Effective Communication by Frank Ostojic

So I want to talk about effective communication today, which is a really important topic in anything you do in life, whether you're going to be a doctor, an engineer, a leader, a parent, a friend. Communication is the name of the game. So I approached it a little bit differently, basically in the way that I learned how things are done here in industry. But let me tell a story first. When I was in college, my senior year, I was taking a class in systolic arrays, some weird thing in computer science that was very difficult. I remember a particular test that I studied really hard for, and then I took the test. I knew how to do all the answers, but I didn't have enough time to finish it. Big problem number one: I thought I got it right. Problem number two: I thought I got it right. I was starting problem number three, but I wouldn't have time. I had like five minutes, so I wrote down what I had on problem three and gave it to the professor. I said, 'You know, I know the problem, I don't have time.' So he took the class. Obviously, two out of three is a pretty bad grade. Then I went to his office and said, 'Well, you know, the third problem, you asked me, and I think I do.' So he asked me, 'Okay, do the problem on the board.' I did the problem on the board, I got it right. I said, 'I want to give you partial credit because you know it's that you were not fast enough.' I remember that professor told me, 'Frank, just want advice: please be a test engineer or quality engineer, but don't be a designer because you're too slow.' That immediately bothered me, from my head to my toe. And then the design manager for 1,000 big black rocker, right? I went to see the professor and I told him, 'Thank you for telling me that, because you gentlemen need to do what you thought that I couldn't. By the same time, maybe even sell out to people instead of getting the reaction again as wild outfit, getting more excited to something you guys could bring that down.' But he's like, 'Oh, I don't even remember.' But I remember. So his communication was effective to me, but was not necessarily effective for everybody. So that's what we want to talk about. But he was being honest, right? So that's what we're going to talk about as well. The first thing I'll talk about is what makes a great communicator: credibility. Let me ask you this: how do you know if somebody's telling the truth? You meet somebody, you talk to them for two or three hours, you don't know them very well, but you talk to them for two or three hours, maybe four hours. How do you know this person is telling you the truth? What is something common about people that tend to tell the truth? Think about that, and we'll talk a little more about that question. One thing that I noticed when I meet with customers, when I meet with people that are trying to sell us technology, is I count how many of those are positive. If they're all positive, I know they're lying, but the world doesn't work like that. So if you're talking to somebody, the professor, a friend, somebody selling you something, some percentage of everything they say is positive, especially if it's something difficult. So one of the things I try to do in my communication with people, whether customers, my engineers, or anybody, when I talk to their friends, I always tell them three things are positive, and then we share negative things. When you share negative things with people, they trust you because they know you're not just selling. In fact, human beings have been raised in school so that if we don't hear everything that we need to hear, we imagine the worst. Engineers typically are trained to design for worst-case: the chip works at low voltage, works at high temperature, works at the worst situation. So we try to design it so when we don't know the data, we assume the worst. We think, 'Oh, it's probably worst, that's probably a really slow part, probably their reliability is low.' So we try to design a chip that works in every single case. Human beings have been designed the same way: when we do not get all the information, we assume the worst. Sometimes we don't make very accurate descriptions. So by communicating with people the reality of something, the good and the bad, then people don't have to imagine the worst and they immediately know what to do. So that's one thing I would encourage you: when you communicate, when you're interviewing, when you're communicating with your professors, when you're talking to your boss, when you're talking to essentially anybody who has a priority over you, if there's something you need from them, to build trust, make sure you always communicate a mixture of the good thing and the bad thing, and you will really have trust. Now, make sure that when you communicate the negative thing, you have to show capability, that you have faith and the ability to solve the problem. That is when communication becomes leadership. So let's talk a little bit about that. Leadership is about showing the situation, ensuring people how you have mastery of what's going on, the positive and the negative, and then showing them how you're going to overcome the negative things. That could be in school, medicine, biology, any domain. That's very, very important. Now, people talk a little bit about communication, and what I learned over the 20 years I worked here is that the most important part of communication is listening. Absolutely number one. Making sure you listen. Typically when I meet with a customer, the first thing I do is ask them what they're