Name: Video recording for Communication mistakes I made at Google - Codementor Events
Uploaded: 2022-02-07
Description: Shunyao shares the communication lessons she learned from her mistakes during her time at Google

## About the talk

*“I am lost in the conversation.”*
*“I tried to explain something but people don’t seem to understand.”*

These are common challenges to non-native English speakers communicating in an English-speaking work environment. In this talk, I will share some mistakes I made during my time at Google, and my learnings from them. 

### This talk will cover

- What to do when you feel lost in meetings
- How to deliver the message concisely and effectively
- How to deal with conflicts and disagreements

*This event will be held on Zoom. Register to receive the recording afterward.*


non-technical events about soft or workplace skills like communication skills

Essential Skills

### What do you do when you don’t understand what people are talking about?


You need to rethink how you communicate, which includes the mindset, framework, structure, and empathy. If English is your second language, communicating will be more challenging too because you need more brain power to think in another language. 


Before jumping into the solution, the common problem and mistake people make when they’re having trouble understanding other people is to assume that it must be their problem. If you’re lost in a meeting, you’ll often find yourself not speaking up and letting the conversation continue while still thinking about the portion you don’t understand. What results from this is you’ll not only remain stuck, but you’ll also continue to lose track of what comes next, making the entire meeting a disaster. 


The more and more context you miss, the less and less you know. You also become disengaged from the conversations, and the notion that not understanding other people is your problem gets highlighted the more context you miss. The way to tackle this is to ask a lot of questions, even the ones where you feel like are “dumb questions.” By asking questions, you build rapport with others who have the same question and help the speaker recognize the communication gap. 


Essentially all the fear is in your head, nobody will judge you when you ask questions and will actually appreciate your questions, as it helps people explain things more clearly. The way to reframe it is to shift your mindset from “I didn’t understand it. It must be my problem.” to “Here’s an opportunity to bridge the gap in communication.”


### How do you ask the right questions?


There are two kinds of ways to ask questions. If the meeting is smaller and has less 15 people, ask the questions publicly. The questions can be:
1. “Just to make sure that I understand it correctly, do you mean…”
2. “Just to recap, the conclusion is…”
3. “Just to make sure I’m taking the notes correctly, the main takeaway is…”


Another way is to ask privately if you’re not comfortable asking publicly:
1. (Ping in the meeting) “Wait, what was that?”
2. (Ask after the meeting) “I missed the part when we talked about…Does it mean…?”
3. (Set up dedicated time) “Can you help me understand the basics?”


Most importantly, the bottom line is to recognize that asking questions is a healthy thing. It's not only helpful for the whole team, but also helpful for the speakers as well. 


### How to avoid extremes in answering questions


There are two extremes when it comes to answering questions. One is under-explaining, and one is over-explaining. Here are two similar conversations and how under- and over-explaining things look compared to giving just the right amount of information, data, and insights. The first one is when you swing from under-communicating to over-communicating:


1. (Daily standup)
Manager: How’s the progress?
You: I completed the experiment
Manager: What’s the result?
Me: 3%
Manager: What is 3%? Can you say more?
Me: We implemented in x way and used Y config. X is changed and we pushed it to 10%. Before the change, the data is Z; After the change the data is W.
Manager:...so what’s the conclusion?


Now, compared to the above example, this conversation would succinctly and concisely answers the manager’s question:


2. (Daily standup)
Manager: How’s the progress?
You: X metric is improved by 3%. It is better than what we expected. This means we are close to the competitors and we can potentially get another 2% improvement. 


To ensure your questions and answers are concise, make sure you’re thinking about these questions, and making sure what information include depending on your audience:


   1. What does this mean?
   2. Is this what we expected?
   3. Is this good enough?
   4. Can we improve more?
   5. What’s next?


Instead of framing your thought process as “I said what I needed to say,” reframe your mindset to “I said what they wanted to know.” Essentially, you want to frame your message to cater to what your target audience cares about. You can predict what they want to know or simply ask them what they want to know by asking “is there anything specific you’re interested in?” Bottom line is, the most important thing is to first try to think about what your audience wants to know, and give them that information instead of all you want to say.

Former Google PM dedicated to helping non-native English speakers

Shunyao Li

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Communicate at Work

Shunyao shares the communication lessons she learned from her mistakes during her time at Google

Video recording for: Communication mistakes I made at Google

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