 OK, so notes like if you're going to speak next year, it would be helpful to have shorter here. So it goes around better. Pockets. And if you grow a little taller too, so you can see across. Anyway, so I'm Keiwu. It's short for Catherine Wu, but everybody knows me as Keiwu. And I am a software engineer at New Relic currently on the Ruby agent team. And I'm here today to talk about my favorite frame for examining differences in communication styles, which is known as ask versus guess cultures. It's a difference that can cause a fair amount of tension. And so my goal today is to help everyone understand this culture clash a little bit better and hopefully be able to do better in communicating as a result. So let's go ahead and start with an example. So here's the situation. This is you. And this is your friend, say Jamie. And Jamie has a friend that you've never met named Taylor. Taylor is going to visit your city and needs a place to stay. But you would rather not host a stranger. And so your friend asks you, can Taylor stay with you? What's the instinctual reaction in your head? Not out loud, just in your head. Is it, oh, I'll just tell them no. Or is it something more like, oh, this kind of puts me in a difficult position? If it was the first one, then you are most likely from ask culture. And if instead, this situation would make you feel really uncomfortable, you're most likely from guess culture instead. And so show of hands. Who identifies more with ask culture? OK, a little bit less than I expected being in Germany. Who identifies more with guess culture? Oh, fair amount. OK, cool, cool. And who's maybe not sure yet? That's an OK answer as well. OK, cool, I have some more content for everyone here. So that was just a really quick litmus test. I'm going to do a little bit of an overview of each of these cultures with additional examples to illustrate what they mean. Then I'd like to talk a little bit about the pros and cons of each, as well as some further considerations, and then get into some practicalities around strategies for handling these differences, particularly in the workplace. So as far as I can tell, this ask versus guess culture description first came up on an Ask Metafilter post in 2007. The way that it's described there is in some families, you grow up with the expectation that it's OK to ask for anything because you're OK with getting no for an answer. This is ask culture. In guess culture, on the other hand, it's much more about avoiding asking unless you're pretty sure the answer will be yes. And the way that you do that is to extend out delicate feelers so that if it's done really well, you don't even have to specifically ask for something, you'll just get an offer. And then even then, you have to use your judgment because if you accept, are you imposing too much? Maybe they were just being polite. And ultimately, guess culture is really about the idea that putting others in the position of having to say no seems a little bit rude. So this is really a spectrum, not a dichotomy. Computers, right, are probably at the further extreme where you have to spell out everything for them. But for people, on the other hand, based on my own experience at least, different regions in the US are probably at different points along this scale. I am from the Northeast near New York where if a stranger talks to you, our instinctual reaction is like, what do you want from me? And so I'd probably place us somewhere along the lines here. But places that have a really strong reputation for being nice tend to be guess culture, maybe like the Midwest somewhere along here. Now, I was actually going to get rid of this very US-centric section altogether, but I overheard a conversation at the party on Friday between two of the speakers this week that gave me another example to use. Because once you start seeing this ask versus guess thing, it's kind of hard to turn off a little bit. So what happened was Joe was talking to Terrence about how Joe has been giving this 12-factor app talk at conferences, like he did at JRubyConf. But he also has this other byte code talk that he would really like to give at conferences as well. And Terrence is like, you should just ask if you can give the byte code one instead. It's no big deal. But Joe was kind of like, I don't know about that. And then I kid you not, like two minutes later, Joe was like, he mentioned that he is from Missouri, which is in the Midwest. And then I cornered Terrence yesterday. I think he thought I was being a little bit weird, kind of asking him where he was from. And then he said he mostly grew up on the East Coast. So these are just kind of patterns that you see oftentimes. Definitely individuals will vary a lot. And so when we look at it on a more global scale, we Americans are probably somewhere along the line here. Whereas what I've known about for Japanese culture, for example, it's probably a little bit more over here. Whereas British folks are maybe somewhere in the middle. And as far as I can tell from people that I've worked with in the past and people I've met here, Germans are probably somewhere along the line here. Yeah. Hopefully I'm not causing an offensive stereotype. But I know at least one German I spoke to yesterday was like, yeah, that's definitely true. So there's that. But I do want to mention something, which is that even though I use the word versus, I really only mean it in terms of comparing and contrasting. Not that one is better than the other. Because I think just because you feel more comfortable in one doesn't automatically make it better for everybody else. And then even if you still sometimes secretly think that yours is the better way