worried about. They tell me in five minutes, or 60 seconds, what they worry about. As they're done, I basically repeat that: 'What you're concerned about is number one, number two, number three, number four, number five.' I repeat what they said, and they either correct me or say yes. In that minute, they tell me that those are the things they're concerned about. Even if I disagree with those, I repeat that. People don't listen until they're ready to listen. Did you know, if you have a professor, a friend, somebody you're working with, and you want to convince them to do something, and they have some objection, the first thing you need to do is say, 'Please tell me everything. Please tell me your concern.' And you listen to them without interruption, summarize what they told you. I can guarantee you for the next 30 seconds after you summarize what they told you, they're going to listen, maybe just for 30 seconds, but they're going to listen. This is extremely true with people that tend to be pretty dominant, powerful. If you're talking to a CEO, a manager of a bank, somebody in charge of a large group, they tend to be strong. The stronger that person is, the more they tend to listen for that time. So if you go ahead and repeat what they've said for 30 seconds, you have time to give your pitch, and then you have 30 seconds. The other thing I learned about communication is that sometimes communication is about convincing somebody: convincing a professor to give you a better grade, convincing somebody to give you a job, convincing somebody to invest money in a company, convincing somebody to stop doing something. How do you persuade somebody to do something like that? What I learned is first you listen, you summarize their concern, and then you very briefly explain why you can do it, and then you ask them if they understand what you said. If they repeat something completely different, that means you're not on the same page. So you try again until you can actually hear what you said. But there are some people who are very difficult to convince. One of those is my boss. My boss is a CEO who is tremendously successful, and I work with him. It is very difficult to convince him. So one way that sometimes I try to persuade them to do what I think is right is by communicating with questions. If they tell me, 'Hey Frank, we want to do this,' if I say, 'No, I don't think that's a good idea because this is what happens, this is going to happen, this will happen,' then they immediately have an answer to all these things. But when I ask them, 'Oh, that's what you're thinking? And what do you think's going to happen when we do this? What do you think the consequences will be? What do you think is going to be the long-term consequences?' Then they convince themselves in their own words that maybe that idea is not a good idea. Because the more power people have, the more they tend to listen to what they're saying. This idea is like a seed: if you give a plan to somebody and they reject it, because they want their own plan instead. So what you do is you give them a seed, you let them look, you plant the thought. You try to get your point across quickly, and the smarter the person is, the faster they will get to that point, and it will become more their idea. So those are some of the few things that I used in my career to survive. 20 years ago, I was basically exactly where you guys are right now. So that's what I can share, some pretty simple stories. Now I'll give you the mic. Any questions for me? We have questions? Please. So I really like how you can become more effective communicators. What do you do if the person you're talking to is not convinced? I've run into that. They don't communicate well, and it starts working the other way. Wow, that is a very good question. My suggestion is typically to help them by moving the following: ask them, 'What are the three things that you want?' I break it down, I create a list. 'What are the three things that you want, and which one of those three is the most important?' When you break it down like that, people start thinking about it and they start telling you, 'Okay, what I really want is this.' Sometimes the thing that they mention is not the most important, or sometimes it's something they were looking for without the courage to tell you. But when you ask them, 'Hey, what are the three things that you want? Which one is the most important?' they overcome that lack of communication and tell you. So ask a question so that you can help them break it down to three things and ask for a priority. That would be one suggestion. The other suggestion is to be very frank with them, going back to being candid and honest. Say, 'You know, I know you are stressed about this, and we are concerned about this. I know you're very emotional about something and not being able to put down exactly what you want.' And then ask, 'Can we do one thing? Instead of three, one thing you want.' Then they might say that one thing. 