Transcript
Shane Hastie: Good day, folks. This is Shane Hastie for the InfoQ Engineering Culture podcast. Today I’m sitting down with Geoffrey Huck. Geoff, thank you very much for taking the time to talk to us.
Geoffrey Huck: Thank you very much, Shane. I’m very happy to be here.
Introductions [00:47]
Shane Hastie: Now you are a French person living in Germany. I am talking to you from New Zealand. So the joys of the global communications.
My normal starting place for this is who’s Geoff?
Geoffrey Huck: All right, so I started with a very deep passion in tech when I was a teenager, learned about everything. Then became a software engineer. I’ve been a software engineer for more than 12 years, 10 years as a freelancer. Nowadays, I help people in tech to speak in public.
So it’s not a coincidence. The reason why today I teach public speaking is because this was my biggest area of struggle. So in a nutshell, I learned how to speak and then realized that I can help my fellow tech people to learn those skills too.
Shane Hastie: There is the stereotypical software engineer who doesn’t like standing up in front of other people where we are again, stereotypically introverted. There’s a reason for the stereotype. There is a tendency towards introversion in our profession. How does that sometimes get in the way?
The tendency towards introversion is completely contextual [02:17]
Geoffrey Huck: Yes, it actually quite often comes in the way. We are mostly introverts because learning about tech and becoming an expert, that requires hours and nights and weekends and holidays days behind your computer. That was my case. I used to have a very, very small social life. So you don’t get the skills that would make you great at communication because you spend so much time on the computer.
I think that’s the reason why introverts are selected when it comes to tech. It comes in the way because whenever we start to build softwares in companies, individual contribution, it’s valuable of course, but it’s not what’s the most valuable. What’s the most valuable is doing things as a team. That’s how you get something that is bigger than just one individual. That’s where lack of communication skills are magnified because if you can’t leverage this way of doing things together, it will never reach as much impact as you could.
The important thing to know is that being introvert, and in fact the notion of introversion itself isn’t as crystal clear as we think it is. There can be many differences between two introverts. They might have completely different skills and non-skills when it comes to social skills and communication. It’s completely contextual. You can behave like an introvert in one context, like work, and be completely extrovert with friends and family. Which means that introversion is more a habit than permanent trait.
In fact, if you study people over a long period of time, there are many people who completely change their personality over a lifetime. Though it has a tendency to stay the same because there is a momentum, once we have our way of doing it, we tend to do similarly in the future. There are many people who change that and I think that’s very important to know.
Shane Hastie: When we say communication skills, what do we actually mean?
Defining communication skills [04:50]
Geoffrey Huck: Going to someone else and speak when you have something to say, instead of spending a lot of time by yourself to guess what the answers would be. Communication skills also mean that whenever you have a conflict, instead of ignoring it, you will go to the person. You will talk about it hopefully in a way that is good for you and for the other person.
Communication is also taking decisions as a group. It could also mean presenting in front of many people, talking in meetings, all those skills that requires talking to other people. So I’m not really talking about writing communication here because I am more specialized in talking, but that would also have to be included.
Shane Hastie: We’re often quite comfortable talking with our colleagues, the people like us who understand our language as technologists. How do we step into communicating with non-technical colleagues?
Challenges with communicating with non-technical people [06:08]
Geoffrey Huck: One of the reason you can easily talk tech with your peers because you kind of know what they know. You know what they know so it’s very easy for you to adapt to their level of understanding. Many people in tech, they don’t really know what non-tech people understand or not because if you want to know, you need to ask questions.
You need to ask for feedback. Hey guys, is it okay if I use this terminology? Do you understand? Do understand what it is? Or can you even give me a short description of what you understand given what I just said?
In order to be effective communicators, we need to be able to assess what’s the gap between our understanding and the other party’s understanding. It really starts with feedback. If there is no feedback, you might talk about something that the other think they understand or don’t understand at all without even knowing it.
Shane Hastie: How do I get that feedback? How do I request that feedback?
Geoffrey Huck: Just ask. Just ask. It’s also important that you ask the right questions. If you are talking to a business owner about technical issue, the first step would be to go there and talk about the issue and why it happens and why the tech suddenly went wrong. Most of the time what the business owner wants to hear, it’s just the business impact. How long can we fix it? Can we avoid it in the future?
Of course, if you are not sure about what the business owner wants to know, you try your best bet. You tell something and then you ask, do you have enough information to take a decision? Do you think that I told you things that you don’t need to know? Did you understand what I meant? Do you have questions? You can be very natural about it.
Of course you could follow a set of questions, but in my experience, it’s always better to first try with just what comes to you without applying a certain method so that you can have this feeling of, oh yes, okay, so this works. This doesn’t work. You internalize the knowledge instead of you just using a framework. If you do it this way, you will have a lot more success at adapting to the other person.
