Effective Cross-Functional Communication

thanks for sticking around so we are

here today to speak about establishing a

system of effective cross-functional

communication and our experience is

going to come primarily from an

engineering standpoint with a little bit

of experience design but what we have to

share can really be applied to any team

and before we get to our intro slide yes

we are both with bounteous you've

probably seen at least one of our

company slides over the last two days

and yes we're hiring that this is

Katrina

she's a front-end developer she has a

liberal arts education from University

of Wisconsin she's been at bounteous for

seven years working remotely her focus

is on a e/m which is adobe experience

manager she does a front-end for that as

I alluded to she is a badger from

Wisconsin and if she were to be sorted

at Hogwarts she would be Ravenclaw and

this is Danny he is a front-end

developer with an engineering background

he has been with bounteous for the last

nine years primarily focusing on the

Drupal content management system

he's a University of Iowa graduate his

Hogwarts house is Hufflepuff which also

makes him a badger

we're exact peers despite our

engineering versus English backgrounds

we both think with both sides of our

brains we view ourselves as translators

between engineers and design we're

ambassadors that can speak to both the

technical specifications and the design

aesthetics and this requires us to share

a common vocabulary that both teams can

understand and to empathize with the

challenges that both teams face

so acknowledging the different

perspectives of these teams how to

create how do we create a system where

we can communicate effectively we start

by recognizing that we have the same end

goals and then when there's some

differences of opinion we approach them

with inquiry instead of advocacy we're

trying to avoid that us-versus-them

mentality that can throw a wrench into

collaboration Andy and I have never

worked on the same project together

we're each bringing our unique

experiences to this we've identified

some common factors we practice what

we're about to preach and as competency

in tech leads we bring this to our teams

and our purpose today is to share what

we've learned and what we continue to

learn the agenda today is we're going to

go over some communication ground rules

we're gonna go over disconnect points

next we're going to talk about bad

communication and constructive language

and finally we'll have some recaps and

we'll put it up for questions so in

order to create an environment for

effective communication where people are

receptive to other points of view we

have a few ground rules the first ground

rule is always the soon positive intent

I might have strong opinions or feel

heated in the moment if you've seen some

of my talks I get really passionate

about things but we need to be able to

trust each other that we're on the same

same side that we're not trying to

subvert or mislead even though I am

coming at you with a lot of passion

we're together gonna do the right thing

and this is really key to how we work at

bumpiness so here we've got a drawing in

which you might see a duck you might see

a rabbit and now that I've pointed out

that both are there you're probably

gonna see both of them none of these

perspectives is wrong

it's our prior experiences that are

influencing our perception of the world

and we've discovered that most

disconnects in communication happened

due to these differences in experience

and the assumptions that we build as a

result so it's our role as active

participants to ensure that we're not

introducing any judgment of those

perspectives into our communication

since Andy and I straddled the world of

design and engineering we understand the

benefits and the challenges of working

with both teams and seeking inquiry into

those perspectives helps us to

understand a third perspective that of

the client

so let's take a little deeper look into

two of those perspectives here on the

screen we've got a fairly typical

mapping of all the processes and

technical layers that can go into

building a web application we'll call it

a stereotypical engineers view of the

world you've got content management

systems api's messaging inventory

there's a lot of things there you can

get pretty complex there's a lot of

critical details and precise steps

involved in building that perfect system

it takes a lot of technological effort

to get something like this stood up oh

and I guess there's a little user in

there somewhere that small icon is up by

the web application box that's this user

of this entire complex system her

perspective is a blind spot if we don't

understand what that user is trying to

do how do we know that we've done a good

job this is the designers view on the

screen what you're seeing is a gentleman

who's holding the phone and he's

laughing and a woman likes oh they're

just having a really great time so the

designers view is really focused on the

people where everyone's having a great

time interacting with the perfect amount

so in the previous site slide the user

was almost absent here in this picture

the phone isn't even in focus so for

design it's difficult to make that

technology invisible to create those

delightful interactions and for

engineering it's easy to lose

perspective of that user among all that

complexity again neither view is wrong

the hardest work is balancing between

both of these views there's a lot of

technical complexity to enable these

great experiences we need to really

embrace the duck and the rabbit and that

really takes communication

so another guiding principle that is

successful to communication is the

