Workplace Communication

Questions and model answers

1. When you need something from a colleague, how do you usually ask?

   I say what I need and by when, in the first line. It took me a while to get there — I used to open with three sentences of apology, and what that actually does is make someone read a paragraph before they know whether it concerns them. Now it's "could you look at the second section by Thursday", and the context goes underneath for anyone who wants it. The part I still get wrong is the deadline. If I say "whenever you get a chance" I'm not being polite, I'm making them guess, and then I'm quietly annoyed on Friday about a date I never gave them. Giving an actual date feels pushy, but it's easier on them.

2. For a difficult work conversation, would you rather write a message or speak in person?

   Speak, but write it first and then don't send it. Writing forces me to find out what I actually think, which is usually less dramatic than the version I've been rehearsing. Then I say it, because the thing I most need in a difficult conversation is the other person's face — a message gives you no correction. You cannot see that you've landed harder than you meant to, and by the time you find out it has been read four times. The exception is anything that needs a record. If it's about pay, or something that might be disputed later, I want it in writing and I don't mind that being obvious. Everything else I would rather say once and watch land.

3. Tell me about a time something you wrote was taken the wrong way.

   I replied "noted, thanks" to someone who'd spent a whole evening writing me a long explanation. I thought I was being efficient. She thought I couldn't be bothered, and honestly, fair enough — she'd put in an hour and got four words back. I only found out because somebody else mentioned she'd been upset about it, and that's the bit that stuck with me. Nobody tells you. We'd sat near each other for a year and she never said anything. So now I try to match the length roughly. Not to be polite exactly, more that people read how much you wrote as how much you cared, whether you meant it that way or not. Two words after two pages says something either way.

4. Do you think most workplace meetings are a waste of time?

   Most are, but not for the reason people usually give — it isn't length, it's that nobody decided beforehand what the meeting was for. A meeting to make a decision and a meeting to share information need completely different rooms, and merging them produces the thing everyone complains about: an hour where four people talk and nothing is settled. The test I'd use is whether anything would be different tomorrow if it were cancelled. If the answer is no, it was a status update wearing a meeting's clothes, and it could have been three paragraphs. But I'd resist going fully asynchronous, because some decisions genuinely need people to hear each other change their minds, and that doesn't happen in a document.

The Korean translation, the expression breakdowns, the reusable frames and the common-mistake notes for these four questions are in the book. The recording and this transcript are free, here and on YouTube.