People Driven Development

Episode 19: The Business Case for Kindness
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[00:00:00]

Eddie Flaisler: Hey everyone, and welcome back to the PDD podcast. Happy New Year. We hope every single one of you is enjoying a well-deserved low stress holiday month to the extent your circumstances allow. Today's episode came from a listener's question, but not the kind we get through our usual channel. A few weeks ago, a mentee of mine who manages a software engineering group for a mid-size e-commerce company, shared a recent post by Will Larson, which Morgan and I found both unsurprisingly insightful and incredibly saddening.

The post is called Good Engineering Management is a fad. True to his usual style, Larson makes a very well thought through argument. He says that in the 2010s, the emphasis in engineering management was on attracting, retaining, and motivating engineers. Driven by the practical business reality that hiring strong engineers was seen as the primary constraint on growth during an era of hypergrowth and uncapped budgets.

When economic conditions changed with rising interest rates and AI optimisms in 2020s, [00:01:00] this focus shifted away from people management and towards hands-on technical work. It reframed the previous era's ideal managers as bureaucrats rather than integrated leaders, and it devalued the people focused approach that had been considered essential. For us, what makes this piece so powerful is that it puts into crisp boards the sentiment from which our podcast, People Driven Development, was born. The surprise and confusion at how quickly so many corporations have shifted policies in ways that not only minimize the importance of talent retention, but also assume exceptional performance at the highly creative job of software engineering can be delivered regardless of how individual employees experience the environment they work in.

Morgan VanDerLeest: Now given we're at episode 19 of the series, you've probably already noticed that management philosophy in engineering is a multifaceted topic. But in the holiday spirit today, we've chosen to address the one that's probably most foundational of all and has the most research tied to its direct impact [00:02:00] on individual and group performance.

Interpersonal communication.

Eddie Flaisler: Those who've worked with us,

Morgan VanDerLeest: especially with Eddie.

Eddie Flaisler: I should have put you on PIP when I had the chance...

those who have worked with us know that we ourselves are no saints. We've had our own bad days with limited bandwidth, careless language, and poorly timed feedback. It's all part of being an imperfect human being. But this doesn't mean we don't strive to communicate with our team in a way that will yield a net positive outcome.

We hope that by the end of today's episode, we manage to convince you of the business rationale behind intentional interpersonal communication, which is as relevant today as ever in people management.

We also hope to show that communicating well isn't some insurmountable mountain if you're not used to it, and it definitely doesn't mean avoiding difficult conversations or under managing what needs to be managed.

Morgan VanDerLeest: We've got a lot of ground to cover. Let's do this. I am Morgan.

Eddie Flaisler: And I am Eddie.

Morgan VanDerLeest: Eddie was my boss.

Eddie Flaisler: Yes.

Morgan VanDerLeest: And this is PDD: People Driven Development. All right, Eddie, I'm gonna [00:03:00] piggyback off some of your final words there before our intro to get this going. 'cause I think there's something there that we need to dig into right off the bat. I feel like your confession about us not being saints represents just a deeper truth.

A net positive communication style isn't just some default that occasionally lapses, but something one develops over a very long time. You and I have known each other for many years, and I can attest that we both communicate professionally today very differently than we used to. I'm bringing this up because I, I worry that leaders who find it difficult to communicate effectively and as some form of emotional defense have developed this thesis that intentional communication is a waste of time, will see this episode as yet another highfalutin list of things one should do as opposed to like a practical intro into this subject. What's your take on that?

Eddie Flaisler: My take is that you're more right than you know. Not only is there a risk of people feeling this conversation isn't applicable to their professional persona, but actually think such a feeling would be justified. Not everyone is there. When we say communication, we ultimately [00:04:00] mean language, mostly verbal and somewhat body language as well.

And use of language is just the top floor of a pyramid whose base is one of the most challenging things for a person to achieve: emotional regulation. This is something that took me years to realize as I struggled to understand why I always felt like deep down I knew what the right thing to say was, but in the moment it always came out wrong.

Over time, I learned that that's what people mean when they say someone is spilling over, taking out your harsh inner monologue on other people.

Morgan VanDerLeest: Do you have an example of what that looks like at work?

Eddie Flaisler: Definitely, I believe it was our systemic imposter syndrome episode where we discussed the expert persona. Effectively, people whose entire work identity and sense of safety is derived from knowing the system better than anyone else. Over the years, I was a quote unquote expert on multiple systems, and especially early on, I remember feeling completely flooded every time someone proposed, we changed something in my perfect software. That was a moment where I [00:05:00] could have listened and partnered on making the system better by incorporating external feedback. But instead, I raised my voice to the person and used words like, "you clearly don't understand this", and "this is a stupid idea".

Having not been able to control the honestly uninformed feeling that they were just trying to make me look bad, these very talented people ended up feeling discouraged from proposing further changes, thereby defeating the purpose of bringing such talent on board. What about you, Morgan? Do you have any, your own example?

Morgan VanDerLeest: I think one of the better, One of the more, unfortunate examples that I can share with this is I remember being in leadership meetings shortly after I joined leadership team. And I was still in that phase of feeling like I needed to prove myself. And so I, I, I got to the point where I was speaking out too much and unpleased with the room, but I would say more so myself when what I suggested wasn't followed.

And you could read that on my face. And that, you know, it took a lot of time over the years to develop that sense of, it's a lot [00:06:00] more about saying less, but saying more when you do speak that I've tried to lean into a lot.

Eddie Flaisler: Totally, especially when you join a new place and you have all these ideas, but the fact is you are entering an existing system and they have the ways of doing things, so getting buy-in, things will take time.

Morgan VanDerLeest: A hundred percent. I do wonder if it might feel a bit disappointing for people to know that some of what we're gonna cover today may just be inherently irrelevant to them because of their foundational personality traits though.

Eddie Flaisler: Oh, I don't think it's like that at all. Over the years, I've had a chance to observe and try to learn from many people, and you can clearly see that emotional regulation can be learned given the right tools.

Morgan VanDerLeest: And what might those tools be?

Eddie Flaisler: I think the most famous one would be one that's referred to as tactical breathing. This is something that's come up in conversations with quite a few of my peers over the years as a huge missed opportunity in leadership training. When people hear something as generic as just breathe to calm yourself down, they [00:07:00] very quickly dismiss it, and rightly so, because this guidance is meaningless. It's not specific, and you're not sure what it is exactly you're going to achieve. But the truth is that not only have certain breathing techniques been scientifically proven to regulate emotions in difficult moments, but the foremost examples of using those techniques are Navy seals and other special forces operators. It's a real thing. These people are meticulously trained in tactical breathing techniques like box breathing specifically so they can optimally handle the life-threatening situations they encounter regularly.

