How to communicate effectively (8 rules and counting)

Update (29/03/2021). I updated this article with ideas I collected from people who read and commented on it. If you have a good idea for a Rule to follow for effective communication, DM me on LinkedIn or Twitter. Will add it with credits to you.

I receive a lot of messages on LinkedIn. On average 2/3 per day and I try to do my best to answer all of them. Everything ranging from people asking career advice, what kind of training/certifications to take. To folks asking how they can join my current company. I try to reply to the best of my knowledge.

However, I often find myself frustrated by people not following simple tricks to make the communication fast, effective, and useful for both ends. This goes from starting conversations with “Hi, how are you” followed by nothing. To (very rarely) people thinking I’m a snob and arrogant when I’m not able to help or answer a question (which also happens often, if I don't know something I say so).

So I wrote this article, where I lay down my way of communicating. And while the whole idea of this writing started from LinkedIn, the tricks can be used in any form of professional communication, at work, school, chatting on IM, or in a meeting… Especially in Covid times.

Before I start I’d like to acknowledge that it took me years to become effective in my communications style and I’m still learning. My north African heritage makes me chatty by nature, but I learned over the years how to tune it down, at least when it comes to working situations.

So what the rules?

• Rule#1 Avoid starting any form of chat communication (LinkedIn, or in your companies chat app) with “Hi” or “Hi, How are you” And nothing after that. I understand people try to be friendly and nice but this is counterproductive for few reasons:

Ask yourself, what do you expect next? People to reply “Hello” then what? You will “How are you”, they will reply “Good and you” then what? You will reply “Good thanks for asking”. You are 5 messages in and you didn’t mention the main thing you intended to chat about in the first place. It’s a big waste of time for everyone, and if you are chatting during your entire workday, for 5 days a week it’s not effective. It’s also a lot of wasted storage space in servers around the world (granted internet is full of junk, but do your part to help).

The person you are talking to is probably busy, like you, they probably don’t have time to tell you that their day is going well or not. So keep that in mind.

• Instead always start your messages with “Hi, your_question_or_topic_goes_here”. That gives the others the chance to read and decide if they want to reply right away or later.
• Rule#2 If you are chatting with someone and after a few backs and fourth sentences, the point you are discussing is not clear yet to both sides. Do a video call (or a WhatsApp call, or whatever mean of voice communication you prefer). You will do yourself and the other side a great favor and help save time that you would waste behind a screen trying to make yourself understood with text messages and getting frustrated in the process.
• Rule#3 Context is key. Before you send a link, a screenshot or an error message, a Log entry, or a compiler error code. Explain to the other person why are you sending these, preferably before you send them over. We all have plenty of things to do in our day, we are all busy with a lot of things going on. And guess what, the thing you need help with is only a priority for you, not for the person on the other end.
• Rule#4 If you don’t know something, it’s ok so say so. Don’t try to be an expert on everything. If you can help guide the person who is asking a question to another resource (another person, a website…) do so. You don’t have to answer all the questions and you probably don’t have all the answers.
• Rule#5 STOP using auto-reply on social media. Either write a personalized message or don’t. LinkedIn is particularly bad in this case, because whenever someone changes a job, or starts a new one and updates their profile. everyone else in their network sees this and LinkedIn proposes to them to send an auto-reply message on chat or as a comment to the Job update. Typically of the style “Congratz on your new role”. This is annoying.

When I updated my LinkedIn profile recently with the new “Co-Founder and Community Lead For the Cloud Native Group Casablanca” (which is awesome btw go check it out). I received 50 messages and an other 50/60 comments on the psot. 90% of them were auto-reply. So i naturally replied with auto-reply to all the auto-replies i got. The ones that were personalized i replied to with a personalized message. If yo go read the comments you will figure out which ones were which :)

• This brings us to Rule#6 Read carefully what people post or send on IM before you reply. My last comment about my profile update on LinkedIn is a good example. I would argue that the CNCG Casablanca community lead is not a Role perse. I didn’t change my company or position. I’m just doing something extra. So I would argue that replying with “Congratz for the new role” doesn’t make sense and it probably means people didn’t read carefully what I updated my profile with.
• Rule#7 Distinguish your opinions from fact. If you are sharing what you think about something, start or end your message with “I think” or “In my opinion” or “IMO” for short. If you are sharing a fact, support it with a link or a screenshot.
• Rule#8 (Credits to Magnus Fagertun) It’s super important for corporate chat/slack. Use Shift-enter to create a newline without sending a chat, to make the DM less dense.