to go, which I'll confess I do a little bit as well, it's ultimately pretty useful and practical for understanding this difference. So let's go through a couple more examples. Here's one from my personal life. So normally on the weekends, my husband Dan and I each cook one big meal so that we have leftovers for the week. One of these weekends, I was thinking through and I just said out loud, I don't think I have time to make lunch for next week. And the thing is, I was just talking out loud about how I would need to figure something out for lunch. But he interpreted that as, could you make some extra food so that I have lunch for the week? And so then he says in response, oh, I'm going to cook two meals this weekend. And I'm over here thinking, that's kind of weird. Dan's planning to make an extra meal this weekend. But OK, whatever, that's fine. That's his prerogative. But what he's expecting me to say, if I wanted to refuse his offer, and I'd seen it as connected to the statement that I had made, would have been something along the lines of, oh, you don't have to do that. And so at the end of the weekend, I'm over here thinking, why do we have so much food in the fridge? And he's over there thinking, I'm such a good husband. And so here's another example I'd like to bring up as well. Again, I was thinking about cutting this section because I wanted to make sure it's a try to help stay on time. But then again, I actually saw this happen right in front of me on Friday at the party. So I figured I'd keep it. So let's say you have this goal of finding out if a new apartment's rent is a good deal. You're looking to move to a new city. And what happened was on Friday, I was waiting in line to get a drink, and not really paying attention to what was going on. So I was just like, oh, the beer is right over there. And I hear the two guys in front of me talking about how they both live in Berlin. And then all of a sudden, one of the guys turns to the other and just says directly, what is your rent? And in my head, I was like, oh my god, I'm so in Germany. This is amazing. But this isn't something that, if it's not something that you're used to, it might feel a little bit too much. And so another way to say that, perhaps, if you were interested, would be something more like, I'm looking at this place. Is that rent reasonable? So it's a little bit better. But the person might not be comfortable telling you, you are wasting your money, unless we're here in Berlin. Maybe then they would be fine telling you that. But I guess culture person on the other hand, the way that they would try to ask for this information, just kind of generally sort of say, oh yeah, I'm looking for an apartment. Because they're just going to float the idea out there and kind of hope that people pick up on that signal that they are interested in having a conversation about looking at and judging apartments, which includes rent, so that might come up. But if this were me, I would just completely just go right over my head. I have no idea that that was the goal that they had in mind. So maybe something that's a little bit more in the middle would be, do you know what the range tends to be? Because that gives people a little bit of space to volunteer what they're comfortable with. And it's also clear what it is you want to know. So I want to talk a little bit about the pros and cons of asking guest cultures each. And my aim is to be as fair as possible to both. So you can let me know afterwards how well I succeeded at that. And so ask culture is one that really prioritizes efficiency in knowing exactly where you stand because there's no ambiguity. There's really no interpretation needed for what you meant. And so it helps you tend to get what you want. At least in the short term. But it can end up feeling a little bit more confrontational sometimes and end up making people feel a little uncomfortable, maybe even alienate them. Whereas guest culture, on the other hand, it really prioritizes avoiding hurt feelings or embarrassment from direct confrontations. And so as a result, it's generally considered more polite perhaps, depending on the culture that you're in. But it does depend on a really tight net of shared expectations. Because you have to be able to recognize those subtle signals that other people are sending and receiving back and forth. And so if you're like me and you're not so great at reading social cues sometimes, that can be kind of hard. And on the flip side, if other people don't share your expectations, you can end up feeling like no one is listening to you at all. And so some further considerations I'd like to bring to your attention are, well, why are people the way they are in the first place? I have no idea. I double majored in psychology in college because I am a giant nerd. And I was like, I don't understand why people do what they do. And so instead of actually talking to people more, I was like, OK, I'll just go read some books about it and take some classes. But if you think about it a little more, probably most of us have some innate preferences here, which is then molded by family and then perhaps the larger culture that we grow up in as well. And in the workplace, I think companies and teams often have different standards as well. I've been told that Intel, for example, is really, really strongly asked culture, where people won't reach out to you to see if you need help. You have to be the one to bring it up. And startups, on the other hand, can be a lot more loose. There may be less processes. People know each other a little bit better. But again, it can also depend on how fast that startup might be moving. Because if they're only trying