These techniques work by calming the autonomic nervous system and overriding the fight or flight response, actually lowering heart rate and cortisol levels within moments.

If these people can successfully learn and practice this with bullets whistling over their heads, we can do it when someone annoys us in a meeting, I learned it's all about intention and what type of leader we want to be. This is definitely a journey and I'm far from mastering it, but I've experienced its benefits [00:08:00] personally.

Morgan VanDerLeest: I love that you call that out. And one of those things that we overlook so easily is at the end of the day, we are people, your body reacts to things in a way that it's just done for the lifetime of humans. And part of that is when you sense something, when your body senses something is not going the way that it thinks, it can cause you to revert back to an earlier part of your brain.

You don't want that. That means you are absolutely not operating as your best self. It's not always a fly or flight where you're not fighting some kind of large cat. But, your brain can still interpret it that way, and your body can respond that way even when it's just a flippant comment in a meeting that sends you off the edge.

Eddie Flaisler: 100%.

Morgan VanDerLeest: So what are the tools that you can use to handle that and bring yourself back from jumping off the cliff with it? Now, I will say, by the way, that as integral as I find breathing exercise is not just for like how you show up at the office, but ones for quality of life in general. I'm not entirely surprised that this type of work isn't ingrained in [00:09:00] people's routines.

It is, after all, a form of self-care, which is something we are just not very good at as a culture. Are you aware of any other means that might feel more relevant to decision makers?

Eddie Flaisler: Well, to be honest, breathing techniques are such a small feat that goes such a long way that it's a real shame not to give them a chance. But to answer your question, the only other structured approach I've heard of for emotional regulation is SIT stress inoculation training.

Morgan VanDerLeest: The PTSD one?

Eddie Flaisler: Not only that, but yes, it's a technique developed by psychologist Donald Meichenbaum in the 1970s and 80s where you expose people to gradually increasing levels of manageable stress in controlled environments, helping them build resilience over time. Obviously, depending on the organization administering the training, the type of stress is different.

The most common use cases are either military, where it's used extensively in Special forces training or PTSD treatment in general. But even though I haven't personally encountered it, I can totally see that being adapted to corporate situations, free idea for someone to jump [00:10:00] on.

Morgan VanDerLeest: That's true. Or you just could have been in tech in the early 2020s.

Eddie Flaisler: Amen to that.

Morgan VanDerLeest: Alright, Eddie, to keep us moving, I do think it's about time to start concretely discussing the communication techniques we intended to cover today. But before we do, I do have to ask something that I'm convinced would cross the mind of at least some listeners as we talk about work communication. Some of the world's largest producers, places like India, Japan, and South Korea are known for their hierarchical work cultures, which include on a regular basis, shouting and berating. And there are even examples of physical violence like slapping. Now, this isn't some hidden edge case where the employee was simply too fearful to report the abuse, but it's somewhat standard practice.

I'm reading this is changing over the years, but still can you help us understand why intentional communication matters if these economies have achieved so much success despite such harsh treatment?

Eddie Flaisler: You know Morgan, not only do I think it's a good question, but I also think this argument in some variation or another is probably at the core of the belief system driving many unhealthy [00:11:00] work cultures today. Something like, I don't have time to play nice. It's business. Besides, look at all these companies that aren't known for being nice and are doing well.

There's a lot to unpack here. So let's begin. Answering this might actually guide a lot of our conversation for the rest of the episode.

Morgan VanDerLeest: Hit me.

Eddie Flaisler: Well, first one big issue is the overly simplistic and uninformed interpretation some people have of what it means to play nice. You know, Kim Scott has this great book called Radical Candor. It does a really good job distinguishing between feedback that is constructive, helpful, and not intimidating, and just avoiding hard conversations, or not being truthful with the employee regarding their performance because you're uncomfortable saying things that aren't entirely positive.

The former is candor. The latter is what she refers to as ruinous empathy actually causing damage to the person's career because you worry about hurting their feelings by bringing up an issue. Getting things done, and not being a dick, pardon my English, are not mutually exclusive, [00:12:00] even though it's very common to assume they are.

Morgan VanDerLeest: So that's like the backlash that Patty McCord got on the, "we are not a family" cultural motto at Netflix because people assumed that she was just justifying mistreatment.

Eddie Flaisler: That's exactly right. Patty McCord, Netflix, chief talent Officer for 14 years worked with Reed Hastings to develop the cultural motto, "We are a team, not a family." Summarizing the company's view on performance management. Many outsiders with partial information rushed to assume that what she meant was. Don't expect me to be nice to you. I'm not your mother or something like that. When in fact, one of the things that we are not a family was meant to say was, I am under no moral societal or legal obligation to tolerate your bullshit towards me or my team.

Behave or get out. And just to call out my mom isn't actually nice to me.

Morgan VanDerLeest: Moms and dads are just the root of many things for us and many others.

Eddie Flaisler: So true.

Morgan VanDerLeest: You know, I I find it interesting that some of the backlash around that was giving the right to mistreatment, [00:13:00] like what's going on in someone's head where they think that just because we're not family, that gives them the right to mistreat others.

Eddie Flaisler: It's funny you say that. I actually attended a talk that Adam Grant gave and he was mentioning the concept of projection, right? How people see in others what they're sensing themselves. So I'm not at all surprised that so many people rush to assume she meant mistreatment when it's so deeply ingrained in our culture.

Morgan VanDerLeest: We're working on it. All right, so we clarified, at least at a high level, this misconception about the definition of "nice". What's the next piece to this?

Eddie Flaisler: I would say 100% cultural differences. I dunno if you remember, but when at Lob, we started doing staff augmentation in South America, one of the first things I showed you guys was an online country comparison tool, which used the Hofstede dimensions.

Morgan VanDerLeest: Yes, the cultural dimensions.

Eddie Flaisler: That's right. So do the honors.

Morgan VanDerLeest: Well, Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions Theory is a framework for understanding the effects of a society's culture on the values of [00:14:00] its members and how these values relate to behavior. So, Hofstede, originally developed a model in the late sixties by surveying IBM employees worldwide, and it's been refined a bit since. The cultural dimensions it looks at include: Power Distance Index - so this is the extent to which employees accept that power is distributed unequally in organizations. You have "individualism versus collectivism", which is whether employees prioritize their personal achievement or group harmony.

