 Welch i gael y tafnwyd. Mae yna'n gwneud oherwydd, dwi'n dweud ei chryfodol yn y clwn sydd wedi i gael y tafnwyd... Dyna, rydw i'n dweud. Mae'n cael ei gael yna. A'n Alys. Mae'n gweithio'r gwasbwysig i ddod i'r wneud y lle mor hwnnw. Ac rydw i'n ddweud. Mae'n gweithio i'r gweithio. Rwyf i'r cynlluniau. Rwyf i'r exer. I'm also a Delivery Manager at Wendah in the UK. I've been looking forward to giving this talk for quite a while, ever since I was coerced gently by somebody who won't be named in this room, I was thinking, you know, that's great. Dries spoke last year at Drupalcon about how we can contribute back to the Drupal community. It has been years since I've coded, and I definitely wasn't a PhDer. And I was thinking, what can I give back? You know, I just can't think. So I had the grand idea of doing this here with you guys. And I was hoping to talk to you about how we can promote better understanding of our clients and make life a little bit more wonderful for each and every one of us. And I'm going to go through a couple of techniques with you today to do that, so that you can pass on this information to more people and more people and create a cascade effect to make life just a little bit more wonderful for everyone around you. OK. So Marshal B Rosenberg said that the greatest communication problem is that we do not listen to understand and we listen to reply. So basically, all you're doing is waiting to take your turn to speak. And one of my colleagues' mum, thanks Alex Lemon, says, her mum likes to remind her on regular occasions that conversations are for listening, not waiting your turn to speak. Which I think is a pretty fantastic way of thinking about things. Cos, you know, we need to really give people time in conversations to be able to get their point across to us instead of just jumping in there as soon as we can, trying to get a point across. OK. So let's talk about the client part of this. You know, we need a trust from our clients, from them to be able to open up to us, to talk about what their problems in projects are. You know, we need to have an open relationship with our clients because if we don't, they're going to stay quiet and then they're going to be nasty surprises at the end of it. We need to build a relationship of trust and have openness with them. And if we don't have that, we build a master-slave relationship. And this is a really bad relationship to have with a client. You know, this is kind of like mad men 1950s style working, you know, somebody from the top gets somebody from the bottom to do something. And we don't want to work like that. We're all equal. We're all humans. We're all here together. And that's one of the reasons I'm not stood up on that lectern because I'm the same as you guys. I'm here and I'm joining with you. And with this master-slave relationship, we often get confrontational conversations. And the problem is, is if there's a confrontational conversation, how do you step back and keep out like a completely calm sense of being when someone finds you and starts shouting at you? I've had numerous clients phone me up with the first thing that comes out of the phone is noise. And I haven't had a chance to say hello yet. And you think, how can I be nice to you? But there's ways, there's ways you can do it. OK. There are other things that come with client relations and that's misaligned expectations. You know, if we don't talk to the client enough, if we don't talk to them about what it is that they need and really, really listen to what it is that they need, how can we hope to understand what it is that they're expecting? If we hark back to the days of the waterfall project, you know, we were given an RFP and we go, oh great, you want pictures on your website. That's good, we'll put them on there. With no understanding of what it was that the customer actually wanted. So we need to be able to converse, we need to be able to open up, we need to understand and relate to our clients. Unconstructive feedback. Are there any designers in the room that get the lovely unconstructive feedback? Alex's favourite, let's make it pop a little bit more. Or I think it's not orange enough. How do we deal with this? This is the type of feedback you get on a daily basis and it's how do you corral this feedback to be something that you can use and be functional with? And we want to try and avoid the frustration that comes from all of these points that I've said, especially with clients. We want our team with the client to be one and to be very fluid and open. But these problems don't just exist with clients. You know, the Drupal community as it stands is a huge distributed team. There are people all over the world contributing to Drupal. You work in a very, very similar way as I do at work. Hundreds and hundreds of individuals that are slightly faceless because they're behind the computer screen. You know, sometimes when communication is poor, especially in a distributed team, it becomes dehumanising. You know, we sit behind our slack and our hipchat and our Skype and we say things that we would never dare say to someone's face because that's not a human. That's a computer. I'm talking to your computer. But actually, it's all the people you're working with and they're all humans. And we need to work out how we can focus on their humans too and understand and empathise where they're coming from. People don't write code badly because they think, hell, today I'm just going to write some rubbish code. They do it for a reason. And if that's education, if that's because they don't quite