to get things done in the short term and everything is very transactional, it might end up being a little bit more ask culture. One thing that I've gotten in response to this version of this talk I've given in the past are things like, oh, yeah, my mom is just like that. Or like my mother-in-law, it's so hard to tell what she wants. And so completely anecdotally, I do think that women tend to be socialized to be a little bit more in the guest culture mode, maybe a little bit more accommodating, less confrontational. And so if you personally don't match people's expectations, and I feel like I fall into this category, you can often get a different reaction, maybe getting labeled as abrasive or aggressive as a result. And it goes both ways. It affects men, too. Because if they don't match up to this image of like sort of like gun-hole manly man, they can end up getting labeled as timid in a kind of negative sense. And so what I'd like to remind everyone is I think that people do the best they can with the methods that they know how. And so it's really helpful to do what you can to bridge any gaps or divides there might be. And so if you still can't categorize yourself, then I'm going to tell you that you probably lean guests because you're not going to want to tell me no. But I think that ass-culture people tend to recognize this frustration and not understanding what it is that other people want on top of like just being told directly, you're a really direct person. This has happened to me lots and lots of times. But again, it can also be a matter of context. You may very well be one way with your family with all of your shared history and then a different way with friends or at work for how you get things done there. So it is true also, I think, that different styles can be more appropriate for different situations, such as when you're not fully sure about the relationship between you and somebody else. So on the one hand, I think you can be a little bit more ass-culture at either end of how well you know someone. Because if it's someone that's just really a stranger, it's much more brief and transactional. You have less of a long-term concern about that relationship versus people that know you really well, they really get you. And you can kind of maybe feel more comfortable and drop your guard a little bit at times. But it's all these people that are in between, which is kind of like a little bit of an iffy gray zone. Kind of like if you have a work friend that you're not quite sure if you're actually friends outside of work just yet. And so you don't know if they like you as much as you like them and you don't want to cause embarrassment. So you can try to be a little bit more cautious when it's sort of in the middle there. So let's talk a little bit about some strategies for handling asked-to-guess situations and the reverse as well. Because I think you definitely can live in harmony. I mean, my husband and I were at opposite ends of the spectrum for sure. And we've been together for over 10 years now. So that's worked out pretty well, I'd say. And so generally speaking, it's really about trying to step a bit more into the other culture so that your message is clear and people are comfortable. And now that you can recognize the difference, at least, you're most of the way there. So if you're from Ask Culture, my very first tip is to make a guest culture friend who can be a little bit of a guide and interpreter for you. Because this is what Dan is for me. If I'm confused by some interaction, I'll bring it home. And he'll help me dissect it to sort of see what was being said between the lines. Another item is to remember that it's not just what people say, but what they don't say as well. Because you might not have actually heard an explicit no in there, but it wasn't an enthusiastic yes, either. And so pay attention if there is any hesitation when people are responding to you. And finally, we all make mistakes. So if you realize too late that what you said might be misinterpreted, that you maybe sent out a guest culture signal that wasn't what you intended, go ahead and apologize there. If you're from Guest Culture, on the other hand, who seems like a fair number of people in this room, well, when I was practicing this presentation and asking my husband for advice, he was like, guest culture people don't need to hear this. They already understand what's going on here. But I couldn't handle the asymmetry from leaving this slide blank. So there's just a couple quick points here. I think if you're angry or frustrated with someone, because it seems like they're just in your face all the time, remember that they might be unaware of the rules. Because it might take a little bit of education to bring them on board. Consider also that softening a no with an excuse can also end up hurting people if, in fact, they didn't understand that what you said was a no. And so for my last section here, I'd like to talk a little bit about how you can handle this culture clash in work situations. First, I'm a really huge fan, of course, of discussing upfront communication styles. For me, when I have a new manager or a mentor, I'll often keep asking questions and try to gauge how strong the responses might be. This is something that I would often say to new managers of mine when I was particularly focused on improving my communication skills. But if you're from guest culture, perhaps, maybe you or your manager has a goal for you to participate more vocally in meetings. And so in one-to-ones, you could perhaps say something along these lines to try to make progress towards that goal in a safe and comfortable way. And from the manager's point of