| Authors: | Noirin Plunkett |
|---|---|
| Time: | 9:00 |
| Session: | http://docs.writethedocs.org/en/2013/conference/talks.html#noirin-plunkett |
| Link: | @noirinp |
We are basically hairless monkeys, but we’ve evolved to be social animals. And we respond to human faces – even just images of faces – in a way that we don’t respond to images of animals or inanimate objects. Our social groups are much larger than those of other primates, and we keep them together through communication and more specifically, empathy.
We communicate via words, of course, but things like facial expressions, hand gestures, and body language and positioning, convey as much, if not more, emotional context than the words. When faced with text like “I need to see you in my office in five years”, we tend to fill in the emotional context with negative emotions: “oh shit”, as opposed to, “yes, I got a raise!” Our professional writing gets a lot more review and revision than our email, instant messaging, or IRC text. The review and revision process helps us calibrate register, tone, and empathy.
The problem is that when we’re writing email or documents we’re not particularly invested in, we don’t write: we speak with our fingers. For people we know well this is fine: we can hear their voice and tone as we read the text, and vice versa. For documentation, we don’t have that luxury: our readers don’t know us, they can’t hear the emotional side channels that we normally have when speaking aloud. Communication is not just transmission, it’s ensuring that the message has been received.
Our online communities are often – sometimes intentionally – social skills free zones. Social skills are like other skills: they can be taught and learned. So how can we improve the emotional tenor of our text and our documentation interactions?
Understand expectations. When it comes to the idea of “tact”, we can think of it as a filter (MIT reference XXX): it can either be applied to the output – as you speak, you apply tact – or the input – as you listen, you apply a tact filter. Either way is fine (and the latter may be more prevalent for geeks), so long as both parties know the setup. When we’re communicating with a non-technical audience, it’s easy to have tact mismatch.
A good pattern to follow is to apply just a little bit of tact on the output; not as much as you might have when visiting a new partner’s parents, but some.
Zero is not negative. When emotional context is missing, it’s a natural tendency to project negative emotions into the vacuum. But zero is not negative. If you can be aware of when that’s happening, you can stop, and ask for clarification. “Are you upset with the job I’ve done?” And if you detect sarcasm, respond with sincerity.
Right and misunderstood is still wrong. If you transmit the correct message and it’s understood incorrectly, you’ve still failed. There are at least seven different ways to interpret a simple sentence like “I didn’t say you stole my money.” When in doubt, re-phrase. If you have to ask if a sentence is grammatical, it doesn’t matter: rewrite it.
They don’t know how you feel. Sometimes we act like small children, and forget that others don’t magically have all the context we have in our brains. Our readers don’t know if we’re having a good or bad day, or what we’re feeling as we write. If a conversation over text isn’t going well and we don’t know why, stating your emotions or emotional state can be very useful in getting things back on track. It provides more context. Another technique is reflecting what you hear back to the speaker: “OK, so what I heard is that you ...”. It’s a way to ensure you’re understanding.
Increase empathic bandwidth. Maybe you move the conversation from email to IRC, or IRC to voice, or voice to video, or video to real life. Just something that can carry more of the emotional side channel than just text.
Perception is reality. If someone feels attacked, they’re going to stop listening. It doesn’t matter if they’re really being attacked, or what you intended. If they perceive some emotional content that’s not what you intended, it’s their reality.
It’s not a competition.
Active isn’t always better than passive.
Competence is more likely than incompetence.
If it doesn’t matter, do it their way.