Introduction

My writing often focuses on communication through the lens of technical leadership. That is because, in my experience, communication is the greatest determinant in the success or failure of projects. Good communication maximizes our odds of being effective in team endeavors.

How can we, as individuals, increase the likelihood of positive communication outcomes, especially in challenging situations? When we pause to think before acting, as we often should, what should we be thinking about? One of those things is, how to recognize and work effectively across differences in communication cultures.

When we work effectively across differences, differences become assets. Productive differences grant us access to checks against our own assumptions and biases. I’ll discuss my interpretation of the concept of high-context and low-context cultures and how it applies to day-to-day communication in practice.

Core concept: High-context and low-context cultures

Low-context communication prioritizes being highly explicit. Communicators assume less shared social context and therefore say more, providing more details in communications.

High-context communication relies on reading between the lines. Communicators assume more shared social context and therefore say less, leaving more to inference.

Trade-offs

Low-context communication accommodates diverse participation by requiring less shared background, but can become verbose. This verbosity may be distracting to participants who have to work through a higher volume of information to parse out what is most relevant.

High-context communication leverages shared understanding, but may be excluding to those that don't share the assumed context. Additionally, it leaves plenty of room for misunderstanding through either missed or misinterpreted cues.

Rather than thinking of modes as being fixed or immutable, we can think of them as contextual. Meaning, we may operate in different modes in different settings and we can switch between modes within a setting. Below, I posit a principle that optimizes for communicating well in diverse, knowledge-oriented work environments.

Guiding principle

💡

The more differences you need to work across, the more valuable it becomes to minimize assumptions about what is common knowledge.

In other words, when I need to be understood, I don't want people to have to read between the lines to understand me. To that end, these days I try to be more intentional about the communication mode I operate in and recognizing when the mode needs to change. It is that principle that guides the practices that follow.

Practical applications

The power of clear intentions

Know when to ask, suggest, or direct

💡

Be explicit about whether you are asking a question, offering a suggestion, or giving a directive.

Ask questions when building shared understanding. Avoid using questions to disguise suggestions or directives.
Make suggestions when the recipient of the suggestion owns the outcomes and has legitimate leeway to make a choice. If you need to know what that choice will ultimately be, ask.
Give directives when you are assuming ownership of a decision.

A common scenario where communication modes clash is in the perception of directives versus suggestions. The same statement might be interpreted as a suggestion by one person and as a directive by another. This is especially prone to happen when there is a power differential between speakers and receivers.

Anecdotally, I once witnessed a leader, using high-context communication, phrase a directive as a suggestion while expecting it to be treated as an instruction. The recipient, operating in low-context mode, understood it as an additional option to consider. This led to perceived insubordination on one side and genuine surprise at that perception on the other. This type of miscommunication can be avoided by making appropriate use of questions, suggestions, and directives.

This type of miscommunication isn't limited to directives and suggestions. Similar issues can occur with questions, especially when their purpose isn't clear.

Add clarifying context to questions

💡

When asking questions, especially via text, stating your intentions may preempt misinterpretation.

Questions with unclear purpose can spur negative inferences about the reasons for asking. Having been on both sides of this equation, I know that it is easy to read extra (ego-flavored) spice into questions, such as inferring challenges, second-guessing, etc, if the purpose of the questions is unclear.

I’ve found that well understood intentions help to preempt this type of response. And if you do this enough times, people build trust that leads to giving each other the benefit of the doubt by default. Simply note whether you’re asking for your own learning, to know what alternatives were considered, etc.

While being explicit about intentions helps to prevent misunderstandings in individual interactions, we must also establish shared expectations for how to communicate over time.

Form communication contracts to change modes when needed

💡

Communication contracting is a process for bridging differences in communication styles.

Acknowledging communication gaps
Determining what goals matter to each party
Committing to specific actions that will close the gaps and achieve the goals

Underlying this is the premise that there’s you in your role and me in my role . We each have information that we each need in order to fulfill our duties and preferences on how to receive and convey that information. Taking time to iron out a shared set of expectations - a contract - increases understanding and decreases misunderstanding. The goals of communication don't change, but the mode of delivery adapts to serve those goals as effectively as possible.

Anecdotally, I prefer to receive feedback asynchronously first then to discuss it synchronously. This approach gives me a chance to process initial reactions and focus on the substance rather than delivery. However, I've found that universally applying this preference when giving feedback sometimes leads to poorer reception, especially in relationships where rapport isn't yet established. In these cases, the asynchronous message might be read with an unintended negative tone.

In those instances, I've learned to pause the async-first approach, acknowledge the communication gap, explain my reasoning, and discuss with the other party how they prefer to receive feedback.

Build trust and autonomy through transparency

I would define “micromanagement” as any system or process that leads to an excessive loss discretion, autonomy, or decision making power from those who should have it. As I explore in scaling engineering teams, rather than taking discretion away from my team, my goal as a leader is to bolster it.

An effective way to build trust and autonomy is through transparent communication. As David Marquet observes,

"When I heard what my watch officers were thinking, it made it much easier for me to keep my mouth shut and let them execute their plan. It is generally when they were quiet and I didn't know what they were going to do next that I was tempted to step in".

– Turn the Ship Around!, L. David Marquet

This aligns with my experience as an Engineering Manager. When I understand what factors an engineer is weighing in their decision making (i.e. they are making literate decision ), that enables me to give them space to execute. Good communication mitigates the need to operate in ways that may feel like micromanagement or handholding to either party.

💡

Thinking and building out loud also creates the opportunity to evolve everyone’s decision making models.

Doing so surfaces differences in decision-making vectors and how they are being weighted, illuminates pernicious assumptions. It can create decision records that build up institutional knowledge and can form the basis of first class documentation.

This commitment to transparency extends beyond sharing our decision-making processes. One of the most impactful forms of transparency is being open about what we don't know.

Build certainty by constructively expressing uncertainty

"Lack of certainty is strength, certainty is arrogance"

– Turn the Ship Around!, L. David Marquet

💡

Flagging risks, doubts, confusion can be some of the most valuable communication.

It affords the team the opportunity to be proactive rather than reactive, to preempt rather than remedy. Because typically, issues get more expensive, not cheaper, to fix over time.

Conclusion

“The product experiences that did the best…and were probably executed the best in large part were because of the small nuclear team that we were able to put together…and that team’s interpersonal dynamics”

– Ime Archibong, Head of Product at Meta

While this approach to communication takes significant investment of time, energy, and patience, it increases our chances of positive outcomes, especially in environments where creativity and autonomy matter. In these environments, strong teams rely on healthy relationships, and healthy relationships take work.

The patterns explored here - being explicit about intentions, forming communication contracts, and building trust through transparency - provide concrete things to consider when we do pause before acting. By recognizing different communication styles and adapting appropriately, we may transform differences from potential barriers into valuable assets.

Once a team has the technical proficiencies to meet its challenges, it is the quality of its communications that determines whether that potential transforms into actual achievements. While poor communication can doom even the most promising initiatives, strong communication practices give good ideas their best chance of succeeding.

On bridging communication styles: lessons from working across differences