view, you can offer up several options to choose from versus having to force putting some on the position of having to decline. And so when you say, oh yeah, we have a few options that would work, A, B, or C, try to be extra enthusiastic for all of these options if you do, in fact, feel equally open to any of these three. There is one particular situation to be a little bit wary of. And that is if you're an ask culture person managing a guest culture person. I think it's really important to constantly remind them that they can say no when you ask them to take something on and give that positive reinforcement. Like, no, it's really OK if you don't want to take on this particular task. Because if you ever set up a situation where you're giving someone this illusion of choice, like you get their input, but then later you reverse the decision without enough explanation, they will never say no to you again, even if you want them to. And so another thing that helps is not to set up processes where people have to ask because it can end up penalizing some folks. So for example, a conference travel policy where people always have to bring it up themselves and make the suggestions and make a case for it. Or like Rebecca said yesterday, like a formal mentorship program that junior engineers have to ask about joining versus defaulting people in. Because as Rebecca said, the people that need the most help are often also the ones least likely to ask for it necessarily. And so ultimately, if you have a report that is really, you think is really guest culture, and they rarely make direct requests, if they do, make sure to pay attention to that because it's a really rare event. And so another technique that if you're a guest culture person that you can use is to reference back to old conversations. So this happened with a friend of mine, actually. She wanted to ask for a raise after she had gotten some new responsibilities. And as we were talking it through and going back and forth with wording that she might use, she mentioned that she'd actually gotten feedback in her last performance review that her boss wanted her to be a little bit more assertive. So I suggested that she reference back to that conversation, and it totally worked. She totally got a raise. And because I'm such a good friend, I did not ask for a cut of that raise. But she'll host me next time that I'm in Boston. And so one thing that you could do is go ahead and use this talk as an excuse for starting some of these conversations. For example, I went to this amazing talk at your camp and then filled in the blank for yourself afterwards. So another common area where this might come up at work is in getting and giving help here. It's, again, something when I have mentors formal or informal that I really like to have a conversation about beforehand. Talking about things like what's the best way to interrupt is that through HitchHat, is that bundle everything up in email is just tap someone on the shoulder. What's the frequency that we should check in? Should I save it up for a weekly one-on-one? Or should I know the signal that headphones on means don't bother in them until the headphones are off again? And in general, what's a guideline I should give for myself of how much time I should let myself be stuck until I reach out to someone and say something? And so again, once we have that conversation to start, we can go back and reference what we had agreed upon there. So this might come up in certain situations like a stand-up where a junior engineer's update might be something like, I'm not sure I really understand this feature. Because what they're doing is that they're hoping people will see that they don't understand and then step up to offer help. So Christophe mentioned this in his talk yesterday on diving into a code base, that it's totally key to ask for help when you're stuck. And I completely agree with that. What I'd like to point out here is that for this person, they are asking for help, even if they're not exactly saying, can you help me? And so it's good to try to pay attention to subtle differences like that. And if you're the one that's in this position, you can go ahead and judge for yourself whether the way that you're communicating is effective or not. Are you getting the help that you need? And if not, it could be that people are missing your signals and you can either try to alternate a little bit how you send those signals out or have a conversation with people to help them pick them up a little bit better for you. And on the mentor side, I think a really important point is to remember that just because no one has specifically said, this is not working for me, doesn't mean that everything's OK. You can go ahead and ask questions maybe really gently to try to find a little bit more about what's going on. So this is kind of like that really good question somebody had yesterday, which is, how can I get honest feedback about whether I am being a good mentor or not? So a lot of people might say something like this. Do you have any questions for me? Which is not bad. At least you're asking and showing interest rather than just waiting for someone to come to you. But another way to try to draw that out might be using that offering options thing again. Where can I help more like in this area or this here or maybe some other suggestion there? Starting from the standpoint that assuming yes, there are areas where you can improve and help people say this is the starting point that we are working off of. And pairing, of course, often involves a lot of communication and people have different styles for that. Something that I find that helps with that sometimes is to have a