responsibility sorry it's the

responsibility of the person who's

transmitting that message as well as the

person that's receiving that message you

have to listen to understand and not to

interrupt we're not just waiting to

interject with our own thoughts I'm very

guilty of that are very passionate about

what I want to say but it really takes

that communication goes both ways it's

not a passive skill it has an outcome

and it has an end goal it's not just

about hearing ourselves talk so in her

book lean in and Sheryl Sandberg noted

the ability to listen is as important as

the ability to speak miscommunication is

a two-way street

communication and miscommunication are

two sides of the same coin so this idea

could be its own presentation and will

definitely touch on this a bit later but

in short if you're in a conversation and

there's a miscommunication you are

partly responsible everybody in that

conversation is so if I'm trying to

share an idea with Andy and I need to be

responsible for making sure that my

intent is received and heard and it's

Andy's role as a listener to ensure that

if he if he didn't quite get things if

he didn't maybe he misheard maybe he

just didn't understand he needs to

inform me of that so that we can settle

things out now that doesn't mean that

we're seeking to reach agreement 100% of

the time or actively avoiding conflict

right which brings us to our third

ground rule

the conflict is not inherently better

aiming to avoid miscommunication is

different than seeking 100% agreement

healthy conflict is absolutely part of

the creative process you know Andy and I

might disagree with each other with our

project colleagues or even with the

client all the time this is

fundamentally not and should not be a

problem

why because even if we have these

different points of view we should all

be working towards the same end goals

and if there is conflict we need to be

conscious of it and avoid going into

battle

so in work and in life we should be

approaching conflict by seeking to

understand where our differences lie and

trying to find some common ground

so we're all here because we build

things for people for that stick figure

and user and we want to be better at it

so we think that building great products

and services requires balancing three

points of view while also pushing the

boundaries of innovation and the Design

Thinking here is human centric problem

solving we converge all of the different

ways that a problem can be solved one to

help businesses focus on things that

their users actually want that we can

build to to leverage technology and not

just based on what's the easiest or the

cheapest or the most fun or the fastest

to build but using what it takes to

solve human problems in the businesses

domain at 3:00 to focus the human not

just on delightful experiences but to

feasibly deliver those experiences using

the technology to meet the needs of the

business if this sounds like a lot it is

it's natural to have a lot of tension

between those three different points of

view and this is where healthy conflict

can lead to great products

translation so each of these three

points of view has a tendency to view

their own domain as the centre point

around which the others need to adjust

so for us engineers in the technology

sphere it could be pretty easy to dig in

our heels on the technical reasons to do

or to not do something the problem is

that this is approaching communication

from an advocacy standpoint we're

failing to inquire into the problems

that the other spheres are trying to

solve or or have and if we silo like

this it makes it harder to find optimal

solutions and harder to build great

products inquiry on the other hand

enables us to shift our own views to

meet at that center point where we can

enable all three spheres that space is

where we make great products and where

we make great teams happen we each need

to take the responsibility to get to

that point by asking ourselves about the

problems we're trying to solve and

aligning on our common goals for

outcomes

unresolved conflicts create real

problems and rework I have a tendency to

say sure it's fine

and really it's fine until it isn't

disconnects and miscommunication when it

within a team don't just make it harder

to work together they impact the

products that we make for those people

in the next few slides we're going to we

made up a few scenarios and we're sure

you're gonna think through a few more

but we're gonna view them as system of

interactions like dialogues for people

so you can get the understanding of it

so imagine that you want to order a

pizza and you want to pick up the pizza

so you go online place the order it asks

you where you are and that completely

makes sense because you want to pick it

up you're where you are then it asks for

your full address but that really

doesn't make sense because you want to

pick it up maybe you're in left and

doesn't matter or maybe you're in a

hotel and you have no idea the exact

address but you saw the store across the

street so most likely if you called the

store for a carry-out order they're not

gonna ask you for this information they

want your name they want your phone

number they want to know if you want

thin crust and extra cheese one can

imagine that the business might not have

had a discussion with the technology

team about reusing some code and nobody

considers the very human implications of

going in and picking up an order imagine

that you want to buy furniture for your

office your home you're asked you want

upholstery occasional or case goods

unless you work in the industry you have

no idea what this means or how that

decision impacts exactly what products

