Disclaimer
A few days ago, I returned from a concise journey to my friend in Belgrade.
We spent approximately 90% of our time together speaking about different matters. So, this article will be the outcome of our discussion.
Non-technical, subjective and short.
Being a human
Working for almost a decade in technical companies, I noticed an essential and rather sad thing: people try to be as optimal as machines, showing no feelings. We try our best to speak concisely, delivering our intention fast and straight. As I see it, the problem is that we’re not machines, we’re human, and we should instead be proud of it and use it as an advantage.
Let me elaborate on it and provide an example.
Example
Last week, I woke up in a terrible mood. I had a sleepless night, and I felt broken.
When I opened our team’s chat, I noticed a few messages in direct messages. People mostly were asking about my opinion.
I started typing the answers, then realized: “Hold on, you’re definitely providing very negative feedback because you feel broke”.
I tried rewriting my message to be more objective, but it didn’t help.
Then, I decided to leave the message as is but add a disclaimer in the beginning:
10:03 AM
I just woke up in a bad mood
please divide any of my claims by a factor of 2 at least
and I then continued to share my opinion.
I don’t know precisely how my colleague reacted to it. What I know is that I at least provided this person with the knowledge of my being biased, not because of the topic this person brought up but because of totally unrelated stuff.
My opinion
Of course, it’s always better to be unbiased.
But I’m a human. I have bad and good days, which affects my decisions and communications. Most of the time, I’m pretty out of control of my mood. (Even tho I’m taking mood stabilizers, haha)
What I know I can do is:
- identify my mood before I say shitty things
- let people know my feelings before we start our communications
- if I failed on both previous points, tell my feelings afterwards
- be patient and empathetic to other people. They may also feel shitty
These are the steps that I’m trying to follow. I hope they will improve my communication.
I wish they could also help you.