little bit of a pairing retro, especially when things haven't gone well or you're having a hard time working with each other. So it can be really valuable to do this sort of analysis. For example, I have a good friend at work, Katie. She's Canadian, which is also like Canadians are known as being really nice. And they're often very guest culture as well. So she said something like, oh, I'm not sure I absorbed enough out of that last pairing session. Now, I could go ahead and look at this and think, oh, yeah. Well, she's just telling me she didn't get enough out of it. Like, that doesn't have anything to do with me. But if I try and pay a little bit of attention, I could say, oh, yeah, well, my work better here. So it's good that I picked up that she was expressing a concern there. But this could use a little bit of improvement as well. I could have instead said something like, oh, yeah. Like, we were kind of in an exploratory phase. Maybe next time we can save pairing for a little bit later. And again, offering up options for how we can try it differently, sort of already opening it to a discussion about different potential solutions there. One phrase that I often end up using is something like, hey, I have a question, but it is totally OK to say no to that. It's just something you can say before you ask people for something. And it works for guest culture people as well, because you can use this to remind yourself that other people can say no to you as well if you're feeling uncomfortable about something that you need to ask. But thanks to some of my expert guest culture friends that I practice this talk with, this can be even further improved. So we can make it a little bit more empathetic. Maybe changing that last clause to something like, it's OK if you're busy or I understand if you're busy and leaving an opening for people to say that they'll get back to you at another time instead. And so overall, I'd really like to impress upon all of us that I think it's really important to be thoughtful and try to help each other out. For example, in meetings, if you're a guest culture person, you can go ahead and enlist and ask culture type of person to help advocate for your point of view in a more confrontational setting. In either direction, you can step in when you know that certain situations might need a little bit of a different approach. Because you can be thoughtful and be the one to call it out, to carve out space for everyone to feel a little more comfortable. So ultimately, this is a topic that I'm a little obsessed with, and I love to talk to people about it. And so if you ever have any questions for me, please just ask. Thank you. Like right now, we have time for two real quick questions. Hey, so thanks for the talk. I really liked it. I was wondering about in a classroom situation, like how would you handle it? Because it's really easy just to tell people, if you have any doubts of what I'm explaining, you can ask. But if they're from, like, as I said, the guest culture, they might not. Like, how could you approach that situation? Yeah, totally. That's a really good question for what to do in a classroom situation. It's one of those things where I think it's good to offer a lot of different venues for people to approach you with questions that they might have. So I remember, even for me, even being asked culture in college, I would often make a really good use of office hours or reaching out to the TAs instead, where I might be able to ask a question one-on-one versus in front of the entire lecture hall there. Another thing I think that would help with those situations is, again, sort of assuming that people do, in fact, have questions and opening up to give them options of where they might be confused in. So you're like, hey, we just reviewed this topic. Based on past experience as a teacher, I know these tend to be common areas where people are a little bit confused. Which of these three areas should we spend some more time reviewing a little bit? And then people can offer you information that way. Cool? One more. That looks like a very enthusiastic ask over there. Hi. I don't have a really great way of phrasing this. But as a guest person, I have a really hard time getting answers out of people who I kind of identify to be guest people as well. You know, we're both kind of being polite around each other, and I can never get an answer out. So what would you recommend for that kind of situation? Oh, yeah, so this touches on another really pet topic of mine, which is something I've been working on over the last few years is really trying to be more comfortable with letting myself be vulnerable to other people. So have you seen that really awesome TED Talk by Brunet Brown on it's called The Power of Vulnerability or something? It's totally worth it. I'm not like a huge TED Talk person necessarily, but it's like a good use of 15 or 20 minutes of your time. And the idea is, you know, sometimes in those situations where you're kind of both dancing around a topic and you're feeling a little bit concerned about causing someone else embarrassment, or like feeling embarrassed to yourself as well, I think trying to practice being willing to be vulnerable and open yourself to possibly making a mistake or hurting someone or being hurt yourself can maybe help you get through that a little bit more. So it's kind of scary. It's definitely something to practice over time, but it's really helped me for sure in my relationships where I'm just like, yeah, I'm just sort of an awkward person. Sorry about that, but you know, we can work it out in the end. Thank you, that was such an amazing talk. Sure. Cool? All right, thank you, everyone.