'I understand. Which one is it?' Then the minute you repeat that one thing, they are willing to tell you the rest. Good question. Thank you. Other questions? I have one, Frank. While they're thinking, you know, I know that you're a religious person, and this course has attempted to help our participants look at their own spirituality as well as their professional and work life. How would you say effective communication and your spirituality work in your life? I think it's something very important that goes together. I think it's not possible to separate who you are from what your job is. I think it's not possible to live like this is personal life and this is church life. Whatever church you belong to, it doesn't matter. I think what's important is to be one person, to be the same person at church and the same person at work. When you think about communication, there are times when the direction being taken by the business or by the school or by the institution is not right. Communication becomes really important. Sometimes those moments are persuasive, honest. Sometimes they are moments where you get less, sometimes they are defining moments where your career might go one way or stop. There we got to be careful. Let's talk about persuasive communication. You have an opportunity to make sure that institutions do the right thing. You persuade, you listen, you look at situations and share them. But there are also situations where something is not right, and that's where you have to say, 'You know, I know this is what they want to do. I cannot do that. I cannot participate because this is not who I am, not what I'm willing to support.' That is a defining moment in life because at that time, that organization might say, 'You're right, thank you for showing that up, and we will change.' Or they might say, 'We're going to move forward without you.' But you always have to be honest. If that's going to happen in that organization, you probably don't want to be participating in that organization. Then you have to have the courage to make the right decision. But you cannot be killed because you don't want to sound self-righteous. There are a lot of things that might not be okay for you. But if there is something that is not necessarily right or honest, it's good to stand up. I've done that, and I'm still here in the same job. So you can do it. Good work. Thanks for the addition. Other questions? Yes, about being in a situation where you want to speed up communication. You communicate points, but at the very beginning, the phonetics work, but you notice you're seeing overdone sentences, and engineers making situations or people feel uncomfortable. How do you go about being neutral and using that in a presidential caucus? I guess I wanted to be able to find a way to simulate that without altering yourself. How do you not change the neutral look within the field? That's a very good question. Your question is basically you're dealing with somebody that has been very successful, somebody that has been proven, somebody that is able, somebody that has been right a lot of times because that's why they got to that position, whether manager, CEO, director, or anybody. How do you influence them? There's one thing that nothing replaces: track record. Nothing replaces track record. So when you produce good results, whether you're a student, a worker, a bus driver, an engineer, a doctor, a businessman, when you consistently produce good results, your ability to convince somebody to do something is 90% better than a new person. So I would say the number one rule of effective communication is make sure your credibility is high by having good results. If it's not there, then you're going to do the best communication you can with what you have until you get that credibility. It can take a month, a year, five years. That'll be the number one thing. Another thing is credibility. What I suggested in the house is again you listen to what they said, you send your best, you try questions to direct the person potentially. The other thing that I use is I talk to a lot of people. I can talk to the CFO, I can talk to an HR person, I can talk to one of my peers and say, 'What do you think about this idea?' and see if they are good. That's powerful because likely people that are very influential, that have a lot of power, have a lot of people they talk to. They call people they trust to check their decision. I know whom I trust. I can talk to those four or five people and say, 'What do you think about this?' If I get a better idea, I listen to them. You get to look like a good leader. Then people network can be verified. So you need to be very observant of the person that you want to influence. Who do they listen to? As part of what you're doing, whether you're selling something or asking for something, you want to implement those people that surround that person. Of course, they might think I'm coordinating time and patience. You might not want to talk to the decision-maker until you talk to those other people so that when you go ahead and implement, you get the right feedback from this place. That's great. Great answer. Thank you so very much. I think we're out of time. We certainly appreciate your participation, and thank you for participating in the Launch Leaders course. I'm hoping we'll be able to talk again before you finish. But any last thoughts before we go? I would just say, you know, the best advice that I can tell you from my point of view is I think it's very important to be positive, to be persistent. When people meet you, they want to make sure that you have the air of somebody that never gave up. That persistence will give you a lot of advances in whatever career, whatever endeavor you want to do. Very good. I wish you the best in the things that you guys are doing. You all look very young, and I think your computers are very right there. This is the time to put in habits, to try new things, to define who you are, and to not compromise. Whatever you do, make sure that you don't divide yourself. Be one person that has the same principles everywhere you go. I really enjoyed talking to you guys. Good luck.