This past week I’ve been seeing a recurring theme emerge while studying about the Scrum methodology: the importance of communication. Teams require transparency in order to assess what they’ve done and adapt if needed. Scrum fails if communication is poor within a team. Clear communication can be the difference between creating microservices or creating a monolith. It feels like communication is often taken for granted, yet good lines of communication are seemingly paramount to a team’s/businesses’ success.

While going through YouTube, an MIT lecture on communication by Patrick Winston popped up, so I plopped down for an hour, took out a pen and paper and jotted down some of the key points. I wanted to improve my overall communication skills as I think it’s of critical importance. While the focus of the talk was about presenting a lecture with the aim of getting the audience to learn something new, I think that many of the key points hold true for more general purposes. Here are some of the key take away points I got from the lecture.

Quality = f(K, P, t)

General formula: Quality = f(K, P, t), where knowledge is most important, practice secondly so, and talent contributing a very minuscule amount.

people engaging in conversation

Pregame

Make sure the area is brightly lit (darkness stimulates humans’ desire to sleep), and that any nuances are accounted for. It’s better if people aren’t checking their phones/laptops because we only have one language processor. If it’s being used up on something else, then it won’t be focusing on what’s being talked about.

Starting it off

Don’t kick off with a joke. The audience isn’t ready for your speaking pattern when you begin. It’s better to start with a promise. For example, “I promise by the end of this blog you’ll know more about presenting”

Meat and Potatoes:

  • Cycle around critical points. Then come back to the main points you want to express. 20% of the time, people are “fogged out” (an idea I had never really stopped to consider), meaning their focus is somewhere else entirely. Going back to key points increases the probability that they will hear your core points.
  • Differentiate your ideas by comparing them to what others did.
  • Up to 7-second pauses are acceptable and create a form of pacing.
  • Ask questions to check for understanding
  • In the slides, use less words, but have the more important information in those slides

Wrapping it up

At the end of a discussion don’t say “Thank you”. That implies that the audience is there as a favor to you, which they are not. Instead, salute them by saying something like, “It’s been wonderful talking about such a fascinating topic with a group of bright folks like yourselves” or something along those lines.

Everyday application

When discussing various topics with coworkers or peers, it’s good to have a focused message when working together towards something. The two most interesting parts I found were in how to start and how to conclude. When your audience are just getting to know the topic well, do not  rush into things and start introducing jokes. It is better to break the ice than to force levity before any connection has been made. Similarly, when rounding up discussions, it doesn’t make sense to thank the audience. Unless they’ve done you some kind of favor or kindness, thank you makes little sense. Saying something instead to compliment them and the situation is a way better exit. While sometimes taken for granted, the importance of good communication skills can’t be stressed enough. With a few tactful usages of the above rules, you too can