Before we got married, my husband and I completed a marriage prep course.
One week, the topic was communication. The exercise involved sitting on the floor, back-to-back. The leaders gave me a set of rectangular blocks, and my then-fiancé a picture of the blocks arranged in a specific pattern. He was to read the instructions to me while I arranged the blocks in the order he described. The catch: I couldn't ask any questions.
As he started to read the instructions, I’d place a block down on the rug. But on the fourth or fifth block, I got confused about the wording of the instructions. By then, he was already moving on to the next step! When he reached the end of the pattern and turned around to look at the way I’d organized them, they were completely off.
We repeated the activity, but this time, I was able to stop him and ask questions along the way. By the end, I had matched the blocks to the pattern.
The lesson? Communication is a two-way road.
“If you miss something early on, you can accidentally send a whole interaction sideways.”
Photo by Artem Maltsev on Unsplash
You may be familiar with that panicky feeling when you have no clue what someone's talking about. You wait it out, looking agreeable to save face. You're hoping that something later in the conversation will make it make sense. Maybe someone else will ask a question that bridges the gap in your understanding. And when that does happen, you feel relief. When it doesn't though...😬.
Think about how you perceive the person in the moment they speak up. They're confident and comfortable enough to speak up and let the group know they're confused. In most organizations, they're a leader. And people want to hire and work with leaders.
So why do we sometimes not speak up? Fear. Fear that we’re going to look dumb, inexperienced, or face judgement. Fear that it’ll seem like we weren’t paying attention. Fear of interrupting or the speaker getting annoyed or upset.
But which is worse: looking clueless for a moment, or embarking in the wrong direction entirely?
It’s tempting to agree with the speaker, or say what you think they want you to say. This is especially true in when you’ve got to think on your feet, such as in a client presentation, or user interview. We record most meetings and have a second teammate on hand. So I can always re-listen to the recording and try to make sense of it, or cross my fingers and hope the other Slider understood it.
But the best choice is to pause for a second, and process what the person said. Silence can be uncomfortable, but sometimes it is necessary to stop and let your brain catch up. And often, you’ll find that your conversation partner sense the pause, and repeats or rephrases themselves to fill the silence.
Other tactics for asking clarifying questions include saying something like:
“Let me see if I understand what you’re saying: {try to rephrase what they said}.” The person will often rephrase what he or she first said, giving you an opportunity to catch up.
“Hmm, I’m not following. Can you restate that in a different way?”
“I missed what you said. Can you say that one more time, so I can make sure I’m following?”
If the speaker has already moved on or switched topics:
“Can we go back to what you said a second ago? I want to make sure I understand before we move forward.”
At Slide, we strive to cultivate a culture that both supports Sliders asking questions and encourages them to seek help when they need it. This doesn't only apply to meetings either. When assigned a task, our rule of thumb is to spend about 10-15 minutes trying to figure it out ourselves first. Then if we haven’t figured it out, we should turn to another Slider for help. Time is money. It’s better to ask for help earlier than to end up wasting an hour trying to figure it out and get nowhere.