Soft Skills: Listen to people, and understand what they are telling you

(This post is not designed to be belittling, instead it's designed to be root cause analysis.)

When Zach, my two year old, figures something out he screams out barely intelligible words and repeats them until I can figure out what he is saying and repeat it back to him.  The more non-obvious Zach's discovery the more insistent Zach will be that I understand his unintelligible statement.

For example, the other day Zach and I were outside and Zach started screaming buddaf -  I was baffled! Zach was very insistent so I started looking around and sure enough I found a picture of a butterfly painted on a bus stop. I screamed butterfly, and Zach became ecstatic and we were able to move on to another topic.

By contrast if I can't figure out what Zach is saying he gets sad, and acts rejected. This morning at breakfast Zach wanted something and I couldn't figure out what it was.  For 3 minutes Zach kept repeating masfd (which I still can't figure out) with vigour and passion. Then Zach started saying masfd quieter and quieter, looking sadder and sadder. Finally, rejected, Zach got up and left the table.

When people grow up, they're the same. They still have novel thoughts that they want heard and understood. If you can't understand and hear those thoughts the speaker will feel sad and rejected, and likely feel rejected for significantly longer than a two year old.

So, when someone, lets call her Alice, tells you something - hear Alice, and work really hard to understand what Alice says. Otherwise, Alice will feel sad and rejected, and will probably continue repeating her thoughts for a lot longer.  Notice that just because you hear and understand Alice, doesn't mean you have to agree with her, just hearing Alice is often sufficient.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Finding CLR exceptions without visual studio

(If you want to understand what exception code 0xe0434352 is, read this post ) Often exceptions are thrown and caught and you don't see them. You probably know how to debug this in Visual Studio, so let me show you how to do it in cdb. Sample Code: class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { foreach (var x in Enumerable.Range(0,2000)) { Thread.Sleep(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(1)); Console.WriteLine("Hello World"); ThrowAndCatchException(); } } private static void ThrowAndCatchException() { try { throw new NotImplementedException(); } catch(Exception) { } } } Output of the application: Hello World Hello World Hello World Nothing about an exception, but you're sure it's happening behind the covers -- fire up cdb: C:\Program Files\Debugging Tools for Windows (x64)>cdb -pn consoleapplication3.exe <SNIP> ModLoad: 000007fe`f7e90000 000007fe`f7eb4000 C:\Windows\Mi...
Read more

Why do I keep getting exception code e0434352?

If you want to know how to debug CLR exceptions using cdb then read this post . Exception code e0434352 is the exception code used internally by the CLR to represent most exceptions(*). Regardless of if you throw a System.NullReferenceException or a System.ArgumentException in C#, you'll throw a SEH exception e0434352 under the covers. A fun way to validate this theory is to watch what happens to the CLR exceptions settings in cdb. Fire up cdb, and see the state of clr exceptions: 0:000> .shell -ci "sx" findstr clr clr - CLR exception - second-chance break - not handled clrn - CLR notification exception - break - handled .shell: Process exited Now, set the exception handler for exception number e0434352 and recheck the value of the clr exception handler: 0:000> sxe e0434352 0:000> .shell -ci "sx" findstr clr clr - CLR exception - break - not handled clrn - CLR notification exception - break - handled .shell: Process exited Armed with ...
Read more

Powershell script to enable windows to capture localhost traffic in wireshark

If you want to understand why the following scripts work read this post . Otherwise just paste the following into an elevated powershell window: Setup windows networking to allow localhost capturing in wireshark: # Find the network configuration that has the default gateway. $defaultAdapter = Get-WMIObject Win32_NetworkAdapterConfiguration | ? {$_.DefaultIPGateway} if (@($defaultAdapter).Length -ne 1) {throw "You don't have 1 default gateway, your network configuration is not supported" } # Route local IP address via the default gateway route add $defaultAdapter.IPAddress[0] $defaultAdapter.DefaultIPGateway Write-Host "Start capturing on localhost by connecting to $($defaultAdapter.IPAddress[0])" Return windows networking to normal configuration: # Find the network configuration that has the default gateway. $defaultAdapter = Get-WMIObject Win32_NetworkAdapterConfiguration | ? {$_.DefaultIPGateway} if (@($defaultAdapter).Length -ne 1) {throw "Y...
Read more