Shane Hastie: So if I have technical information to convey to a group of non-technical people, how do I communicate that in a way that does support that understanding?
Understand why you are communicating with someone [09:06]
Geoffrey Huck: You really need to know what they care about. Usually tech allows you to do something. So talking about what it does, it’s always a good bet. What it does, what problem it solves, what it makes possible could also be the shortcomings of this tech. It has a low performance or it’s slow or it’s expensive, takes a long time to set up. Everything that is related to business is always something that’s valuable to people because that’s what they use.
So whenever it comes to time, when it comes to money, when it comes to problems that you solve, those are always good bets. Now, if you really want to talk about how the tech works, make sure that people really want to know. If they do, your best bet would be to use analogies, metaphors. Try to find a story that explains the main concepts in a simple way. Here a rule of thumb, is to talk as if you are talking to young children.
Shane Hastie: I would argue that with the pervasiveness of technology today, isn’t it encumbered upon everyone to be able to talk about what the technologies are?
Communicate in a simple and clear way, even when the topic is complex [10:30]
Geoffrey Huck: It’s not always simple for people who are in tech to talk simply about technology because talking simply about tech is a different language than talking about what tech really is if you look behind it. It’s almost two different languages. If you never use the simple language to explain your knowledge, you don’t make the connections in your brain that enable you to explain it.
It’s really step-by-step. You need to practice to talk to people who don’t understand in order to be able to understand it better. Of course, you can also write articles about it. That’s usually a great way to be able to explain these things in a simpler way. If you’re not sure that you can talk about some concept or some technology, write an article that makes it available for the general public.
Shane Hastie: How do I keep people engaged when having these conversations?
Geoffrey Huck: What works well to keep people engaged is usually to change the rhythm. So this is more for a setting when you speak to a crowd. If you sound like documentation, it’ll be boring and then it’ll be hard to follow. If sometimes you drop a number, then you tell a story, then you ask a question to the audience, you change the rhythm often you will keep the attention longer.
Of course this doesn’t replace a good delivery. Talking clearly, talking with intonations, talking with a certain amount of passion, this is something that gets attention easily. It’s something that you can train yourself to do.
Shane Hastie: How do I train myself?
Practice communicating clearly [12:31]
Geoffrey Huck: The best is the camera. You record yourself and then you look at it. If when you look at it you feel that the person who’s talking on the camera is natural, then you are probably there. How you can proceed at practice is to take two minutes every day doing a short record, choose a topic you want to speak about, look at the camera and speak for two minutes.
Try to be a bit more expressive than usually. Try to be a bit more energetic. Talk a bit louder. Use intonations with your voice. Of course, it’ll be hard the first few days, but if you do it days after days, you will see that your delivery will improve a lot.
Shane Hastie: Another thing that we’re often accused of or maybe not accused, but we’re often again stereotyped, is struggling to connect with other people, particularly in social situations, organization social situations.
Connecting in social situations [13:39]
Geoffrey Huck: How do we get comfortable? It’s very interesting that you ask me how to be comfortable because that’s really key here. Many people who are not very comfortable, who identify as introverts, when they go to a networking event, they go out there to meet people, they face a big emotional reaction. Then they go there, they have this big emotional reaction and they try to apply techniques that they read to be effective networkers. That’s a completely different game.
It’s the same in networking. It’s the same in public speaking. It’s actually the same in all kinds of social situations. If you feel a very strong emotional reaction, your only goal is to go there and show up. Show up. That’s it. Techniques to be effective, to connect with people that you might have read in books, on LinkedIn, or heard about, those are techniques that are meant to be used only once you’re quite comfortable already. It’s the case for public speaking, for networking.
Many people, they’re blocked because they try to apply techniques before they’re even emotionally comfortable. The only way to get emotionally comfortable in a new situation in which you feel a strong emotional response is exposure. Anything else that you add on top of exposure might well backfire. So once you’re a bit more comfortable, the key is to focus on other people.
That’s also similar in networking and in a public speaking setting. We have a tendency of seeing the spotlight on us, but we need to put the spotlight on other people. Be curious about them. What would they like to know or to hear if we are talking to a crowd? Or if it’s a networking event, how can I help them? How can I understand who they are? How can I find what’s really beautiful in this person? It’s all about the others.
Shane Hastie: This can be very uncomfortable. I might well be a bit anxious. Am I taking a risk? Am I stepping into that place where maybe they don’t want to listen to me, maybe they don’t like me?
Geoffrey Huck: In which setting? In a networking setting?
Shane Hastie: Let’s talk a social setting.
Geoffrey Huck: Oh, you mean you might not feel comfortable to ask questions, like deeper questions about the other person?
Shane Hastie: Maybe.