you might want to buy during the

purchase so here the business point of

view is again getting in the way of the

human experience the company's internal

jargon is bleeding out onto the website

and it doesn't make any sense to their

end users but even if we cleaned up the

interface to change the the verbiage you

know change it from case codes to to

what have you if your data is still

organized in this way it can still

create a disconnect

neither the business

technology is again considering the

human experience of shopping for

furniture so this brings us to our

fourth ground rule don't fall for the

illusion of communication so sometimes

it might seem like people are

effectively communicating because we're

having meetings we're sending emails

things are being said only for some some

stressful and costly realizations to

happen down the line often when it's too

late to easily resolve the

miscommunication some common examples of

when the illusion of communication might

be occurring is if all of your

conversations are overly optimistic

maybe there's the appearance of no

conflict maybe you're just avoiding

having some of those really hard

conversations so how do we know if

there's a disconnects in our

communication let's start with a logical

framework so we have four quadrant and

for every communication we're gonna have

a yes or a No if there is an actual

disconnect and at the bottom we have a

yes or no if there's a perceived

disconnect so on the screen then the

lower left quadrant is discussion

there's an actual disconnect that you're

aware of that's great at least in an

environment positive intent you can work

through the disagreement via discussion

moving up to the top left corner where

we have clarification sometimes it might

seem like there's a disconnect but

really there's not those conversations

might start with people approaching it

in disagreement but ideally someone has

an inkling that maybe you're saying the

same thing this is a great time to

really slow down and learn the

vocabulary or perspective that you just

missed

moving down on the screen and the bottom

right quadrant is the illusion of

communication it's the most subtle and

most damaging sometimes there may be a

disconnect but both parties just don't

know it yet this is a this is harder to

spot but not impossible an example is an

engineering team says that the designer

oh we didn't estimate time to build that

never ever been said before I told you

that would take more time no you said it

would be hard not that it would take

more time and cost more hard is not

those two things those are very

different things

and this can lead to unresolved

ambiguity and we'll talk a little bit

more about how to detect that in warning

science and how to get out of that top

right on the screen in the top right

quadrant it is a highly functional team

so you're a highly functional team

spends a lot of time in this quadrant no

one perceives a disconnect in there are

no disconnects note that this doesn't

happen by accident it takes work and

also want to make this really clear this

is not a magical zone of no conflict

what's great about this diagram is that

when you find yourself in one of those

quadrants you're gonna want to move to

another quadrant and ideally get to a

high-functioning team so again it

doesn't mean that you're always

high-functioning you just get back there

quickly it takes vigilance and it takes

recognizing where you stand in the

diagram patrina yeah how many times have

you been not a highly functional team

well I mean you know there's been

several times in a team as if it's toes

into that quadrant but the most

effective team I was on was so good that

we accidentally recruited a dev away

from a client

so one of these teams look like highly

functional teams they're usually diverse

they're lean there's a lot of trust if

there's too many voices at the table if

we're siloing our work with not a lot of

transparency if there's micromanaging

from the top or what-have-you

or if the team is just too new and that

Trust hasn't been established it's

really hard to stay in that that top

right quadrant for too long

now that we have our ground rules let's

discuss areas in a project where

communication disconnects are most

likely to happen on the screen there's a

graphic and at the top the graphic is a

very heavy rock on top of a man the man

is reaching down to a woman and holding

her hand and trying to lift her up but

what the man can see is in a cave

there's a snake that's reaching out and

biting her arm what's interesting about

this is the man can't see the snake and

the woman can't see the rock so the

woman might say why isn't he lifting me

up any faster and the man might say why

is she keep pulling away I'm trying to

help her they're both wondering because

they're trying to help each other out so

the point of this graph and this is a

pretty graphical representation of it

but what really is trying to say is

sometimes we can't see each other's

obstacles we need to learn to understand

each other's perspective and not only

that it's a two-way street we have to

communicate our perspective clearly to

the other person so as Andy said in our

intro in the seven years that I've been

with bounteous I've worked entirely

remotely in fact a great deal of our

company is remote in one form or another

either because we're we're gonna be the

team that is spread out across multiple

time zones or like me they they live and

work full-time from a city in which we

don't have a brick-and-mortar office so

during our time as full-time or

part-time remote employees we've

identified what we're calling the three

DISA's of remote communication the first

is disengagement withdrawing from

