that's a great story. But no, it's not, no one cares.
Jeremy Borys 40:23
I laugh. So that's a great point. You know, what I find myself doing with complex concepts is trying to answer the question, what is this like? This is like something is there's something that else that would, could explain this, like I'm always thinking about. One thing in our organization, or my domain, is how a firm or a company should be structured. And so there's hierachy and there's all these traditional models and I'm thinking that I want something that's flat, dynamic, constantly growing, tightly connected...what is that like? So I think that's something we should always be thinking...I try to think of things in the natural world, maybe the way plants grow or something in the social world like the way religions grow in society. So anytime you can take a complex concept and see, what is this like? That's where it tends to resonate with people. And so that an important challenge for anybody trying to communicate complicated things.
The second thing I want to do is I want to tell you a story. So 10 years ago, I had been a 10 year, I been I spent a decade in consulting as a deep expert in IO psychology, which nobody cares about. It's a very specialized, it's a very specialized field. And I felt very proud of this PhD that I had that my parents didn't even know what it was, my wife had no idea what I was doing.
And after 10 years of consulting in this space, I went to go to get an MBA, intentionally to stretch my awareness of things across multiple domains. So you know, the story, I get into this MBA about a year and a half into it, I'm starting to see that these deep, complex IO psychology models that I was using to orient information are the same models they were talking about in marketing, and strategy, and ops, and economics. And, and legal and governance, I'm like, well, they're not the ones creating org effectiveness frameworks. That's, that's what I do in my domain, and it was a lightbulb moment for me to realize two things.
Number one, that language I'm using is easily portable. If I think of the model that I'm using, not the words, the way pieces lead from a high end to an operational end to an outcome like that model transitions to all domains. And once I think of that model in marketing, or ops, or legal or economics, I understand the concepts because they're just like the concepts I've studied my whole life.
The second thing is I realized, we're all coming from the same core, and a human nature, organizations, data, they tend to have these natural phenomena that are that are actually consistent. And that through time, we kind of treat different expertise as very specialized, but they all come from the same core. And if we can talk to people at this level, at the core model, the core interrelationship of data or factors or criteria, you actually can bridge so many more gaps, because you're talking their language without speaking the actual words that they're using. So that was an eye opening thing for me. And I find it a great way to relate to people in a very different domain, when you can start thinking like fundamental models that are linking their information, the same way it's linking my information.
Michael R. Gilbert 44:07
So that's great. Actually, that reminds me of a concept I stumbled across quite a while ago, in the technology world, in IT, we talk about best practices a lot. And of course, that's not unique to IT, a lot of people do. But the thing that I noticed is that we talk about bringing Best Practices over from other companies. And actually Best Ppractices don't transport very well at all. Best Principles do. It's the principles that give rise to the practices that you care about, not the practices, the practices or just the instantiation. And in your model, we're talking about the same thing. It's the ideas behind the words and not actually the words. And if we can get those ideas and translate those into the words of our audience. Well, then we're on a winner.
Jeremy Borys 44:54
Well, this leads to one last model that I think is something I've learned and we've talked about, you and I've talked about this before. There's a progression that we all make in these, these professions of ours, we go from knowledge, to skill, to judgment to wisdom. So we understand the knowledge, what what's of this profession, then we have the skill, we're applying them. The judgment, we're learning to make decisions and anticipate and the wisdom is to see the strategy and the vision of how this all fits together. And I often realize when there's a disconnect between people it's because we're talking at two different stages of that model. I may be talking about something at the judgement level of how we're anticipating and making decisions and somebody may be talking to me at the skill level, or the knowledge level. Or maybe I'm entering into a conversation with just the basic knowledge of the situation, and you're at the wisdom level of this conversation.
And so that's another thing that really helps you if you can just be aware of what's going on here, just again, self awareness and other awareness. Where am I on this discussion or this content? And where are they and if you can realize, if you're close enough knowledge to skill, that's okay. But if your knowledge to wisdom between the two people, you're not going to have a great conversation, and you'll learn to adapt based on that situation and frame it.
So one of my best mentors, he has always talked to me at the wisdom level. And I always recognize I'm at the knowledge level. But he helps me progress over time to the skill and the judgment. And when I get to the wisdom level, which is very slow and painful, he reminds me, I've been saying the same thing for 10 years now. But you finally have progressed through the stages. And I give him a lot of credit, because he could have easily talked to me at the skill level when I'm at the knowledge level, and incrementally moved me. But he always stuck at the wisdom level, which forced me to accelerate through that path to get there. But it is a different way of communicating for sure. Boy, we've covered five, six different models of how to communicate here. Obviously, it's very complex.
Michael R. Gilbert 47:12
It is, it is. And you know, there's there's lots more to say, but that we'll have to wait for another time. I do appreciate your time. Jeremy, you are always interesting to talk to and I learn something new every time it's kind of like rewatching, a film that you've seen 10 times before and every time you see it at a different level. And and I love that, and I do thank you.
Summary 47:35
So it seems that there are some systematic reasons why communication can be hard. And though they aren't unique the IT business boundary. They are particularly pronounced at this point. The good news is that yes, we can do something about that.
There were four big takeaways for me from my conversation with Jeremy. One, know yourself and your audience so that you can tailor your message accordingly. The same parts will not weigh as heavily with all participants. Ask yourself if you need to be talking about facts, figures, actions and timelines; appealing to core beliefs; highlighting the relationships and impacts on people; giving space to reflect or teasing information out; spotlighting the win; or maybe injecting a little humorous, light relief. If your audience represents many different personality types, you can layer your message to appeal each of them.
Two, be wary of assuming your audience holds the same understanding that you do even of common words. Try to make it more of a natural dialogue. The more you interact, the quicker misinterpretations will surface and the quicker they can be resolved.
Three, avoid, "Expert's Syndrome". Anytime you find yourself explaining something, ask yourself, it's that adding value to the purpose of the dialogue, or just adding color when none was really needed. If you are an expert, you're probably in this conversation because you're an expert. And the rest of the audience wants to hear your conclusions, your recommendations, not learn your subject. And that's what you're here for.
And four, keep it interesting by keeping it relevant to your audience's domain. And if that's hard is probably because you don't really know them or their domain. And that's the problem you really need to fix first, get to know them, meet them on their grounds, your communications will grow exponentially. So that's it for this episode. I hope you've enjoyed it. And I did. If you have any comments or feedback, go ahead and leave a review on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcast from. And if you'd like to enter a dialogue with us or fellow listeners, head to our website at https://thetechnologysoundingboard.com where you'll find show notes, bios and a discussion board. Thank you for listening, and we look forward to connecting