You have "uncertainty avoidance", basically how comfortable employees are with ambiguity and risk.

You have " motivation towards achievement and success versus cooperation and work life balance, long-term versus short-term orientation", or whether people prioritize tradition and quick results or adaptation and future planning, and then "indulgence versus restraint." So this is the degree to which employees expect to pursue personal gratification and enjoyment at work.

Now the idea is that individuals from different countries often score wildly differently on those dimensions, and they have personal [00:15:00] traits heavily influenced by their country's overall cultural norms.

Eddie Flaisler: So the point in bringing this up is to say that you cannot detach your management philosophy from who and where you are managing, expecting people to react the same to a certain communication style re gardless of who and where they are is not just poor management, it's delusional.

When I worked at Box, we expanded our presence to Eastern Europe and started hiring engineers in Poland. I was literally shocked to receive the template we needed to use for job descriptions when compared to the lightweight one we had in the US. Pages and pages describing what the person was supposed to do and not do every minute of every day.

Nothing was obvious. Break policy, responding to emails and messages, everything. I found the language very surprising, especially because I had known the Eastern European engineers to be very self-driven, hardworking, so I didn't understand why all the scrutiny was needed. Besides, of course, the legal aspect because labor laws in these countries are very strict.

Only later when I started [00:16:00] working with the team from that geography full time did I realize that to put it in Hofstede-esque terminology, they score much higher on uncertainty avoidance than Americans do. They genuinely wanted and needed that level of detail and structure to feel comfortable and perform at their best.

What I initially saw as micromanagement was actually just providing the clarity they expected.

Morgan VanDerLeest: That's a great example. Eddie, do you have something related to say, power distance? I feel like that would be more applicable to verbal communication.

Eddie Flaisler: Yeah, so one of my very early team lead roles was with a company called Harmonic. I was working in Israel back then, and I was assigned a team of engineers in India. Almost all of them were more experienced than me, and regardless, I remember that specific team as being very technically strong.

In any case, as their team lead, it was my job to come up with the designs we were going to implement. At the time we were working on a feature needed to close a major deal. When I finished the design, I presented it to them for feedback.

All I got was approving nods, smiles, and "well done sir". I was naive [00:17:00] enough to actually take that in because working in Israel, I was very used to people speaking their minds. It was only a few days later when I realized I had glaring issues in my design. I made some hidden assumptions that were completely incorrect and would've caused the feature to be dead on arrival.

The team, who were experts on the system, surely knew that. So I called the meeting and told them, I knew there was no way they had missed it, so why didn't they say anything? And in response they said, we never correct, superior, sir, they know best. From that day on, I made it an official performance requirement for them to find flaws in my designs, even small ones.

I had to find a way to make them talk. You work with what you have. You can't pretend it's not there.

Morgan VanDerLeest: 100%. Even just stepping back for a moment, this is exactly why companies, countries, et cetera, do not wanna surround themselves with yes men type people, because when you do that, you are getting rid of the very thing that makes a great collection of people, which is a variety of perspectives and viewpoints and backgrounds that can actually help [00:18:00] get to the best possible outcome.

Eddie Flaisler: 100%.

Morgan VanDerLeest: So as we've established, playing nice is not equivalent to under managing. And now we've also made a good point about the cross country comparison not being very relevant. Any final thoughts before we close out the question of why harsh communication seems to work in some successful economies?

Eddie Flaisler: Yeah, the most obvious one, you don't know what you don't know. What's even the definition of success? How do you know if you're getting the maximum from your team? You might feel in control because everyone is generally following your orders and maybe even seem to internalize the sense of urgency you've instilled.

But how do you know their creativity and motivation is truly at its peak that truly you're getting from them everything they can give and that they're truly working together in a manner conducive to business success. Sure you define the goals and the metrics and then you can check if they were met. But who can tell if you're inspired to think big enough? The answer is no one ever knows and no one will ever know what's the most an organization can achieve.

So while saying we're meeting our goals, [00:19:00] which we believe are ambitious, is factually correct, claiming you're doing well in general, when you don't actually know what that means is just sloppy. The only thing you can do as a leader is to act on what has been repeatedly, scientifically proven to be a leading indicator for top organizational performance, and that is the health of your team and its individuals.

Morgan VanDerLeest: And to build on that too, especially within our industry, software engineering is not so much, dealing with machines as it is dealing with people. And people are organic. They change when teams change, everything shifts. This is an ongoing thing. It's not a, oh, we figured it out once and it's gonna be that way forever.

Even with the same group of people. And over time that changes. It's a thing you have to stay constantly on top of and aware of. Otherwise, you're, you're losing out on the potential optimization of everyone individually and your group of people in general.

Eddie Flaisler: No question.

Morgan VanDerLeest: Okay. I think we've spent more than enough time on [00:20:00] motivation for the subject.

Let's move on to some actual mechanics. What does it mean when we say intentional interpersonal communication?

Eddie Flaisler: Well, the way I see it, there are two major situation types where intentional communication really matters at work. The first is planned deliberate communication, performance reviews, giving feedback, handling prolonged conflict. The second is in the moment reactive communication when you're dealing with your own stress or emotions from something potentially unrelated, but you still need to show up and communicate effectively without spilling over something like, my boss just yelled at me and now this other guy wants an answer about a deadline, so I let him have it.

That kind of thing. Both situation types are inevitable. For both deliberate and reactive, If you're not intentional, things go sideways fast. And across both types, the worst possible thing you can do is express something that should be part of a deliberate communication as a heated reaction.

Morgan VanDerLeest: I was just gonna say that even before we [00:21:00] talk about what to say and not to say in each situation type, there's the foundational issue of knowing when to shut up and not share in the heat of the moment something that clearly belongs in a thought out message.

Eddie Flaisler: definitely.

Morgan VanDerLeest: Anyway. We should probably start with deliberate communication. There's a lot more inherent structure there that we can cover.

Eddie Flaisler: I agree. But even before we dive into the mechanics, there are two overarching points I'd like to make, and as far as I'm concerned if listeners are getting bored, they don't feel like staying with us all the way to the end. Let these two be our only takeaways. The first one is this, one of the most eye-opening pieces I've ever read about work communication is a Harvard Business Review article called The Feedback Fallacy.

It's a piece by Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall, which reviews something like 40 years of neuroscience and psychometrics research and has a shocking conclusion. More than 50% of the feedback we give a person reflects our own characteristics, not theirs.

And by characteristics I mean our own subjective perception, [00:22:00] our biases, our standards, which are often influenced by our very narrow and skewed past experiences. We're fundamentally unreliable raters of other people.

