Communicating Effectively

Communicating Effectively

Introduction to Communication in Development

  • Communication is vital for success as a developer.

  • Being able to sell ideas to financiers, market apartments to buyers, and motivate real estate agents are crucial skills.

  • Effective team communication is essential for innovation and achieving outcomes greater than the sum of individual contributions (one and one makes three).

Importance of Communication

  • Understanding different communication styles.

  • Written communication skills.

  • Presentation skills.

  • Referencing an influential lecturer (unnamed) in robotics who became a renowned communication expert. He emphasized the importance of speaking, writing, and quality of ideas.

  • Ability to communicate effectively will hugely affect success in life.

  • The ability to articulate your vision is essential to win the confidence of stakeholders in complex urban projects and also for managing development teams.

  • Communication is part of leadership and quality assurance.

  • Developers need to communicate with various stakeholders, including financiers, councils, and community groups.

Communication Styles and Personal Skills

  • Recognizing different communication styles is essential, similarly to recognizing different types of people.

  • Adapting communication styles to suit different situations is key.

  • Sticking to a non-norm communication style to communicate can cause exhaustion.

  • Two main branches of communication styles:

    • Push: Assertive, demanding.

    • Pull: Attracting, inspiring.

  • Understanding the other's brain side. Left brain (engineers, logical), right brain (designers,creative).

  • The communication style should align with the nature and role of the person you're communicating with.

Push Communication Style

  • Asserting, demanding, bargaining, prescribing.

  • Assertive communication is strong but not aggressive.

  • Aggression is counterproductive.

  • Persuading is a medium-level push, logical, explicit, and involves debating.

Pull Communication Style

  • Bridging: Finding common ground, drawing out information, active listening.

  • Attracting: Inspiring and aligning with the other's views.

  • Avoiding: Used when dealing with aggression, involves disengaging and moving away.

Examples of Communication Styles

  • Persuading (Designers):

    • "Given the feasibility report, design fees need to decrease for the project to be viable. Please review your fees."

  • Assertive (When Persuasion Fails):

    • "The feasibility report is clear. Your fees are killing the project. Provide a lower fee by the end of the day."

Describing Persuading

  • Clear, simple, direct, concise.

  • Positive and outcome-oriented.

Describing Assertive Communication

  • Forceful but not aggressive.

  • Maintaining control, setting expectations, and using pressure.

  • Avoiding aggressive body language.

Pull Examples

  • Bridging:

    • "I understand added foundation complexity may require further design fees, but you must understand the project's financial constraints. How can we progress without jeopardizing the project?"

  • Attracting:

    • "Imagine receiving the 2025 Architecture Award for Good Design upon this project's completion. The entire team is striving for an exemplary project. How can I help you achieve this without increasing fees and risking the project?"

Active Listening

  • Involves planned silence to encourage the other party to speak.

  • Reinforcing their statements to encourage further conversation.

  • Paraphrasing to show understanding.

  • Most people speak too much; listening is more valuable.

Tools for Effective Communication

  • "Push, pull, push, pull" negotiation tactic: alternating between assertive and attracting approaches.

  • Gear changing: Transitioning between communication styles.

  • Both parties should feel comfortable and understood after negotiations. Look at a negotiation timeline and level of upset represented by a graph that goes up. At first there must be high pulling, then high pushing and so on. It is said that both parties need to cut a deal to come to agreement.

Extreme Situations and Avoidance

  • Deflecting and refocusing in complaint situations.

  • Avoiding and withdrawing from aggressive confrontations.

Applying Communication Styles

  • The approach depends on individuals, performance, and team challenges.

  • Constant assertiveness can be counterproductive to team performance.

  • Universally, human beings want to do a good job in what they are good at.

  • Taking an interest in the designer and being properly briefing them can result to better work.

  • Creative architects may require a more pull-oriented approach.

Example: Communicating with a High-End Creative Architect

  • Meeting in a high-end hotel lobby to discuss fees.

  • Creating a comfortable environment for negotiation.

Effectiveness of Communication Methods

  • Email and letters are less effective due to lack of two-way communication, it is just a package of data that is sent.

  • Phone calls allow for two-way information exchange and voice modulation.

  • Video conferences offer visual cues and facial expressions.

  • Face-to-face communication allows for observing body language and subtle cues.

  • Body language (e.g., crossed arms) can indicate barriers to communication.

  • Humorous anecdotes about video conferencing mishaps during COVID-19 and early video conferencing experiences.

  • Human senses can help, and a sense of communitcation you can only get from face to face.

Writing Skills

  • Structure, grammar, and accuracy are crucial.

  • First impressions matter.

  • Letters should be logical, concise, and paragraph-based.

  • A letter-writing course emphasized concise sentences (under 13 words).

  • Keep everything short and concise as after one and a half page people stop reading.

  • George Orwell was reported stating four key questions for clear writing:

    • What am I trying to say?

    • What words will express it?

    • What image or idiom will make it clearer?

    • Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?

  • Three drafts improve writing quality.

Report Writing

  • Clear, concise, and well-structured.

Planning Presentations

  • Rule of thumb: preparation time should be eight times the presentation time.

  • Define the presentation's objective.

  • Know the audience and their potential reactions.

  • Use an appropriate mix of media.

  • The audience needs to hear important points three times, including summary.

Presentation Examples

  • Flood prevention scheme to Manhattan

  • Architecture Spirals