involvement in an activity or a group

this can include personal disinterest

burnout boredom as well as some

unintentional omission

that is being inadvertently excluded

from a conversation here's an example

I'm assuming we've all been on a

conference call where you've got one

group dialing in from the same room and

you know maybe some other folks are

calling it from the road they're working

from home maybe they're at a client and

once that call is over conversations can

still continue among the group that's in

that that physical room together and if

those folks are in conscientious about

relaying important information or

decisions that have been made among that

group to the people who had to hang up

or maybe couldn't attend that's a point

of miscommunication

the second is distraction so if you

don't have somebody staring over your

shoulder or sitting right next to you

nobody who can see your screen it's not

as obvious that your attention is

elsewhere it's really really easy to get

distracted by slack messages or

responding to emails or you know poking

at that line of code that just keeps

throwing a building or giving in to

distraction is allowing ourselves to

become lazy in communication and it

really opens the door for for

disconnects the third and the third is

distrust so the work involved in

avoiding disengagement and and resisting

the temptation of distractions is that

can make a remote work challenging

enough but if there's distrust amongst a

team communication can become become

toxic really fast tone and context

become incredibly important you know

especially for those people that we

don't see in front of the coffee maker

every day earlier today JD talked about

how easy it is to miss read a simple

question as aggressive or accusatory

without careful attention to what we're

saying and how we're saying it we can

easily create that forth this disconnect

so speaking of tone and language let's

take a look at how we recognize some bad

communication patterns and take action

to improve kanji that conscious of time

we're going to go through some of these

a little bit quickly and there's a lot

of text on the screen but these are some

phrases that might be a sign that your

team needs to do some work to improve

their communication also the slides are

up on the session so feel free to

download them again we're gonna go

through these kind of quickly but

miscommunication can happen when you

find yourself saying something is either

good or bad

something is really important they

approved it that's hard

so if you were in heathers talk about

accessibility for PM's she touched on

how exclusion can happen when we develop

for our own biases a lot of these

miscommunications come from the point of

view of opinions judgments they're not

facts they're focused on the individual

instead of on the whole team and the

whole team's goals and outcomes using

some of these phrases can easily exclude

folks from the conversation

communication shuts down fast when you

hear or find yourself saying and as I've

said before I I told that because I said

so that's just common sense right we say

these things when we're frustrated

because we perceive somebody else's

breakdown in communication whether it's

real or not and we're putting the blame

on that instead of addressing our

failure to communicate our message these

phrases can make us sound

impatient or superior and they present

us as caring more about ourselves than

about the outcomes following could be

warning signs the communication is only

happening in a single direction you're

going to want to perk up to these

warning signals when you hear or say I

told them that it was in an email I gave

them a link to the wires that's my

personal favorite

so these phrases are illusions because

they're based on the assumption of

effective communication and they exhibit

a lack of failure to confirm again they

put the responsibility and sometimes the

blame on other people and show off our

own lack of ability to take initiative

so let's be clear using any of the

phrases from the previous three slides

is not communication because there's no

ownership

so touching back to those quadrants of

actual versus perceived disconnects it

is possible to intercept some

communication behaviors and to move

between the quadrants to get to where

you want so watching for those signals

and anti-patterns and miscommunications

it's just the first step now we'll give

you some alternative language that can

help you and your team move towards

highly functional and again I will be

reading through all of these let's be

highlighting a few of them so if you

hear things like good bad this is the

right way to do it

there's no time that's hard

you might try to reshape the

conversation by probing for more detail

quantifying some of the impact of

changes giving and receiving read back

what I hear you saying or getting

confirmation that everybody's on the

same page seeking to understand helps

our communication turn from me based

outcome focused

communication anti-patterns are often

knee-jerk reactions to a prior

miscommunication or an attempt to avoid

conflict so things like that's just

common sense I'm really busy I told them

that we can work out some resolution

here by first acknowledging that there

might be a disconnect in our

communication we can reposition conflict

by saying things like it sounds like

this is important to you can you help me

understand the urgency we're explaining

what you mean if there's a breakdown in

your common language and here we do need

to be open to re-evaluation of work

based on current conditions perhaps the

context or our understanding of the

outcomes have changed we might be

missing information

[Music]