understand what they're doing, you know, we don't want to, like, target someone for doing something wrong. We want to try and understand and develop on their ideas and work with them. And again, in teams, there are misunderstandings. And often, there's lack of empathy. I worked in a very small Drupal shop in East London a few years ago. And I watched a boss who was slightly, I mean, pull up this young guy. So I worked with two young graduates on my team and they were developers straight out of uni. They were kind of quite eager guys working all the time. They'd work night and day. And this boss came in and he went, what's wrong with you? You know, why are you working so slowly? You know, I could have built that so much faster. What would you do with your time? And I just thought that I went, oh, God, really? Are you saying that? And you have no idea what the negative impact of this kind of judgmental, aggressive attitude that this person gave to this guy. And he had no idea. The poor developer had actually spent ages doing it because he was trying to get it right. And the boss could have probably done it faster, but that wasn't the point here. We can approach it in a way that's more constructive than that. Let's try and get rid of those experiences. And what if I told you it didn't actually have to be like this? Today, in just this short talk, I can introduce you to ideas that help you communicate more successfully. And it will improve your communication at work, but also you're going to find that it improves your communication at home as well. These techniques can be used anywhere, and it really is fantastic. It will provide you with more productive conversations and more understanding of your clients. And it will transform the way in which you communicate with other people and, in turn, how they communicate with you. How. I'm interested in thinking how. So what we're going to do is we're going to learn how to communicate in a way to enrich understanding and enhance relationships. And that's going to give greater openness, more understanding, more in-depth conversations, and more happier teams. Okay, I'll get on with it. I'll tell you how. You may be sitting there thinking, I'm not doing anything wrong. I mean, back when I learned these things, I thought, I'm fine. I'm really empathetic. I know everything. I'm cool. No. So let's look at a couple of examples that you might be doing that may stop things, may stop communication a little bit. Are you a fixer? By human condition, we don't like to see other people in distress, which means, of course, we try and fix it. The problem with being a fixer, however, is if we try and fix it, what we do is we throw our anecdotes and our ideas and our experiences into a conversation at someone who's trying to tell us what's wrong. But what we're doing is we're turning the conversation around and we're pointing it back at us. We're going, oh, look at me. This is my problem. And you're like the poor person trying to talk to you. He's sat there. And often when you fix a situation by doing this, they'll sit there and they'll go, oh, you might have a point. But they won't carry on. They won't want to talk to you about it anymore because it's kind of a, okay, that's it. That's over. I fixed it for you. Go, it's fine. Okay. I love this phrase. I don't know about it in other languages, but I understand in the UK is something that we throw in all the time. Oh, yeah, I understand. Yeah, you don't. You're not that person and you're not in that person's shoes at that time. Physiologically, you're not. You don't have their hormones. You don't have their outside environment. You don't have what happened before breakfast. All of the things that happens to that person to get them in that place, you cannot, you can try, but you cannot understand where they are. So if someone's talking to you and they're saying, had a really bad day at work today, and you say, oh, I understand, effectively, I know that you probably don't mean to say this, but effectively, what you're saying is, I don't want to really hear any more about it, sorry. So it's kind of like, I understand is a real kind of like, shh, thing. It might not feel like it, but that's actually what it conveys. So next time you want to throw in the, I understand, just step back and think about it. Okay. Yes, but, yes, but it's even better. Okay, so adding the word, but into any sentence will negate anything that came before it. So you might hear in a meeting, I really, really love your designs. They're great, but what I'm going to do is do it like this. So what that meant is, I really hate your designs. The problem is, is when you use the word, but you don't realise that it has such a negative connotation, but actually when someone's listening to it, they feel completely ignored. So if you've got a client that says something to you and you go, oh, yeah, but, mm-mm. They're like, did you hear me? Did you hear me? Please hear me? It's not fair. So yes, yes, but it's not a good one to use. Try and use something positive like yes and build on their ideas. Instead of negating it, build on it, grow it. Try and see how you can do it like that. Okay, so we've seen some negatives. How can we make you into communication superheroes? Teaching a small group these ideas create a cascade. And what if you guys learn these techniques and you went on to create cascades? Just by communicating in a more empathetic way. I'm getting to the how. So trust between colleagues or within a team or between vendor and buyer is so important. We want to build this openness in a