The research shows that humans cannot hold in their head a stable objective definition of abstract qualities like business acumen or assertiveness, and then accurately evaluate someone else on them. Our evaluations are deeply colored by our own understanding, our own sense of what good looks like and our own unconscious biases.

This is why receiving feedback inherently feels so unpleasant. Recipients have to struggle to this forest of someone else's perception searching for something they actually recognizes as themselves. And here's the kicker: no amount training can fix this. It's a constraint to deal with.

Morgan VanDerLeest: Yeah, I love that article and I think one of the related points of thought is it's not just your feedback that you're giving, but the other half of any feedback is that the person receiving needs to actually hear it.

We talked [00:23:00] about this in a previous episode, but if you are not talking to someone in a tone wording, context, et cetera, that they can actually hear your feedback means nothing. You're saying it for your sake and not theirs. And the best part is that's different for everybody 'cause everybody is in a different place at different times and is gonna hear things differently.

So it's this constant struggle to make sure that you are communicating in ways where somebody can actually hear it. So your feedback means something. That's why they say it takes what you have to repeat something three, four, or five times before somebody hears it. Especially like in a leadership context.

It's 'cause even though you're saying the exact same words, sometimes it just takes time to sink in. Someone's not listening, paying attention to the way that you need. It matters where people are when you are giving that feedback.

Eddie Flaisler: Absolutely. And we'll get to some helpful tips on that later on.

Morgan VanDerLeest: Yes. But ultimately, what are we saying here, Eddie? That there's no point in giving the feedback because it's probably wrong anyway.

Eddie Flaisler: Not at all. The way to think about this is to remember that when we have something to say to a person, we are not [00:24:00] the ultimate authority on truth in the world. We are only the authority for how we would like to be worked with.

We're allowed to have our wants and needs, especially if later we're held accountable for the outcome. So things should make sense to us, but we do need to remember that what we have to say may not easily resonate with the other person. And this doesn't mean something is wrong with them or that they're not listening.

It might just mean that our framework for excellence is different from theirs. So some convincing is needed and attacking definitely won't help.

Morgan VanDerLeest: I love that. Now, what about the second takeaway?

Eddie Flaisler: The second one is that one of the biggest contributing factors to how the things you say land with the other person is not what you say or how you say it, but the existing relationship and level of trust between you two. You can definitely still fuck up a perfectly good relationship with the wrong words, but even the right words will only get you so far if the recipient isn't inclined to trust you or give you the benefit of the doubt.

Morgan VanDerLeest: Do you mind sharing an [00:25:00] example of that?

Eddie Flaisler: Sure, and as usual, I'll make it very extreme to drill down the point. In one of the companies I worked at, we had a big release just a few weeks after I joined. The release was being managed by me and my counterpart, who was a leader in data science and had been with a company for several years. I distinctly remember this meeting with my group leads who had just met me.

In that meeting, I said, and this is a quote I can tell everyone is working very hard on this. It would be great if we can have a demo later this week so I can make sure we're not missing anything compared to the requirements I was given, and we have time to fix it if something is off.

Morgan VanDerLeest: That sounds reasonable.

Eddie Flaisler: I thought so too. My data science counterpart, however, took a very different approach. They just sent a slack message on our channel that said. And again, this is a quote. "Hello. I would like to see the data quality report for the release no later than tomorrow at 9:00 AM Thanks." Two things happened in the following 24 hours.

One is that not only did my counterpart get the report, [00:26:00] but several team members posted on the kudos channel, a thank you note for their leadership. The second is that my VP pinged me to ask why my team was already calling me a pushover and a micromanager. Obviously, my initial instinct was to get deeply offended and confused, but I realized I had no choice but to ride it out. While I, myself probably wouldn't have rushed to complain to my boss's boss if my manager asked me to do something I wasn't excited about. The underlying message the lead sent was, who the hell do you think you are? And the only cure I know for that is time. Which it was.

Morgan VanDerLeest: Yeah, trust is one of those just difficult things. One, it's difficult to build quickly, so yes, you just need time. And then it's also so easy to mess up and lose it anyway, so that's a tricky one.

Eddie Flaisler: Absolutely,

Morgan VanDerLeest: I would also be curious in that case, what the, some of the cultural dynamics were behind some of that 'cause if you're running off and saying, giving kudos to a boss for just shooting out a slack message like [00:27:00] that seems off to me. But hey, that's not what we're doing right now.

Eddie Flaisler: Totally.

Morgan VanDerLeest: All right. So again, Eddie, just to clarify, what are we saying here? If it's not uncommon that no matter what you say, it's gonna land incorrectly if the relationship isn't there? Hmm.

Eddie Flaisler: We're saying that regardless of how we communicate in specific situations, which it's always good to be intentional about, there is a lot of value in relationship building outside these moments. So when a high stakes situation comes, it's easier to communicate.

I wanna be very honest and say that as an introverted neurodivergent individual, I'm the last person to ask how to build a relationship with people I don't interact with as part of my job on a daily basis. There's a limit to how close I can get with someone when the entire interaction is an infrequent one-on-one.

So some situations are inherently difficult to navigate unless you're naturally gifted at building rapport quickly. But what I do know is that even when we have limited interaction with someone, life gives us plenty of sliding door moments as John Gottman who [00:28:00] will meet later in this episode, calls them.

And by sliding door moment, I mean a moment at work, Or in life, which presents us with an opportunity to build trust with another person, but also the opportunity to betray it.

Morgan VanDerLeest: Like when a colleague or team member stumbles in front of you during a presentation to leadership, you can sit back and watch it flounder or worse, you can point out that error. Or you can jump in if there's space, Own that misunderstanding by saying something like, I think I might have confused them when we were talking about this, which you have the luxury to do since you're not the one on the hook.

And then you can offer the answer.

Eddie Flaisler: That's a perfect example. I strongly recommend watching a 20 minute video called The Anatomy of Trust. It's an excellent talk by Brene Brown that does a really good job breaking down what trust is, what builds it, and what tears it apart.

Morgan VanDerLeest: Oh, that's a new one. I'll have to put it on my to watch list. Well, great. I think this makes a lot of sense. So Eddie, we're now at a point where we have the two overarching takeaways you mentioned. I'm gonna bring us back to deliberate communication specifically. Let's talk about the mechanics of that

Eddie Flaisler: For that, we need [00:29:00] to meet the Gottmans

Morgan VanDerLeest: wait a minute, Eddie. You mean the marriage counselor Gottmans?

