How to communicate a lot with people and not hate them
Hello! We are Lera Cherepanova and Natasha Kolesnikova – researchers in the UX laboratory of Kontur.
The UX laboratory helps both teams without their own UX researcher, and those teams that have a researcher, but the workload does not allow them to take on the task. Like other researchers, we communicate a lot with the customer team, with product users and with other colleagues.
But there is one significant difference: a laboratory researcher has a new customer and a new product every 3-4 weeks. In a couple of days, we need to build communication with the team, understand the product, communicate with completely new users for 1-2 weeks, and at the end present the results to the team in a way that inspires trust.
That is, the basis of our work is not just maintaining communication. In most cases, this is precisely building it from scratch, and the drivers of this process are ourselves. But this does not mean that we are all super extroverts and recharge from endless communication.
That's why we decided to talk about how to communicate with people a lot and not hate them. And consider the example of Dasha.
Introductory
Dasha has a classic three-story red calendar, and her eyes are also red. Dasha is a hero, she drives many processes and actively participates in discussions at every meeting. At the same time, Dasha can hardly be called an extrovert. Communication with people exhausts her more than it energizes her. Dasha looks forward to Friday evening, comes home and is silent for a long time, looking at the wall, and comes to life only on the weekend.
Here a question arises. Why do anything about it at all? After all, you can just take a break on the weekend, go on vacation, and everything will work out.
But tracking your condition is important. And in our practice, communication is the most energy-consuming part of the work process. Therefore, Dasha read all the articles about planning and time management and left only the most necessary things in her calendar.
But there is still not enough strength and energy even for this.
What to do if time management doesn't help
Stop and reflect
Remember meetings that drained the remaining energy
Understand whether there are meetings after which you feel better. What kind of meetings are these? You can divide them into categories: with a team, with a working group, with a lead, etc.
Next, you need to determine your position and degree of involvement in each communication. How invested was I in this meeting? How did you feel at different moments? Did you drive more or watch?
This will help identify which communication is draining the resource. It is imperative to record such reflections in order to be able to return to them after a while.
Think about whether all the activities that you drive really drive you
Focus specifically on those meetings where you are most active and take on a lot. Spoiler: perhaps these are all your current meetings.
Answer your question honestly: why am I investing in them? I'm afraid that without me something will break? So passionate that you don’t want to share? Or is it important for me that it be exactly the way I want and nothing else? Or maybe all at once?
Outline your area of responsibility
Look at every meeting and think: what will happen if you stop being active? Will something break or not? Does communication in this process depend on me alone? Is there anyone else influencing the process?
And the most difficult thing is to understand that part of your involvement and responsibility can be delegated. There are meetings where you can simply listen to what others are saying and think about it while drinking tea.
Think about specific steps that can change the situation
There is no sequence here, only options. And you can choose the right one only based on honest answers to the previous questions.
– You can make a list of actions. Describe what to delegate and to whom, indicate the target level of inclusion at each meeting/different types of meetings.
– Make a decision not to be too active where it is not necessary: remain neutral and let the people responsible for this right now be active.
– For example, if the calendar is full of meetings, but there are trainings / large group synchronizations / meetings where you are only a part, but you need to be at the whole thing – think about it: perhaps not all the meetings were eliminated and it just seemed that there was nothing superfluous left on the calendar.
– Sometimes you can, through an effort of will, forbid yourself from going to unnecessary meetings.
When the energy saving plan appears, track your status
You can practice this activity: at the end of the day, evaluate the communications that happened. Which ones filled and which ones drained energy? At what point did you feel like you had run out of energy for communication?
In dynamics, such self-synchronizations help highlight certain patterns and tell you when to slow down. It will take no more than five minutes, and will save much more time and, most importantly, energy in the long run.
What risks might there be after such a reconfiguration?
May like to remain silent in meetings
Sometimes this is not bad and only means that the current type of work is not quite suitable for you right now. But in fact, having gone to this extreme, you will more accurately understand where to speak, after all, it is necessary. And five minutes of analysis after meetings will help you realize which topics are not yours and save many hours in the future.
You can relax too much at some point
And not to notice how he returned to where he started. Still, reflection is a continuous process. But the more often and regularly we practice some activity, the faster it becomes a habit and the higher the likelihood that it will take root.
Happy ending
Dasha understood which meetings filled her and which drained her energy, found patterns and decided not to go full throttle from 10 to 18 all 5 days a week.
This did not change the number of meetings Dasha had, but she gained more strength.
She learned to track how much energy she has here and now and carefully dose it so as not to remain in the red at the end of the day.
Conclusion
A lot of communication is our and Dasha’s inevitable reality. This is often a great networking event, but sometimes it is an unpleasant and energy-consuming undertaking. It is important to pay attention to yourself, where your energy is spent, and at what moments your strength leaves you.
And you don’t need to try to control all the processes around you. Surely there is someone nearby who is ready to pick up something that no longer fits. Don't hesitate to ask.
Written for a telegram channel about research with a tasty name “Muffin”
