Talk on the run. Talking programmer

I have been sitting in a deeply echeloned rear of an IT office for quite a long time, successfully pretending to be a blonde for six years and incorporating the sprouts of psychological knowledge and communication skills into programmer heads of all kinds and stripes.
And now I’m ripe to share what, actually, speaking, I do it, and how.

What for?

• Most of the projects that I have to deal with are arranged according to the principle of a two-three-level hierarchy, with serious bosses at the top of the food chain managing serious customers, and coders for food of varying degrees of advancement at the bottom. In the golden mean sit tmlidy, they are technicals, they are coordinators, on whom, strictly speaking, the main responsibility for real value and real delivery rests.
• These people most often are the company's own product, starting out as a young punker, having gone a long way of development, and at the same time - they absolutely do not want to turn into big bosses, because the fresh wind is still noisy in their heads, and break away from their own, lovingly cultivated on .NET beds, they do not even want.
• Nevertheless, people come and say to them: you grow up years old, boy, it's time to lead, che.
• However, - a couple of dozen juniors are attached to them, and they are politely asked to teach those wisdom.
• They give their voices at every substantive meeting, and since they usually know what they are talking about, they begin to listen.
• Moreover, they are constantly being taken to rallies with the customer, so that they finally explain, humanly, how this crap works.

And here the ambush opens. Because, as M. Zhvanetsky, the great classic of Russian literature, wrote, “You, Fedya, are NOT able to be a propagandist. Because there is power in your words, but you cannot arrange them correctly. ”

Right. Because most of them have never been taught to. People in a strange way refuse to understand that this is this, that is, should-about-that-because, well, we are a barge, in short? They also understand their other people here and there, and the customers - not my God, they do not get it, that's all.
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What can be done to somehow improve the situation?
Zebra knows several tricks designed to talk the silent lambs.

Psychological stuff

It is impossible to believe how many organizational conclusions a newcomer can make from a single trivial exercise. We assemble the group, put them in a circle in a cool meeting room and give them a task: the group silently throws fingers on one hand until all the group members throw out the same number of fingers.
What can the group see in this exercise?

• How the majority knows how to set individual opinion with their authority
• As a single, stubborn participant, the meeting is able to stretch the decision making for an additional 15 minutes (2 hours, three days, write down the duration to taste)
• As it suddenly turns out that there are opinions in the room other than your own, the only true one.
• How interesting it looks from the side of every person trying to come to even such a trivial agreement
• How sometimes a common goal remains beyond the framework of striving for self-affirmation and demonstration of one’s own authority
• As a smart leader, able to carry along a fragmented amorphous mass, which has not yet formed its own opinion

Questions to ask for success:

• What helped to complete the task?
• What interfered with the task?
• What did you notice?

Questions that need to be asked if the task is not fulfilled within a reasonable time (in terms of a group in a circle, - 15 minutes, - the limit of permissible):

• What prevented the task?
• What could help to complete the task?
• What did you notice?

Each participant must express his impression, and your task as a presenter is to draw the speaker’s attention not only to his own actions, but also to the actions of those around him.
1-2 rounds and - oops, - you are one step closer to the skill of reaching an agreement at a meeting on dates that can be safely called reasonable.

Public speaking practice

It does not require any special skills to carry out - the leader needs to have two properties: utmost attentiveness and correctness when criticized.
How is it done?
Come up with 3-4 topics that in your community will look relevant and at the same time quite controversial for the development of the discussion. Someone may have eternal java java vs .NET, someone can afford more abstract truths like “Carthage must be destroyed” or “What is allowed to Jupiter, not allowed to bull” , break the community into an approval team and a negative command, limit them in time and ask them to prepare: a) a set of arguments, b) questions for the enemy and c) a comparison of the positions of the parties in order to convince the public that their side is more convincing. See the rules of the game in the debate of the name of Karl Popper, and if you see laziness, then limit yourself to the following rules:

• Each performance should take no more than 2 minutes.
• Each team must consist of no more than 3 people.
• Each team member should have the opportunity to speak.
• Each team member should be asked questions.

An audience who does not take part in this particular verbal battle should carefully record all the speakers' mistakes and decide who convinced them more.
After the game (and, to be honest, it was precisely for this that it was carried out) a detailed debriefing for each of the speakers should begin. Tell them what was convincing and what was not, count how many seconds out of 120 they spent moaning, biting themselves by the elbows and the terms “well,” “shorter,” “so to speak,” show them how much time they had spoken, leaning glance at the floor.
And only after that - tell the basic rules for holding the attention of the audience, all this marketing staff about eye contact, distinct articulated speech, speech structure, message shortness, the number of pieces of information that a person is able to keep in memory at once (remember, 7 plus or minus 2).
Let everyone go free.
Repeat the exercise in a week. Progress will be drawn immediately, because nothing moves a person in the direction of working on himself, as slipped under his breath the evidence of his failure.

Heartless resource limit

The most valuable thing that our employees learned from the series of communications trainings we conducted was our utmost punctuality. The lesson was scheduled by the minute, and each time we fit in the allotted hour.
An important subtext that comes out of such a stubborn following schedule: value someone else's time, and value it higher than yours; you may have the opportunity to catch up by donating a round in Counter Strike, others may not have this opportunity. Based on the presumption of universal employment, we have shown that we are able to create value in a short time.

References and sources:
S. I. Makshanov, N. Yu. Khryashcheva. "Psycho-gymnastics in training" (St. Petersburg, 1993)
Debate them. Karl popper