Eddie Flaisler: That's exactly right.

Morgan VanDerLeest: Okay. You've intrigued me.

Eddie Flaisler: So John Gottman and Julie Schwartz Gottman are American academics in the behavioral sciences with John trained in mathematics and quantitative psychology, and Julie in clinical psychology and psychotherapy.

John became well known due to his radical thesis that if couples therapy was going to offer advice that actually worked, it needed to be grounded in objective measurements. In the 1970s and 80s, while most relationship counseling relied on intuition and self-report, Gottman began studying couples empirically at University of Washington. He recorded conversations. He tracked physiological responses such as heart rate and skin conductance.

He coded facial microexpressions. And to all of that, He applied statistical models to identify which interaction patterns predicted whether a relationship would drive or breakdown. This work led to his well-known and initially controversial claim [00:30:00] that he could predict divorce with high accuracy.

After observing a couple interact for only a few minutes, a claim that was later proving disturbingly accurate through long-term studies tracking those same couples.

Morgan VanDerLeest: That's right. And if I remember correctly from my prep for this episode, John and Julie met professionally as colleagues in Seattle. Julie was a clinical psychologist focused on trauma and relationships. Her work centered on helping people change even when emotions were high and histories were messy. John meanwhile brought something, her critical training did not a rigorous understanding of which behavioral patterns actually mattered most to relationship success. When they married and encountered their own difficulties, his research helped them distinguish between conflicts that were inevitable and behaviors that were genuinely corrosive.

While Julie turned that knowledge into day-to-day practice. What emerged was something rare, a marriage researcher and a marriage therapist developing tools they also had to use to strengthen their own marriage.

Eddie, their story is pretty cool, but how is this related to our topic?

Eddie Flaisler: Well, marriage and work have one big thing in [00:31:00] common. In most, not all, but most societies, including our own, they are arrangements of choice.

People get to decide whether or not they want to collaborate with you, support you, give you their best selves, and if they have the authority whether to work with you at all. The Gottman's figure it out what makes people choose to stay engaged in a relationship and what makes them check out or leave. Those patterns, the small daily interactions that build trust or erode it, are just as relevant between managers and reports, between peers or just anyone who needs to work together effectively as they are inside a marriage.

Morgan VanDerLeest: Okay. Now that you frame it this way, I can totally see that. I will say the Gottman method is quite elaborate. They did really comprehensive work covering all kinds of interpersonal situations. How would you like to focus with the limited time that we have?

Eddie Flaisler: Definitely the four horsemen.

Morgan VanDerLeest: Ooh, that's a good one. So the Gottman methods for horsemen are four toxic communication patterns that the Gottman's identified as powerful predictors of relationship [00:32:00] breakdown. Those four are criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling.

When these patterns show up frequently and go unrepaired, they pretty reliably erode trust and are strongly associated with relationship failure, forming a core part of the Gottman's high accuracy predictive models.

Eddie Flaisler: That's exactly right. At work, These have very specific meetings. Criticism is when you attack someone's character or competence instead of addressing a specific behavior. For example, instead of saying, this code review came in later than we agreed, you say you're always unreliable with your commitments, or you clearly don't care about this team's timeline.

The healthy version of this is to make a specific complaint about the behavior without making it about who they are as a person. So, hey, the code review was due Tuesday and came in Thursday. That blocked the team for two days. Can we figure out what happened and prevent it next time?

Morgan VanDerLeest: I think that's what people often call situation, action, outcome when giving feedback. You're focusing on the problem and not the person.

Eddie Flaisler: That's right. Contempt is the most toxic [00:33:00] one. It means communicating from position of moral or intellectual superiority. It shows up as sarcasm, eye rolling, mockery or condescension.

In engineering management, This often sounds something like, oh, great. Another brilliant architectural decision from our quote unquote senior engineer, or rolling your eyes when a junior developer asks a question in a meeting. The healthy version of that is building a culture of appreciation and respect.

When someone makes a mistake, you focus on problem solving, not on making them feel stupid. You say, let's walk through the decision together. What were you optimizing for? Instead of, did you even think about scalability?

Morgan VanDerLeest: I think this one is particularly apt, especially when you're looking at team dynamics when hiring. I don't care how good somebody is, if they have any sense of contempt in the way that they speak and talk about things, it's an absolute no-go because they're gonna come in and do stuff like that and it is gonna erode the team's ability to do anything so quickly.

Eddie Flaisler: 100%. Low confidence is low [00:34:00] performance.

Morgan VanDerLeest: Indeed.

Eddie Flaisler: Defensiveness is refusing to take any responsibility and instead making excuses or counter attacking or playing the victim. A classic example is, let's say your manager points out that your team's sprint velocity has dropped, and instead of acknowledging it, you immediately say, well, if product would stop changing requirements every five minutes, maybe we could actually finish something.

Or, I'm the only one in this department who actually cares about code quality. The healthy version of this is taking responsibility for even part of the problem. So you're right, our velocity is down. Part of that is the requirement changes, but we also could have flagged the scope creep earlier.

Morgan VanDerLeest: That's a big reason why when you do retros it's recommended to start with the prime directive to help get past this sense of defensiveness and actually have a good conversation about, Hey, look, this is what happened and how are we gonna handle this moving forward so we can make sure that we reduce the likelihood and get past this in the best way.

Eddie Flaisler: Absolutely

Morgan VanDerLeest: Now, how would you describe [00:35:00] stonewalling?

Eddie Flaisler: Stonewalling is emotionally withdrawing or shutting down. So giving someone the silent treatment, ignoring their messages, or just sitting there stone faced while they're trying to discuss something important. You know, I remember this one time I scheduled a call with a peer after a contentious situation.

It was during the COVID era when everything was on Zoom. I was trying to make things better, which was obviously very vulnerable. They joined the meeting but kept their camera off. They refused to turn it on with no explanation and only gave one word answers the entire time. They effectively made me apologize into the void with no feedback on how it was landing, and needless to say, no acknowledgement on their end regarding their part in this, which was actually quite substantial.

Funny enough, even though they didn't say anything, that conversation is one of the most scarring memories in my career. That's stonewalling.

Morgan VanDerLeest: Geez, that sounds rough. Especially nowadays with Zoom. I know people push for being on camera or whatnot, but there are certain times that you kind of need to be. This [00:36:00] would've been a one-on-one in an office in a particular setting. So completely losing the human facial reaction responses there is tough.

