11 Comments

Really good points! These apply to people with disabilities too. Not every human thinks, processes, ideates, or speaks at the same cadence so it's great to create an environment that allows for variability and maintains fair engagement.

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Thanks for pointing out this out. Being more inclusive and thoughtful of those who need more time or thought to communicate is important to building better companies and products.

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Agreed to some of these. But again, this is in the vein of "lean in" ideologies which slap on bandaids without addressing the real root causes of power imbalance in the tech space. So I would take this advice with a grain of salt. I'm a non-American who has been perceived as "shy", "quiet" and an "introvert" when I am none of those things. The reasons why non-Americans may hesitate to speak up are in fact complex, myriad and varies across individuals.

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Amazing points and re-read your piece on "the bias no one talks about" which has so many gems!

I found it really tough to find meaningful places to practice speaking. I used to do Toastmaster's as well, but it overfocuses on prepared and performative presentations and not enough on impromptu. Long meetings, but little time to practice.

If folks are looking for a better place to practice, Ultraspeaking is phenomenal for impromptu speaking and is 100% experiential + practice-based in nature.

This one hit home: "Your words carried disproportionate weight—in some ways, more weight than the actual work you had done. Though these discussions make up only about 5% of the time you spend at work, they make up more than 50% of how others judge you."

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"English was his second language, and while he thrived in 1:1 conversations, he rarely spoke up in larger meetings. The PM spent hours prepping his EM. They practiced and practiced, and when it came time to speak, the EM did an excellent job of presenting their product and progress.".

Why all this prep was necessary for a internal meeting? Wouldn't this environment be more opened for those less articulated? It looks like putting more burden on the EM to achieve a communication level/standard set by someone else.

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The presentation was an all-hands which was a presentation with hundreds of attendees. The EM wanted to do their work justice, and he put in a lot of time so he could get comfortable presenting in front of so many people. And he did great!

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This is something that did not come naturally to me. Luckily i had mentors that guided me through what you outlined here. One hack that helped me was I could be an ally even though i wasn't entirely comfortable speaking up; it was a low-risk way to practice speaking up and build relationships.

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I love that you had mentors who worked with you at it. And your hack is one we should all practice.

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This is such a timely read - I struggle with being a 'processor' as well and it's definitely a lot of work to come out of that shell. Thank you for putting this out there.

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I hope we can change the way we do things to make it easier for everyone to full participate in a way that makes them comfortable. Right now, the onus is put on each individual to learn this skill to excel at work.

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