relationship. You need your client to be able to tell you when they're not happy. And they also need to be able to approach you and talk about things that might be upsetting, but they need to be able to trust you that that's okay. So I've got two ways of doing this. Active listening and non-violent communication. This is what you're probably thinking, but that's fine, because that's what you're meant to be thinking. These are two techniques that we're going to look at today. And by no means is this the be all and end all of your ideas for this. This is just an introduction. So my ideas for you to Google, go home, investigate and build on. So let's look at active listening. Emma Jane mentioned in her talk on Tuesday that listening actually means shut up and listen. It's kind of like that. So active listening is kind of like shut up and listen. But it's a technique that we use that's proactive in conversation to prevent us from blocking people from talking to us and opening up and giving us what they're thinking. And what it will do is it allow individuals to bring to light any questions that they have, any queries, and any help that they need, because the hardest thing to ask for is help. Okay, so are you listening? Yeah, are you thinking, is everybody listening? Everybody's listening? Uh-oh. So in life we have so much input. We have media. I bet every single one of you has a mobile phone. Probably 98% of you have laptops and then just slightly lower tablets. If you combine that with the adverts that we see on the street, the tram going past with the advert on the side of it, people talking, ear-wigging to someone else's conversation. You know, we are so distracted and we don't even mean to be. And this is what we have problems with when we're listening to people. You know, if we go into a client and we leave our phone on the table and we can see the tweets coming up and the conversations from home, we're looking at them. We can't not look at them. But what we need to do is try and get ourselves away from the media, get ourselves away from the confusion and try and focus on the person that you're listening to. OK. So are you really listening? Let's think about it again. I've kind of shot myself in the foot a little bit by having slides. Because that means you're not actually really listening. But for the people at home, it would be kind of mean for me to just do a slideless talk and speak at you for an hour. So I thought I'd better have some. Because that's nice. OK. So active listening is about listening to someone actively rather than passively. And what's the difference, you might say? Well, if we don't listen actively to our clients and we give the phones and the iPads and the tablets too much attention, we're going to get the misunderstandings and the misaligned expectations because we haven't fully understood what it is that our clients need. And therefore, features will be built in correctly. You're going to get the nasty surprises. So how can you listen actively? So there are two parts to this. There's a physiological part about how you are as a person, how you are being as a person. Then there's a second part, and that's the interaction part, how you speak and how you hear the person who's interacting with you. Let's look at the body language. How can we improve our body language when we want to interact with someone and be open and hear them and then realise that you're interested in those things that they're saying? Sit quietly. Put your phones away and put them on silent. Has anyone ever been in a room in a meeting when there's been that white elephant of the phone on vibrate going off in someone's handbag? And you just go, and you're like, nobody gives it any attention. I think, oh, it's okay, it's just vibrating. I won't turn it off, it's fine. And then it'll do it again and again. If a phone's on loud and it rings, somebody is going to go and turn it off because it's embarrassing and it's really, really in the room. But if it's vibrating away in a pocket or in a handbag, for some reason, that's fine. So turn the phone off entirely if you're going to go and talk to somebody and actually want to hear them because you don't want that distraction. Allow the speaker to complete everything that they wanted to without interruption. Unless you are totally confused about what it is that they're saying. Like, I mean, completely stumped. Try not to jump in while they're talking. Try not to bounce into their space because it's their space and they're talking right now. Try and really, really hold back and let them finish. It's a really, really hard thing to do, but I believe you me, you'll notice yourself doing it. And gently, over time, you'll be able to sort of hold back. Smile and be approachable. It's not hard. Although, if you're not in a good mood when you turn up to that meeting and you're tired, you've been on the tube for an hour, you're slightly sweaty, I don't know, the cats escaped and you're hungry, you're not going to be in a mood to do kind of active listening and be like really passionate about what this person's saying. You're going to want to kill someone or something. So when you arrive at a client, try and be early. Try and be within yourself in a good place, in a place where you've got energy and you've got compassion and empathy and you feel ready to, you know, you feel energetic and ready to take on this task. Because nobody can talk to somebody who's in this sort of grumpy mood and you can tell when someone's in a grumpy mood even if they're not portraying it with their facial features, that kind