Eddie Flaisler: Yeah, I remember when the Zoom era began, there was this whole conversation about whether or not you can force people to be on camera. And as inclusive as I always try to be, Morgan, I'm actually the opinion that you should force that because it's a job. And while during the COVID era there was no other option and people had maybe house family circumstances that didn't allow them to be on camera properly and they, you know, because of like children or they stayed at the house or like they didn't have time for X, Y, Z, so then they keep the camera off.

That's a problematic situation. But like as we emerged from that into working at home as an option and a benefit and not necessarily an outcome of a force majeure where everyone has to do that. [00:37:00] I do think people should turn camera on. It's minimum courtesy so people can have a feedback loop when they talk to you.

Morgan VanDerLeest: That's fair. I'm tossed, this is the case where I like a hybrid virtual model. Not so much hybrid as in some in person and some zoom, but encouraging on camera, especially if you have a good team dynamic, I think it kind of comes up naturally anyway. Folks want to interact with their peers, colleagues, et cetera. I know at least in personal experience, there's times when like I am much more spent from being on camera than off and just need the, I'm here, I'm listening, I'll, I will jump in and talk and I'll use feedback in other ways. But like, I swear, if I'm on camera for the next hour, I'm gonna be just too drained. But in general, I like the idea, I like to encourage it. But also as long as people are doing their thing and the team dynamic is good, I try not to worry about it too much.

Eddie Flaisler: Yeah, zoom fatigue is real.

Morgan VanDerLeest: Indeed. Now, I also assume that the healthy version of stonewalling would be them communicating that they still need space and are not ready to [00:38:00] talk, and then actually coming back to finish that conversation properly.

Eddie Flaisler: Exactly right. The point is that they're allowed to be upset and not ready to talk, but they can protect themselves emotionally while still communicating instead of punishing the other person with silence. They could have said before during the call something like, Hey, you know, I'm realizing I'm still really raw about this situation and I'm not sure I can engage constructively right now.

Can we try this conversation next week so I have time to process? Totally fair.

Morgan VanDerLeest: You know, I'd love to take a moment here and remind everyone that this is probably not something that as an individual you're comfortable with, but being familiar with some of that phrasing or something similar can make all the difference when you're in a difficult emotional situation and need to have some kind of recall or way to discuss these things.

And a second point I'd like to call out there is this takes leading by example. If you want the people on your team and your colleagues to do this, you need to do it because it makes a huge difference. I've seen this in the teams that I've worked on. If I'm like, Hey, I am not feeling it today, do you mind if we bump a [00:39:00] one-on-one, I'm just dealing with something or whatnot. We're people, and it makes you feel more like a real person that again, if you're in an office setting, like you would see somebody frustratedly walking away from a desk or like dejectedly walking out to their car in the evening or something.

Like you can see these kinds of things. You need to communicate more in a virtual setting. And this is an example of that. It needs to be healthy communication, but it's incredibly important.

Eddie Flaisler: You are giving them permission to be human, and you're also showing how to stay professional while being human.

Morgan VanDerLeest: Absolutely. Now, Eddie, before we move on, I have to admit that while I find our conversation to be very insightful, I wonder if it might go over the heads of some listeners who are very well intentioned, but might not be well versed in thinking about how their words land with others. Can we leave people with a cheat sheet version of this?

Something like a tightened list of good and bad examples.

Eddie Flaisler: Sure. Here are some phrases that will help you start speaking more effectively when you disagree with someone. I discovered all of these in Brene Brown's work and an interpersonal communication workshop I took a few years ago. They're incredibly [00:40:00] helpful. First, clarify your assumptions to make sure you understand exactly what's going on instead of just assuming the worst. Example: when you said that in the meeting, the story I'm telling myself is that you're trying to get the project taken away from me and giving to you, but that doesn't make sense to me because I know how supportive you've always been. Where did what you said come from?

Morgan VanDerLeest: Yeah, I love that. I remember doing a communications workshop a few years ago. And it was like, how do you structure going into a conversation like that, say you're a manager dealing with an employee who's struggling with something or showed up poorly in a certain situation. And that positioning at the beginning really sets the tone for how the whole rest of this conversation goes.

So how do you say the thing in a way, again, that they can hear what you're talking about, know that it's important and that it has impact, and then also you're still delivering like, Hey, this is not working, something's off. Let's make sure we pinpoint this and move forward.

Eddie Flaisler: Yeah, it's very easy for people to stop listening very early on.

Morgan VanDerLeest: [00:41:00] Yes.

Eddie Flaisler: So second, make sure you're thinking about the problem and its premise or constraints the same way as the other person does. I've seen so many contentious conversations that turned out not to be actual debates at all, because people had different understandings of the situation, so nothing got resolved and people were just left with better taste.

That's why phrases like. I'm working under the assumption that X, Y, Z, is that different from your assumptions? Or what problem are we trying to solve here works so well. So often people just think about different things and they end up arguing about something that they shouldn't be arguing because they're not talking about the same thing.

Morgan VanDerLeest: I found this to be one of the most useful perspectives that I can bring to a meeting or a group conversation or facilitation is clearly two or more people are not on the same page. All right, how do we get back to some fundamentals here? Make sure we're talking about the same thing and that we're understanding this in the same way.

Eddie Flaisler: Absolutely. [00:42:00] So third, I cannot overstate how important it is to stay genuinely curious and open to being proven wrong. It's not only about humility and expanding what you know, it's about making the other person feel less defensive and more likely to share their thinking. And curiosity can't be faked well, so don't bother trying.

Instead, use phrases like, give me more context. Why do you think this fits here? Or, I hear you, my experience has been different, so let's figure out where the gap is. Even something as simple as starting a sentence with, "I'm wondering if" instead of just stating things as absolute truth, leaves room for you to be wrong, because we don't necessarily know better than they do.

Morgan VanDerLeest: A hundred percent agree. I think a helpful mindset for any leader or manager to have is, I don't have all the information here, so how do I make sure that I am still leading and operating in the best way assuming that something is missing. So I need to approach this conversation in a way [00:43:00] that there's something I don't know, and it may change how I'm reacting to this, so how do I make sure I can get that information and have the person hear and communicate in a way that makes sense?

Eddie Flaisler: Totally.

Morgan VanDerLeest: And of course there's a list of big no-nos. Saying something like, you're so sensitive, or, I didn't picture you being so fragile. That's contempt. You're attacking their character from a position of superiority or saying, I didn't think this was personal for you.

Again, contempt, you're implying that they're overreacting to what's going on. Saying something like, you're being defense. That's criticism. You're attacking their reaction instead of addressing what it was that they said. You hear things like, I have to be careful what I say around you. Again, that's kind of a combination of contempt, criticism, and still mulling all in one, or it's all in your head.

