stop beating around the bush, a letter for the old me
a coworker once told me I needed to improve on something, and that made me realize how often I was actually beating around the bush every single day.
not sure how I got there, but I developed this strange way of dealing with people where I'd always beat around the bush. as a result, people were constantly giving me feedback like, 'Be more direct, I don't want to read between the lines!'. it's something I often reflect on, and I'm finally working on getting rid of this habit.
looking back, I finally decided to take some baby steps and move in a more direct way. the first obstacle I needed to overcome was saying 'Hey, I'm not judging you, okay?'. I often found myself saying this, and I know it sounds really annoying when someone is trying to solve issues quickly.
people won't get upset with you just for disagreeing with their vision (as long as you don't disrespect them). It took me about four of my eight years working with technology to finally understand that. this might sound a little late, especially considering that I work with product management, but better late than never!
this might sound a little obvious, but if it's your job to decide whether or not something should have a blue button instead of a dropdown, or even if the absence of a blue button is enough for the whole feature, people are actually expecting you to say something like, 'Yeah, this makes sense. Let's stop there and cut the scope.' so, don't be afraid to say things like, 'This is nice, but we won't be doing that at this time,' or 'Nope, this isn't working as intended; let's review that with our design team.' this is simply the expected behavior, so embrace being direct.
I'll come back in the near future to talk about the other obstacles, but I might just need a little coworker feedback to get things started. lol.
M.PM