of thing. And try not to hold a constant eye contact. No one likes the death stare when they're trying to open up to someone. They don't want to be intimidated. OK. So we've done the body language. You've got a good general idea of how you want to be when you're with people. So let's look at listening and speaking and this is the more difficult to explain part of active listening. So I've got a surprise for you in a bit. OK. But using a unique pattern of language, we can delve deeper into the thoughts of our counterparts by making sure that we have completely understood everything that they have said to us. OK. So we do this in three parts. We listen, we reflect and then we clarify. OK. So I'm going to break this down because it can be a little bit confusing. So with listening. Listen to what the person is actually saying to you. You know, really, really listen. If you're struggling to remember things, write it down on a piece of paper. Nobody is going to be angry at you for listening to them. They're not going to be upset that you make notes about it. So you'd be happy, just make notes. It's fine. Try and look at their emotions and this is a really big one in distributed teams and this is why I'm an advocate of the hangout and being able to see someone's faith. Because you can't tell someone's emotions by just speaking to them on the phone. So that's important. And what this also allows us to do is approach them with something that you feel may be a problem. You know, if someone's appearing anxious or angry or any other emotion, you can actually say to them, I'm getting that you're feeling quite angry about this situation at the moment and they can go, oh, no, I'm not. I'm fine. I'm really happy about it, actually. I've just got an angry face. So I'm happy. But it's good to make sure that you're right because you could have gone out there without asking this question and gone, oh my God, they were really angry. I don't know why. So the listen parts were really important. Try and absorb as much information from that person as possible. And with that information, what we're going to do is reflect it back to them. Okay, so by using reflective phrases to feed what the person's just said back to us back to them, we can confirm that we're understanding them at 100% correctly. So you can use, I'm hearing that, it sounds like. So anything with this kind of like reflection beginning is a really good thing to use. And it might feel like if you keep saying things back to someone saying, I'm hearing that, it sounds like, that they're going to think you're a robot. But actually when someone's actively listening to you, you can't tell that they're doing that. Not unless they're really kind of shady about it. But yeah, so people are so happy when they've got a problem that they're being listened to that this all fades into the background. Okay, and what we do is after the person's spoken to us, we reflect back to them the things they're saying, just to confirm we've got it right. And when they get to a point in the conversation where they're one word, so they're just like yep or cool or anything, they get to the end of their conversation, you can then take them down a different path with a question, so by clarifying. So when I talk to a client and we go through this, they can be telling me about a feature that they want building. And then what I can do with my technical understanding is ask them something that will take them down a completely different path that they haven't thought of yet. And because the client is able to think about it on their own, and we're not just saying, oh look what we did already, take this solution. They're being able to generate their ideas and thoughts naturally, and therefore it's more rewarding. So this is a really, really, really good thing, okay. And so after the reflection, we clarify using a question. I bought some friends with me today to help me show you how this has done. Give me a moment. And if anyone from England's been wondering where these guys have been for the last couple of years, it's because they've been working on active listening and online communication. So any of you that aren't English might not know these guys, but they're pretty cool. This is Suti. In real life, he doesn't actually have a voice, he just whispers, oh you think they're cool. They're cool. This is Sweep, but today I'm going to be their voices so that we can actually get a constructive conversation out of them. Okay, so I'm going to be Suti and Sweep is going to be a client. And we're going to talk about Feature. It's a really basic example, but it's only to give you the idea of what the structure is like. Okay. Oh, hello. Okay, so what is it that you want on your website? I want pictures, pictures everywhere. Okay, so am I understanding correctly that you want pictures on every page of your site? Oh, no, no, not on every page. Okay, so am I understanding correctly that you want pictures on just one page of your site? Oh yes, yes, just one page. I want a gallery, a gallery. Okay, so let me get this straight. You would like pictures on your site, but you would like them all contained on one page in a gallery. Oh yes, but I want people to be able to click on them. Okay, so it sounds like you want a gallery on your website that people can click on one picture and then they can scroll through from right to left. Yes, yes, that's exactly what I want. You've nailed it. