This is something that's bothering me from time to time, so I'm interested in knowing if others are struggling with it as well.
It seems to me there are some people (my experience is with SWEs but probably not limited to that) that:
- don't directly address the point of your question / provide a much complex answer (or even worse, a non-answer) to a simple question
- don't stay focused to the point of the discussion
- don't have some level of clarity in their train of thought and speech
- generally over-complicate matters by wandering off to other related subjects and extending the scope of the discussion
In such cases I find it hard to have technical discussions at the point where I'm frustrated thinking of all the pointlessly-spent energy required to have those discussions the first place.
Anyone else feeling like this at work? Why do you think this happens? Is it an intentional choice to communicate like this, is it lack of some skill (on theirs or on my part) or something else?
P.S. Apologies for this rant (that probably lacks clarity as well)
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EDIT: Fixed title and some missing words (oh the irony).
In an American culture, it is "self-evident" that clear communication is about being direct and to the point. But this is far from universal. More generally, western cultures tend to conflate earnest and truth. "Telling it like it is" is valued. We don't realize our own "phoniness".
I have witnessed countless times people hitting a wall in meetings and other situations because they tried to address the point "butt head". Some typical examples I've witnessed
1. French/Japanese starting a simple resource discussion. As we French typically do, French manager starting a negotiating by saying no. Gradually softening while getting given more information. Result: French manager happy at the end, happy to start project, Japanese manager extremely stressed and thought nothing was decided.
2. American engineer excited about a starting project, mentioning how "awesome" things are. French engineer unimpressed, 50 % stuff not working, think the American is bulsshiting him, decides they can't be trusted. American just wanted to share his enthusiasm and wanted to build a working relationship. I was that French engineer long time ago, I really was super confused by American optimism. I thought it was all fake, I since learnt to tune and update my mental model :)
In all those cases, everybody thought they were very clear. I now work in Japan, and what Japanese would call very clear is very different from what we would consider clear in Europe or the US.