That's contempt and defensiveness. Together, you're dismissing their reality and refusing responsibility. And then there's the classic, I'm sorry you feel that way, which is just defensiveness, disguises an apology. You're taking zero responsibility for what actually happened.

Eddie Flaisler: Isn't it incredible, Morgan? How these, all two common phrases we [00:44:00] hear in conversations are so deeply damaging.

Morgan VanDerLeest: It really is now, Eddie, we're running short on time, so we should probably move on to reactive communication, but before we do, we can't talk about deliberate communication and engineering without addressing every engineer's nightmare: The berating code review.

Eddie Flaisler: Could not agree more. You know, I'm not sure many people realize how vulnerable a situation a code review is. There aren't many professions where your work is regularly scrutinized word by word and line by line, especially when the nature of the work is creative. You're not just executing a process, you're putting your best thinking and problem solving on display.

This is one of the worst context for criticism, but here's the thing, it's also critically important in production systems to have a good second pair of eyes. And as we mentioned the beginning of this episode, being intentional about how you provide feedback is very different from avoiding it all together and allowing problematic code to hit production just because we didn't want to have a difficult conversation.

Morgan VanDerLeest: I am curious what you think good code review looks [00:45:00] like, especially in the current era where so much of that task can be automated using AI.

Eddie Flaisler: You know, I personally think that the emergence of AI tools and code reviews has only made clear what the actual role of the code reviewer has always been, and that is using their own context to ensure the code they're reviewing doesn't just work, but is also aligned with how the rest of the system and the broader team think about the product or service behavior observability, design considerations like scale and security and so on.

To me, what makes code reviews counterproductive much more than the use of problematic language is when the reviewer oversteps their bounds and introduces unnecessary friction and frustration.

Morgan VanDerLeest: I can totally see that, and I can think of several examples of things that really should not be included in the code review. First, Syntactic nitpicks style violations, naming conventions, or any other issue that a formatter linter or a static analyzer would catch. If you're passionate about something specific and the automation never catches it, add it to the config file instead of repeatedly [00:46:00] overwhelming your reviewee with more comments.

If there's no automation then you probably got bigger fish to fry anyway. Second, asking the person to solve problems they didn't create. You complain to your product owner all about scope creep, but then you introduce it to others and when they push back, you make them feel like they're being lazy.

That's a big no-no. If you're bothered, there's a backlog where you can introduce refactoring or fixing tasks or whatnot, and you can get those prioritized along with everything else. Now, third, you don't question macro level design choices during code review.

It's too late for that, bud. Code review cleans things up. It doesn't send the person back to redo the whole thing. Again. If you have an issue at work where coding commences before the team is at a proper opportunity to discuss what needs to be done and why. That's the problem you need to fix.

Eddie Flaisler: That's exactly right. To me, the main thing a human code reviewer brings to the table is context about the existing system and its development practices. An AI model doesn't necessarily understand things like relative priority, target audience, business situation, and so on. In theory, all that can be fed into [00:47:00] the model, but as we all know, the more information you feed it, the more challenging it becomes for the model to make sense of it all.

That's where human shines, right? For example, inheritance might be an excellent OOD practice, but I know quite a few people in real time in defense tech who want to see the actual lines of code being executed at any moment and would not agree to the compiler doing anything, quote unquote, behind their back.

Also, cost considerations can be nuanced. Or a use case might seem classic for caching, but do I really wanna do that? Given that our cache and validation strategy is already a nightmare? And adding another layer will make debugging impossible. Probably not.

Morgan VanDerLeest: 100% I do think that given we're discussing communication is worth talking through some really bad ways to communicate. Even when the feedback itself is relevant. What are the top things to avoid?

Eddie Flaisler: Sarcasm, interrogations and ghosting once the feedback was given. And the reviewee asks for clarifications. Things like, did you even bother to check if this works? Or, [00:48:00] why would you do such a thing? And seriously, this is the best you could come up with.

These things belong in a college dorm, not a workplace. Remember what we said, you are probably not the world's leading authority on anything. Show humility, show curiosity.

Morgan VanDerLeest: Could not agree more. Eddie, any final thoughts on deliberate communication before we move on to reactive?

Eddie Flaisler: Yes. I think I mentioned in the past that one of my favorite newsletters is Lizzie Matus Just last week, she wrote a summary of a recent broad study conducted in Germany that looked at how different software developers perceive the same asynchronous communication like Slack messages or emails.

The findings are pretty incredible. The study found that about two thirds of messages in software projects risk being perceived differently than intended because developers naturally fall into at least two distinct perception groups.

One group focuses on emotional cues, friendliness, and informal language, while the other emphasizes [00:49:00] professionalism, usefulness, and clarity, and may actually react negatively to casual messages. The amazing thing was that it had nothing to do with demographics, age, gender, or experience level. Didn't predict which group you're in.

So what can we do? Take safe bets. For high stakes communication, like architectural decisions or blocking issues. Use information dense, formal language. A lot of words isn't always bad if it leaves no room for misunderstanding. For lower priority updates explicitly signal tone with something like "quick win:" or "FYI non-blocking" so people can triage without friction.

For bonus points, the paper offers a structured exercise where the team rate sample messages is positive, neutral, or negative. So you can learn about your team style from that, but honestly, being super clear and conservative in your communication style is always a safe bet.

Morgan VanDerLeest: And it is definitely worth mentioning that while emojis seem aesthetically pleasing, they're not always as effective [00:50:00] as they may seem in conveying tone. Not only can people still perceive as smiley as say passive aggressive, but we've mentioned in the past the prevalence of neurodivergent individuals in the industry, and many of them can't necessarily map facial expressions to sentiments.

Sometimes words are just better.

Eddie Flaisler: They are indeed.

Morgan VanDerLeest: Eddie, I think it's time we switched to our closing section for today and talk about reactive communication.

Eddie Flaisler: Let's do this.

Morgan VanDerLeest: Right, so since we spent a quite a bit of time today on deliberate communication, I'll quickly remind folks that reactive communication is about things you say in the moment, not something you planned. So obviously you have much less control over what you're gonna say, which is why, unsurprisingly, when it comes to reactive communication, there's no point in spending time on scripts for specific situations.

Chances are you're just not gonna have the bandwidth in that moment to think about the right thing to say. Evolving reactive communication is rather about mindsets and patterns. In 2014, when Satya Nadella became CEO of Microsoft, one of the first things he did was ask his senior leadership team, and in some accounts, the broader top executive [00:51:00] suite to read the book, nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg.