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Okay, let me ask you a question. Would you like to be able to add captions to those images? So that's the, you know, like adding the captions on isn't the extra question to help them understand what it is that they actually want from a feature. And obviously that was a really basic example, but hopefully it gave you the idea of like reflecting things back to somebody and then clarifying at the end. And with a bit of practice and a bit of watching of YouTube, you get really good at it. So let's look at nonviolent communication. How can we make life more wonderful for our clients, for our teams and ultimately for ourselves? These were the words of Marshall B. Rosenberg. The technique is used in schools, war zones and many other places to encourage positive and peaceful communication. Nonviolent communication sounds a little bit aggressive actually for what it is. So just ignore that. The concept is that the core of all anger is a need that's not being fulfilled. And Marshall B. Rosenberg created this technique based on the ideas of Mahatma Gandhi about creating an idea of a peaceful communication. By empathetically viewing someone's situation, we can realise that most problems are caused from a single need not being met. Often when someone comes at you aggressively, you take the responsibility for their aggression. Actually what you should do is try and remain neutral because often the root of that aggression isn't you. It's something that's happening in their day. It's something that's happening in their life in general. Or it's just a need that isn't being met, you know? And this can come from home relationships, clients, anyone in the whole world. So what is nonviolent communication? It focuses on having empathy for one another. We all have feelings and needs. And it's the art of understanding what other people's needs are. And by using MVC, we can build a relationship of trust, understanding and communication by taking away judgment and focusing on reality. And communicating our real feelings and needs to other people. And what the primary focus of this is, removing all judgment from a situation. How often do you judge somebody that you work with as being lazy or not working hard enough? You know, do you have a strong understanding of what's happening in their lives at home? Do you have a strong understanding how hard it was for them to get to work this morning? You know, I've heard lots of people talking about experiences that they've had with colleagues at work. On Monday, I think somebody mentioned that a guy at work was, pardon my language, a dick. The problem is with that, is that you're judging somebody. And immediately as you judge somebody, you're going to get, they're going to try and defend themselves. And that's going to create an aggressive conversation. So let's step back from the judgment and try and view that person as a human, as you are, as you would be feeling. What are all the possibilities? And what could they need? Removing judgment allows us to concentrate on only fact. So we don't make quick, nasty remarks at people. We just observe the fact. It helps us understand why someone's acting in a specific way. And you may be asking yourself, what may they need? Sorry for the typo, my bad. Okay, so we're going to get Sotin's Sweep back. Yeah, okay. And I'm going to demonstrate somebody being judgmental and how that can give a really, really negative conversation. Okay, and we have to imagine Sotin's Sweep lived together. Okay, Sweep, why are you so lazy? The flat is a tip, powerful. You just sit there doing your thing all the time. I'm not lazy. You are so lazy. If you just got up and did a bit this and you could help me, and it would be fine. Well, I'm not, because I'm not lazy and I'm going to go out so I don't have to listen to this. So that's kind of like one way of not communicating a single thing. By using this judgment, Sotin has not actually managed to communicate a single thing about the situation to Sweep. He's not said how he feels, what he needs from a situation, anything. So actually, he's only communicated bad things. So how do we communicate good things? So there's a construct that we can use to communicate with someone. When we make an observation that we want to talk about our feelings, how do we actually feel the actually inside of us, a real emotion? Are we anxious? Are we happy? Are we sad? And we don't want to say I feel that, because actually I feel that, this, that and the other, is a description and not an emotion. So you're not actually honestly saying how the situation is making you feel. Then we put in a need and then we can make a request. So with observations, we want to clarify just fact. We just want to make an observation about the situation. We're in Spain. That's an observation. Avoid classifying, analysing or determining a level of wrongness. Because I don't know if you do, but I sometimes find myself going, oh, God, you're so wrong. You did that to completely wrong. And it's not, we can't judge some with our own morals or standards. They might, it might feel like they've done something wrong, but we can't judge them as a human being against our ideals. So this is where we have to remove it. And we want to talk about our feelings. Humans don't talk about their feelings because it makes them vulnerable. We really withhold it, especially in the UK with the stiff upper lip. Not one of us talks about how we feel. You know, how do you actually feel? Be self-aware. Distinguish your feelings from your thoughts. And we need to convey how a situation is actually impacting on you as a person and how it's affecting you. Because if you make judgments like you're lazy, the person