How Product Managers Can Avoid Miscommunication
What to do and what not to if you want your audience to understand your message.
What to do and what not to if you want your audience to understand your message.
Do you know how much time you spend writing e-mails or replying to messages?
Do you do that mindfully or let the flow drive your actions?
Please, reflect on these questions for a minute.
After the outbreak of Covid-19 in 2020, how we work changed dramatically. Many people have worked fully remote since then, and that is the present, and it seems to be the future. We quickly adapted to the new normal. Virtual meetings and written communication became the official work mode, but the question is: does that make sense?
“Listen with curiosity. Speak with honesty. Act with integrity. The greatest problem with communication is we don’t listen to understand. We listen to reply. When we listen with curiosity, we don’t listen with the intent to reply. We listen for what’s behind the words.”
― Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
Do you know how communication works? Most of us may think that it is about sending and receiving messages. From this perspective, virtual communication should be just fine; everyone can send and receive messages. Yet, this is a flawed perception, and undoubtedly it will result in misinterpretation, false expectations, and ultimately, frustration everywhere.
Until Product Managers master the art of communication, creating value sooner will be just a fantasy.
By the end of this post, you will have clarity on how communication works and why the new normal puts us in a tricky position. No worries, you won’t leave here powerless; I will guide you on how to act.
Understanding Communication
It’s too naive to believe text messages are an effective communication medium. Most people I know — including myself — spend significant time writing messages and replying to e-mails.
Be careful; this will potentially lead to miscommunication because words represent only 7% of the message.
Dr. Albert Mehrabian clarified how personal communication works. It’s shocking to know that words transport only 7% of the content, while 38% is related to the voice and tonality, and 55% is connected to the body language.
Excessive usage of written communication creates excessive misinterpretations. Let me make it graspable.
Short messages: sometimes, you want to inform something quickly. The message triggers a series of doubts instead of being helpful. People may interpret, you’re angry, or they need something wrong, and start second-guessing.
Unclarity: words have several meanings and can be interpreted differently. Imagine a designer sharing a prototype with you, then leaving many comments, e.g., this message is too big, or this blue is too bright, the flow is unclear to me. The designer will have to think, interpret, and hopefully address your feedback correctly.
Understanding cannot be taken as a given. Expecting all communication mediums have the same effect on everyone is ineffective.
Let’s evaluate two common traps Product Managers constantly fall into.
#1 — Ticket Communication
I am a calm person, but one thing can drive me mad: ticket communication as the official method inside a Product Team. Picture this scenario, a software engineer doubts a feature, and then the following happens:
Day 01 — 09:13 am: developer writes, “UX, I don’t understand the flow of this feature. Could you clarify before I start the implementation? Please.”
Day 01 — 10:47 am: the UX reads the ticket and interprets it as “My flow is unclear” then opens the flow, tries to make it simpler, attaches the new version, and writes, “Dev, please look at it the new version. Let me know if you need something else.”
Day 01–03:33 pm: the developer noticed the update, looked at the flow, and thought, “Hum. I still don’t get why the user cannot undo his request after it’s sent. It seems illogical to me”, she writes again in the ticket, “UX, thanks for the update but I still don’t understand the flow. Why are users unable to undo their request?”
Day 02 — 09:51 am: the UX sees the message and thinks, “Aargh. Nothing is wrong! The user cannot undo the request because our goal is to increase revenue. It should be obvious” he comments that on the ticket.
Day 02–11:11 am: the Dev thinks, “OK, it’s all about money. I won’t question again”, and then comments in the ticket, “OK! I will do it.”
It took more than a day to clarify something that would need no more than 5 minutes in a normal conversation. Beyond that, the developer and the UX Designer got annoyed with each other.
Act spontaneously. No matter the tool you use, prioritize human interaction as much as possible. If you have remote work, just start a video call, and by starting a video call, I mean just do it, don’t try to search for a slot in the calendar.
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Parallelism Is the Source of Mediocrity
You may think you’re a multi-tasker. You may believe you can have a video call, pay attention, get the content, participate, and reply to messages simultaneously. You might be able to do it all, but that doesn’t mean you can do anything well. My question to you:
Do you strive for excellence or mediocrity?
I understand many Product Managers feel pressured to do more and more. I used to think that as well. But many times, all we need to do is to slow down. Doing more doesn’t mean creating more value. On the contrary, it means creating more distractions.
Video calls are already challenging to connect to people. In many calls, we only see faces, and if we don’t give our full attention, we will neither understand nor transport the message we want.
Remember, 55% of communication is related to body language.
Another point, in real life, you don’t get your phone during exchanges and start replying to messages, updating tickets on Jira. You don’t do that because it’s impolite, but you may do it with remote work because you think people don’t perceive it. Well, everyone knows it, but everyone does it, and nobody says anything. That’s the right way of having misaligning of failing to transport messages.
Product Managers struggle with the new normal. Their calendars are full, and they often spend their whole day inside meetings and end up frustrated with a feeling of no achievement.
We need to adapt how we work remotely to escape from this trap. There’s a way out of being more productive, and we are lucky some start-ups are already trying to help us out. For example, Between is addressing such issues and helping Product Managers enjoy effective meetings. They offer a really cool way for you to manage notes, agendas, and attendee participation with a free Google Meet extension.
Communicating Effectively
No matter how you work, remote or offline, communication needs to be taken seriously.
Neither text messages nor e-mails will guarantee your counterpart understands what you mean.
Ticket exchange will lead to fatigue, misalignment and considerably reduce performance.
Parallel activities during video calls are neither effective nor polite.
Here are my tips for proper communication:
Mindfully choose the best communication format: video call, phone call, e-mail, text message.
Transport your message. Put yourself in the recipient’s shoes and think about how they would interpret the message.
Ensure understanding, ask your counterpart how she interpreted the message, and correct any misunderstandings.
When you are the recipient, re-phrase your words what you understood and ask, “Do you feel understood?”
“Words are the source of misunderstandings.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince