I’m now back in Nairobi and into the swing of things. It’s ~25 degrees, and so quite a change to get some Vitamin D.
Anyway, this week I thought I’d share the concepts of a recurring conversation I had with friends over the festive break. Namely, the topic of speaking bluntly.
For the previous 12 months I worked solo, and before that always shared a physical space with teammates. This changed drastically when I started working with the Kubicle team: communicating via electronic means with my colleagues.
The biggest difference though has been the style of communication.
It’s very direct and requires a level of emotion to be left at the door in order to not be affected by what, in other social contexts, would be considered as harsh or rude.
Getting over the weirdness of the words sounding accusatory, it then becomes (I’ve found) a lot more liberating to speak in a way that gets to the root of an issue quickly.
Such as below…
In any case, if you’re interested in reading a bit more on “radical candor”, this article is the best I’ve read.
In other news…
To lighten the mood, let’s talk about sticks.
This interesting article is around how, rather than stones, the human use of sticks was our defining evolutionary step. Why has it been overlooked? Well, sticks decay whereas stones don’t, meaning the archaeologists aren’t able to study them.
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