Communication on guy@secdev.uk

How to Have Difficult Conversations

Mon, 18 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

There’s a particular kind of dread that settles in the night before you know you have to have a difficult conversation. You rehearse it in the shower. You draft opening lines in your head while making coffee. You tell yourself it’ll be fine, and then you spend the rest of the morning hoping the other person calls in sick.

I’ve been having difficult conversations as a manager for a long time now, and I want to be honest about something: they don’t get easier. What changes is that you get better at having them. You learn to sit with the discomfort rather than rushing through it. You learn that the conversation you’re dreading is almost never as bad as the one you’ve been having with yourself about it.

Communication Is a Craft, Not a Soft Skill

Mon, 28 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

For most of my career as an IC, the code did the talking. If the system worked, the message was clear. If the tests passed, the argument was won. Communication meant writing commit messages, maybe the occasional design document, and turning up to stand-up with something coherent to say.

Then I moved into leadership, and I discovered something uncomfortable: the thing I’d spent the least time deliberately practising was suddenly the thing I needed to be best at. Not architecture. Not debugging. Communication.

Giving Feedback That Actually Lands

Mon, 05 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

There’s a moment I remember clearly from early in my management career. I’d prepared what I thought was a really well-structured piece of feedback for someone on my team. I’d thought about the situation, the behaviour, the impact, the whole lot. I delivered it calmly, clearly, and with good intentions. And it landed like a brick through a window.

The person shut down. They nodded politely, said “okay, thanks,” and I could see the shutters come down behind their eyes. Whatever I’d intended to communicate, what they’d received was something entirely different. That gap, between intending to give helpful feedback and having it actually received that way, is enormous. And I’ve learned the hard way, more than once, that closing it takes far more than just getting your words right.