I've taken a lot of your advice, on matters from investing to dating! I think for me it really helps that you've spent a lot of time showing that you care about my wellbeing, that you understand what's important to me, and that you're happy to explain the basis for your advice.
Yeah, and I think that's really important. The actual advice is just a small part of persuasion. The larger part is our existing friendship and the high levels of trust that we've built with each other.
In a time when texting and online chats make it hard to get the full picture and feel close to people, how do you think we can use your ideas about complex communication and giving advice so they still work well, even though we're mostly talking through screens?
I think it depends on the context of the relationship. If you're chatting to a complete stranger online, it's basically impossible to give good advice unless that person is already primed for it in some other way, in which case it seems more like reinforcing a preexisting belief rather than persuading someone to do something they hadn't considered before.
In the context of, let's say, a work relationship, being able to communicate effectively and persuasively through text or video chat will depend on a lot of factors. Do you have a good working relationship with them? Have you demonstrated to them that you have their own interests in mind? Is there a significant delta between what you're trying to tell them and what they think?
That's going to vary from person to person, but in my own experience, chat via text should only be reserved for things that need very little context and subtext in order to properly understand. Once you try to convey more complex (or charged, in the case of negative feedback) ideas and concepts, it's best to use video chat, because it allows for non-textual cues of communication and is much less likely to be misinterpreted. That's very likely something you already know, so I'll close out my answer with one last bit.
Effective communication and good advice are most likely to be received when trust between both parties is high. And you can build trust in numerous ways. One way that I've found is to bring subtextual and contextual things to the forefront, acknowledge their existence, explain how your advice/conversation is affected by it. Because oftentimes, in a conversation, there is a large information asymmetry between both people. Reducing that asymmetry intrinsically builds trust.
I'll give a personal example of this. Last year, I was part of a task force charged with improving our software's performance that had high visibility with senior leadership. My manager was micromanaging me, insisting on daily updates and subtly and not-so-subtly trying to accelerate timelines and progress. From my end, it was extremely annoying and stressful. We had a chat about it, and he told me that he knows it's a pain in the butt, but he was also facing these exact same situations (daily updates, a mandate for accelerating progress) with his own manager (which included a director who was a known asshole and hard charging micromanager) and leadership. Although this was something that I was already aware of, him acknowledging that the pressure he was putting on me wasn't coming out of nowhere, that it was coming from impatient leadership helped build trust and made me more aware of the pressures he was facing and how those pressures related to me.
I've taken a lot of your advice, on matters from investing to dating! I think for me it really helps that you've spent a lot of time showing that you care about my wellbeing, that you understand what's important to me, and that you're happy to explain the basis for your advice.
Yeah, and I think that's really important. The actual advice is just a small part of persuasion. The larger part is our existing friendship and the high levels of trust that we've built with each other.
Great article!
In a time when texting and online chats make it hard to get the full picture and feel close to people, how do you think we can use your ideas about complex communication and giving advice so they still work well, even though we're mostly talking through screens?
PS: Big fan of Steve McCurry
I think it depends on the context of the relationship. If you're chatting to a complete stranger online, it's basically impossible to give good advice unless that person is already primed for it in some other way, in which case it seems more like reinforcing a preexisting belief rather than persuading someone to do something they hadn't considered before.
In the context of, let's say, a work relationship, being able to communicate effectively and persuasively through text or video chat will depend on a lot of factors. Do you have a good working relationship with them? Have you demonstrated to them that you have their own interests in mind? Is there a significant delta between what you're trying to tell them and what they think?
That's going to vary from person to person, but in my own experience, chat via text should only be reserved for things that need very little context and subtext in order to properly understand. Once you try to convey more complex (or charged, in the case of negative feedback) ideas and concepts, it's best to use video chat, because it allows for non-textual cues of communication and is much less likely to be misinterpreted. That's very likely something you already know, so I'll close out my answer with one last bit.
Effective communication and good advice are most likely to be received when trust between both parties is high. And you can build trust in numerous ways. One way that I've found is to bring subtextual and contextual things to the forefront, acknowledge their existence, explain how your advice/conversation is affected by it. Because oftentimes, in a conversation, there is a large information asymmetry between both people. Reducing that asymmetry intrinsically builds trust.
I'll give a personal example of this. Last year, I was part of a task force charged with improving our software's performance that had high visibility with senior leadership. My manager was micromanaging me, insisting on daily updates and subtly and not-so-subtly trying to accelerate timelines and progress. From my end, it was extremely annoying and stressful. We had a chat about it, and he told me that he knows it's a pain in the butt, but he was also facing these exact same situations (daily updates, a mandate for accelerating progress) with his own manager (which included a director who was a known asshole and hard charging micromanager) and leadership. Although this was something that I was already aware of, him acknowledging that the pressure he was putting on me wasn't coming out of nowhere, that it was coming from impatient leadership helped build trust and made me more aware of the pressures he was facing and how those pressures related to me.