so if we consider effective

communication to be successful and

parting of ideas these illusions clearly

indicate a failure to communicate so

instead of jumping to a position of

Defense with phrases like it was in the

wires they were in the room I told them

that find out if your message was

actually understood make sure that

everybody has the same shared

understanding get confirmation that

somebody agreed to what you think they

and if there's a miscommunication take

ownership I'm sorry it looks like I

didn't define that well enough let me

try to ensure the success of your

communication

recap we're gonna create the right

environment for communication ultimately

we succeed where we fail as teams great

teams have multiple skill set you've

heard a lot about diversity you know

even in your teams of design or

engineering all those different

viewpoints so you need to take pride in

the team's results and not just

individual contributions not just one

rock star on the team it takes

everybody's perspective and a lot of

work to make that happen it doesn't

matter if you see the duck or the rabbit

you have to work together to balance

both of those viewpoints so creating the

environment that fosters good

communication really comes back to our

ground rules always assume positive

intent communication and

miscommunication it's two ways don't

avoid conflict but seek inquiry and not

advocacy and don't fall for the illusion

of communication just talking is not

communicating this is hard it takes a

lot of work and our hope is that you can

use what we've shared today to help make

you and your team's communication more

effective thank you any questions

important that both sides take

responsibility on clear communication

the other situation in which we have

something

say something and another Polly's

ever have

and come back later and have wasted like

this a waste of time saying

that's already presented how do you

address that how do you make it so that

that person starts understanding you

because at that point and what point is

it now on you and now on the other

person that is the question was I'll

rephrase it for the recording is at what

point somebody if it keeps happening

over and over again

what are avenues to address that and

work towards resolution um so I mean

it's it's always gonna be the

responsibility of both parties of course

so you know for you or yeah you I assume

I would try rephrasing the communication

perhaps there's something in the the way

that it's being delivered maybe maybe

they don't remember things if they're

hurt but they do if they're seen so you

know get it in writing instead share

meaning notes after the fact

and maybe there's a time of day that I

was actually just gonna say that yeah is

I found every within the past year as

has been some challenges for me and I

found every time I was the most

frustrated in the worst situations I was

in wasn't always Friday at 2:00 o'clock

after a really long week after a really

hard sprint everytime so what I'm what

I'm suggesting is watch for when this is

happening is it at the start of a

project is it at the end of a project is

that at the start of the sprint or the

end of the spring if it's at the start

of a project maybe you want to look at

setting ground rules and have a kickoff

or a project if that's that's an

opportunity if it's at the end of a

project perhaps having a retro about it

a say French Rome and just see how that

helps that's another way that other

people can give that feedback and it

might be heard

communicating they don't something

they've gone through

like that's how do you like obviously

you can't do that

one percent of the time when you men or

even like 50 percent of the time and

like there's but like most of time along

the time you don't

it's like routine stuff that short works

out but like it's like that there's a

not insignificant like gray area how do

you how do you navigate that yes how do

you tell whether you're doing too much

or not enough sure sure so the question

was when do you validate the

communication when do you get

confirmation that your message has been

received so like you said there's a

there's a lot of gray areas and there's

a lot of you know wrote routine

day-to-day conversations you know and

again I hesitate to put a value on it

but if a conversation is really

important if a decision is important ask

for validation

I will say it can be exhausting it can