People love to be asked about themselves [16:29]
Geoffrey Huck: Oh, they love it. Oh, then it’s really something that you should try. What I found is that when it’s genuine curiosity, if it’s genuine curiosity, people love it. Everyone wants to talk about what’s on their mind, but everyone is having a kind of a social networking professional mask in those situations. They want you to break it because you see it when you start to talk about what they find meaningful, what’s their passions, what’s their values. Usually people light up. So it really works.
If you feel not very comfortable to do it the first time, that’s perfectly normal because the first time is always the time where you have to break barriers. The first time you do something new is always the hardest thing of all. It’s also why it’s so important to do things that you feel discomfort to do because that’s how you grow confidence. That’s how you create more possibilities, more opportunities in life. So here the only advice would be just try once and if you feel discomfort, it means you are growing.
Shane Hastie: Tell us a story. Tell us an example from your own experience of how this has played out.
The extrovert switch [17:56]
Geoffrey Huck: The first time I discovered what I call and what other people that I met at networking events who are a bit of a similar experience, called the extrovert switch. When you go to networking event and you talk to people who are extremely open talking to everyone, it happens a lot that they tell you that they used to be the most extreme type of introvert.
A few years ago I was traveling in Taiwan, I was backpacking in Asia. I was a digital nomad at that time. I went to a hotel in which there was a big table in the main room, big table with people around. One of the reason I started to backpack and be a digital nomad was because I wanted to overcome an extreme shyness and inability to connect and awkwardness. I thought it was because I was a tech guy.
How can I possibly connect with normal people if I am a hundred percent into tech, building software all day, was a PHP at that time. Then it hit me. I started to feel this discomfort of, oh, but I’m shy, but I don’t think I can do it. I realized that people here, they don’t know I’m shy, so I might as well pretend that I am not shy. I’ve set the challenge of talking to everyone in the room without exception.
So I talked to the first person. Of course it was hard. I didn’t want to do it. I had to push myself. By the way, a little tip. If you try to find or wait for the perfect first sentence to talk to someone, just use, “Hey”. Works all the time. Don’t overthink it. Hey, and then you see what’s going on.
So I talked to the first person. Okay, I felt a bit weird. Then I initiate a conversation with the second person, still hard. Then a third, and that’s when I started to feel open. I started to feel more joy. I started to feel comfortable, confident, and I wanted to talk to everyone. I repeated this over and over and over.
When I go to a new environment in which I am not very comfortable because I don’t have any experience in it, people might be not the type of people I usually talk. I still face the first one or two people I talk to an obstacle. Then when I reach the third one, I open up and then I want to talk to everyone. Then I don’t have to force it anymore. It’s all nice and joy and openness.
There are many people out there who is the same. Many people who used to identify as introverts would discover that the secret is in initiating conversations, you initiate with one, two, three, and then suddenly you want to talk to everyone. The extrovert switch.
Shane Hastie: A lot of our communication today is exactly like you and I are here, moderated through a video technology where we don’t see the whole person. We might see a bank of names, sometimes we’re not even in the cameras. How do I create connections in that space?
Creating connection in virtual spaces [21:49]
Geoffrey Huck: The camera reduces the dimensionality of the meeting. You lose many things. One way to compensate is to talk with a bit more energy and expressiveness than what you would do without a camera. What I recommend people to do is to at least at the beginning, the first 30 seconds to one minute, talk with more energy, talk a bit louder with more expressivity, you can even move your body and look at the center of the camera. This one is very important.
If you have a secondary screen and you are not looking at the person when you speak, you fail to create the connection. You don’t necessarily have to do that at all time. This more energy and this looking at the center of the camera, but for the first half minutes, first one minute, it’s extremely important. It can really change the relation that you have with the other person. Then you might keep the same energy because it makes you feel good or you might lower it, but that’s your call.
Shane Hastie: What if we haven’t got the camera? The person I’m talking to for one or other reason is behind that box with a name on it.
Geoffrey Huck: So you can’t force the other person to put their camera on. What I usually recommend to do is to try to make them open it. You can ask a question like, “Hey, when I do those presentations, I use visual feedback to really adapt what I say to the people who are here. So it means that if you put your camera on, you will have a better experience. Of course if you really can’t, I understand”.
So you tell them that it would be great that they put the camera for their benefit and not for you. You still leave them a door so that if they really don’t want to do it, they don’t feel forced to do it. I think this is the best you can do.
Shane Hastie: Geoffrey, merci beaucoup.
Geoffrey Huck: Merci, Shane.
Shane Hastie: A lot of good concrete advice in there. If people want to continue the conversation, where do they find you?
Geoffrey Huck: I’m on LinkedIn. I post tips about public speaking almost every day.
Shane Hastie: Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us today.
Geoffrey Huck: Thank you very much. My pleasure.
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