listening to you can't actually, he doesn't have a clue what's wrong with you or why you're acting in this way. Who has ever been asked, are you all right? And you've turned around and gone, I'm fine. I did this from about the age of 13 to about 24 constantly. By saying, I'm fine, what we do is we put all of our emotions into a box and we keep pushing them in and pushing them in on top of each other and pretending everything's fine until one day it explodes in some humongous volcano of screaming, crying and all of the rest of it. But by actually just turning around to somebody and being honest and saying, I'm really sad about that, I'm really happy about that, what it does is it avoids this huge cataclysmic situation and with clients, if they can say to you, I'm not happy about that or I am happy about that, it stops them from turning into a pressure cooker and it allows them to be open with you and saying to you what their problems are. So this is really important and what are your needs? What are the needs of the other person? Because we can use nonviolent communication to reverse engineer what that person is thinking. We can use this construct to turn it around. It might be what we're thinking and needing, what they're feeling and needing, and then make a request. If we're going to tell somebody how we're feeling and what our needs are, we need to guide them in supporting us and helping us out in a situation. So, I'm going to get my friends back. We're going to show you the same conversation that Satie and Sweep had at the beginning of this nonviolent communication section. And then what they're going to say when they've learned all about nonviolent communication to each other. So, if you remember last time, Satie called Sweep lazy and that wasn't very nice, wasn't it? Okay. So Satie's going to make an observation. Sweep? The flat's a bit of a mess, isn't it? No, no, you're definitely correct about that one, Sweep, Satie. Yeah, it's making me feel quite anxious. Oh, really? Yes, it's making me feel really uncomfortable because the flat's a mess. Oh, okay. Need. I need your cooperation. I need your cooperation. And if it's okay, would you give me some help in an hour and try and get the flat cleared up? Oh, yes, sure. I'll give you a minute, but in an hour I'll be fine. So if you can see the difference between the two conversations, in the second one, Sweep, sorry, Satie succinctly told Sweep how he felt about the situation, what was happening, what he needed, and what Sweep could do to help him achieve those needs. So it's really, really obvious when you marry the two up how hard it is to actually convey what it is that you need to succinctly. And by using nonviolent communication we can actually achieve that. So I'm going to do my last little puppet show now and it's from experience. This is what happened in my real life, but not with Satie. So this is me and this is a customer. Hello. This is over the phone, by the way. I'm really, really, really, really angry. Oh, okay. I'm so annoyed. I cannot believe this. I can hear that you're a little bit angry. Is everything all right? No, it's not all right. I have heard that your developer is travelling whilst working on our project. Okay, so I'm hearing that you're a little bit anxious because our developer is travelling and it's going to have an impact on your project. Is that correct? It's terrible. When I went travelling there was no way that I could do a job at the same time. So much to see, so much to do. Okay, so I'm hearing that it sounds like most of your frustrations are because you feel like our developer is going to be distracted. Is that correct? Yes, that is correct. Definitely. That is definitely correct. Okay. Well, I feel concerned about this. I don't want you to be upset. So I need your cooperation in sorting out this situation. Would you be happy if we spoke once every morning and we made sure that the project was progressing in a way that you wanted it to? Ah, yes. Oh, that's fine. Thanks. Okay, speak to you tomorrow then. I actually had that conversation in real life. So you can see that even if someone's coming at you like a bull in a china shop, as they say in the UK, you can actually diffuse the situation by observing everything that's happening with them and with you. Try and remember that you didn't cause them to be angry. They're angry for a different reason. Make sure that you remain calm and kind of collected because you're the only person that can make a positive out of that negative situation. So is this the magic pill? Well, for me, it's been really, really positive to learn these skills. And I'd say that this isn't the be on and end all of this information. This is just scraping the surface. And I want each of you guys to go away and Google this and YouTube it and find out more about this and YouTube it and find out more about it. There's a book called Non-Violent Communication by Marshall Beam Rosenberg. He sadly passed away in February but his foundation still runs, his book is still published and his work is still used across the globe to fix so many problems in war zones and relationships in schools. And as I said earlier in my vision let's make the world a more empathetic and kind of place one person at a time. Thank you. What I want to do now is I want to take my microphone off so you guys can ask me questions but it's not recorded because I want you guys to be able to ask me questions in a safe and comfortable environment and obviously if it's being recorded then it can be a little bit intimidating so just give me a minute and I can