also feel like you're putting the other

person down say what I hear you saying

is and that just might turn into an

automatic trigger for that person to let

go off again on something so try a few

different ways it can be exhausting but

hopefully the effort keep giving it the

effort and learn from that like wow that

that really didn't go good singing a

slack message at 4:55 when I know that

he has to go coaches gets his team time

like that can wait so again trying to

see where that culpability is or maybe

this person is just always set off by

any slack message ever and just doesn't

you need to find out how to work with

that person so being interrupted all the

time maybe they don't know how to smooth

slack maybe they don't understand about

communication within the team may be

asked to move the stand up because the

stand up they're just half half tired at

the afternoon you know there's different

ways to look at those things

ensure that it gets there and to try and

think creatively through it I know I

talked a lot with Katrina to works

through a lot of this and just talking

with a colleague can really help give

you that outside perspective because

when you're in it you're in it you know

it gets hot in that room it feels easy

to talk to somebody else and that's

another suggestion if you can get a

third party involved because then

there's someone else there who can say

yes this was what we agreed to so we

don't work together we already like

together yes if you are going into you

like if you're being deployed into a

client in

any experience that you've had where you

are something some miscommunications or

conflicts that have existed between like

marketing and IT and now outside here in

their space I can you experience that I

can you speak to that question is

parachuting into another team that is

experiencing miscommunication I can't it

is it is definitely a challenge because

you don't have any of the backstory you

don't have the politics you don't know

where the landmines are so here asking a

lot of questions using you know and

being very conscious of the language

that you're using in the tone involved

in that can can really get you the kind

of information that you need or at least

get you started on the path to having

those conversations that can be more

effective um I find that maybe finding

the one or two people on the team who

have been there a long time

just picking their brain getting that

information getting that back story that

history can really help me get a sense

of what I might be walking into quick

story and then oh because my point had a

call with somebody that came into the

team and that had been on the client

call and person spoke and said but what

normally this person says and the call

got over the person immediately I got

the slap call right away like that guy

hates us like what's going on is like oh

no that's that's exactly what I would

expect in this situation like that's

that's how we work through problems so

didn't quite understand that that was

how as on the outside what felt kind of

not a great situation it actually led

towards resolution and a kite can kind

of be at the cost and is it like have I

just been beaten down enough where I

just take it but I know the I where it

comes from is that trust slide I have a

lot of trust in where he's coming from

and there's a lot of consistency that

we've had and and I'm not gonna move

away from that trust so establishing

trust is hard when you parachute in but

the other thing I always say is just be

fair be human and that's an easy

perspective when you're new because you

just walk in the room and you don't know

all the subversive gonna the subversive

things that are the arrows that can be

fired back and forth that can easily

sink an idea like you that's a big

advantage but at the same time that's a

great advantage for you to just call it

what it is like whether it's fair or not

so it's not for you to point out the

disconnects just be fair and try and get

more understand it's now that you have

to say oh this guy just really blows up

when he gets angry that doesn't mean

that you can't come at him you know with

with what the problem is so that makes

sense

any other questions I think we're at

time resources that you suggest to read

the book radical Tanner question was

resources about communication radical

theatres great places

all right thanks everybody thanks