Shut Up More Before Thinking Out Loud
One of the traits that I've repeatedly gotten feedback in the past few months is in my communication. Not just verbally but also over text – Slack, Teams, etc. It's the skill that I'm working on the most right now– how to say things with enough concision and context and at the right altitude.
The thoughts in my brain are sometimes multi-threaded. I don't have diagnosed AD(H)D – the most a psychologist could do was mild-ADD. In some conversations, where I'm not the most important voice, I'm just listening to the thoughts being shared and decisions being made. I may quip about something that was being looked over. Usually, I let all of it sit in my head before following up with the relevant folks afterwards with gaps in the decision-making.
The way that I write is sometimes a mirror to the way I think (and sometimes speak). I speak as if I were thinking out loud. The problem I've noticed with this form of communication is that not everyone is like me and can follow multi-threaded conversations and tangents. If I'm caught off guard by a question or are in a brainstorming session, I have to think through my entire thought end-to-end, tangents and all, before coming to a single-threaded and easier-to-understand message.
The other thing I've noticed is that in a cross-functional work setting, I have my perception and context based on the things visible to me, and others have a different view of the situation based on their context – some of which is visible and some of which is not visible to me. In those situations, communication alters our shared reality of who knows what and who can influence what. I've noticed in meetings when folks ask very pointed questions mostly to gather information when I know there's a lot more context that's behind the question in the first place. A "loaded" question, but it doesn't come across as such when one is ignorant of the context.
Given the feedback that I've received over the way I share my thoughts or insights as it comes to my work, I'm going to start taking note of what everyone cares about, so I don't provide any extra unnecessary context unless prompted. When I've seen too much, it's much better to shut up before thinking out loud.