The intention behind this wasn't just a, a quirky book club pick. Nadela was trying to shift Microsoft's internal culture from its historical combative, know-it-all style to a more empathetic, collaborative and learning oriented culture. I don't think we need to spend a single second telling you about the mind blowing transformation Microsoft has undergone since easily regaining its industry leading giant status.

Eddie Flaisler: What we find particularly useful about the Nonviolent communication method or NVC, is that it provides a single, succinctly described pattern that's easy to remember and so conveniently to apply in the moment. At its core, NVC makes one fundamental shift from who's wrong, to what's unmet. In reactive moments, the brain defaults to judgment.

We assign fault, we label, we diagnose NVC reframes conflict as a signal of unmet needs, not bad actors. Almost every sharp remark is really pointing to something that isn't being met. Clarity, safety, [00:52:00] respect, time, quality. In our example from the podcast opening, that poor guy who asked us for a delivery timeline right after we've been yelled at by our boss, unintentionally took away our sense of control.

That was the unmet need. We'd just been stripped of autonomy by our boss, and now here's someone else making demands on our time without acknowledging what we're dealing with. So we gave him an earful. The way NVC works is that it provides an ordered sequence of four components.

Observation, feeling, need, and request. Following this order forces a pause that interrupts escalation and offers a handrail to focus your thinking on more helpful things. Observation blocks judgment. So instead of you are being unreasonable, you say you're asking for a timeline on something. We just got redirected on.

Feeling blocks blame- so instead of saying, this is ridiculous, you say, I'm feeling overwhelmed right [00:53:00] now.

Needs block argument- so instead of arguing about whether the request is fair, you say, I need some space to regroup before committing to the new timelines.

And request blocks coercion- So instead of leave me alone, you say, can we revisit this in an hour after I've had some time to think through priorities?

Morgan VanDerLeest: Now, here's the critical nuance Rosenberg emphasized repeatedly. You don't need to complete the sequence. You don't need to hit all four steps to have the perfect phrasing or even to have the other person understand what you're trying to achieve. Just getting to step two, noticing and naming what you're feeling already changes this dynamic. In that moment with the guy asking for the timeline.

If all we'd managed was, I'm feeling overwhelmed right now, it would've been enough to interrupt that reactive loop. Rosenberg's inside here. His key judgment collapses time. Think about it. When you snap at someone, we're collapsing the past. What should happen with our boss, the present, this person's request, and the future all the work [00:54:00] ahead, into this one undifferentiated threat. The NVC sequence, reintroduces time. It forces you to separate what just happened? How do I feel about it? What do I actually need and what am I asking for? This is exactly how Nadella applied it at Microsoft. Not as a script, not as a mandated language, but as a shared internal grammar for reacting under pressure.

When everyone on a team understands the pattern, you don't need perfect execution. Someone says, I'm frustrated, and the room knows. That's a diagnostic signal that they're sharing. It's not a judgment that're passing. There are four NVC patterns that show up constantly in technical environments. First, observation versus evaluation.

This design is sloppy, is an evaluation, whereas saying, I'm seeing three different design patterns for error handling is an observation. One of those triggers, defensiveness the other keeps the conversation and problem solving mode. Microsoft used to re reward the sharpest critic. When you stick to observations, there's nothing to win by being sharper, harsher, or more clever.

In our example, if we'd said, you always pick the worst time to [00:55:00] ask for things. That's evaluation, judgment, blame, but you're asking right after I got redirected is just what happened. It's hard to argue with and it's easy to work with. Now second feelings are data, not weapons. NVC doesn't tell you to be soft.

It tells you to treat emotions like telemetry. If frustration shows up, it's pointing to a constraint, usually time, clarity, or ownership. " This is ridiculous" escalates. Whereas saying I'm frustrated because I don't see a path to shipping on time is informative. Psychological safety doesn't mean less tension.

It means tension gets expressed without blame. When our colleague asked for that timeline, our anger wasn't the problem. It was information. It was telling us, Hey, autonomy has violated, our capacity has exceeded, and our priorities are unclear. If we'd named that, we would've given him something to work with instead of just heat.

Eddie Flaisler: Third is empathy guesses, but not the way you think. This isn't about feelings, it's about surfacing constraints faster. When someone's being difficult, they're usually operating under a [00:56:00] constraint. You don't see The fastest way to find it isn't to argue your position harder. It's to guess at theirs. Are you getting pressure from someone upstream?

Is this blocking another team? Do you need this before the spring closes? Notice you're not asking how they feel. You're asking what they're dealing with and here's what matters. Even when you guess wrong, you get information, they'll correct you. No, it's not blocking anyone.

We just don't have visibility into when this ships, and now you know what you're actually solving for. The fourth one is needs versus strategies, or in other words, what is the argument we're actually having? Engineers might argue at the technical strategy layer, which API, what architecture, whose timeline, but the fight is almost always happening at the needs layer.

Safety, clarity, ownership, predictability. Naming the needs doesn't solve the problem, but it reframes it into something you can work around. So our colleague [00:57:00] needed predictability. When is this shipping? We needed autonomy space to process the new direction without surfacing that they push for a date.

We dodge in the conflict loops. Once the needs are explicit, the fight dissolves and the options appear. A range instead of a date. A date for a date, I'll commit by date x. A confidence level A. What would change this list. Or a temporary placeholder with a renegotiation point. The disagreement wasn't about the timeline. It was about two legitimate, unspoken needs colliding. This isn't touchy feeling. It's diagnostic. When you're stuck in a technical argument that won't resolve, you're probably arguing strategies while the actual conflict is about needs.

Name the need, and you'll often find that strategy. Debate dissolves on its own. Nadela put nonviolent communication in front of Microsoft's leadership not to make them nicer. It was to make them functional under pressure.

Effective, reactive communication isn't about saying the perfect [00:58:00] thing. It's about not saying the one thing that shuts everyone else down.

Morgan VanDerLeest: Mic drop, Eddie. Pleasure as always,

Eddie Flaisler: The pleasure is all mine.

Morgan VanDerLeest: and to the listeners, if you enjoyed this, don't forget to share and subscribe on your podcast Player of Choice. We'd love to hear your feedback. Anything resonate with you, or more importantly, did we get anything completely wrong? Let us know. Share your thoughts on today's conversation to People Driven Development.

That's one word, peopledrivendevelopment@gmail.com, or you can find us on X or Twitter at @pddpod. Bye everyone.

Eddie Flaisler: Farewell.