Today I'll tell you about one interesting skill that for some reason almost no one possesses, but it's extremely important in any work and not only.
I won't even drag the cat by the balls and will immediately say what it is. It's the ability to speak the same language as your interlocutor. And unfortunately, they don't teach this in language courses.
I'll tell a story to make it clearer.
Imagine Vasya. Vasya is a programmer, in the good sense of this word, if there is one. At school he studied diligently, spoke English, left for Czech Republic, studied, started working. In general, he does everything clearly.
But there's one problem - he's valued at work, but not enough to be promoted. Despite the fact that actually Vasya's technical skills in the company are unique. Vasya is irreplaceable, only for some reason no one knows about it.
What's the matter? Let's go see what our subject is doing.
Aha, Vasya is coding. Not bad. Let's look at his code, maybe it's Indian? No, normal. Here a colleague approaches Vasya with a question, Vasya explains everything clearly, the colleague nods and leaves. Everything seems good too.
Although wait, not quite. Now let's go ask the colleague what Vasya told him there. Aha, the colleague didn't really understand anything. Why? Let's look at Vasya's advice.
Oh well, here, in short, everything's easy, I've had this a hundred times. Let me show you. So, here bang a script, throw this thing in the header, lazy load and all this through hash table. Ok?
Got it? Me neither. And this is everywhere. It turns out that most often we share information and knowledge with people of other backgrounds.
I encounter this every day when I write articles about Czech Republic. For example, I can write something like: "When you arrive, just buy a 30-minute ticket, stick it in the validator on the bus, get to Nádraží Veleslavín, then to Staroměstská, and from there walk to Czech Bridge".
What's interesting, here everything is absolutely clear to me. To someone who has lived in Prague - too. But to the one who asked how to get to the hotel - not a single word. Where to buy the ticket, what's a validator, what's Staroměstská.
That's why one of the most important skills in any profession - when you're asked a question, first you need to put yourself in the place of the person who asked the question. And only then answer.
In other words, it's very important to be able to get dumb at some point. Now, perhaps, I'll get into details and explain what I mean when I say "get dumb".
I like the DIKW information perception scheme - data => information => knowledge => wisdom.
- Data - is just some written text, like this one. So far it gave you nothing.
- Information - is when you think about all this a bit and somehow put it into your brain. Already at this stage different people will get different information from the same data, because information depends on your background.
- Knowledge - is when you already understood this article and HOW it works. You have theories about how to apply it.
- Wisdom - is when you've already tried to apply this knowledge, got experience (doesn't matter, negative or positive) and made benefits from it. Now your brain knows WHEN to use this wisdom, and when - not.
Let's move to the article's topic. Imagine someone asks you - how do I go study in Czech Republic? Bad answer - just come, it's all simple here. Good answer - I described the whole process on a couple of A4 sheets going into the very depths.
What distinguishes a good article from a bad one? In a good article you'll see that the author doesn't share wisdom with you. He doesn't say: "I left, and you'll leave". He puts himself in your place and operates precisely with the data that you possess.
If at work you're asked: "Help me with the program", it's stupid to just take and do everything yourself. You need to give the person as much data as possible and push him to transform it into exactly the knowledge he's looking for.
You stand behind a blind person and can only help him with words, without hands. An inexperienced person will say "right, turn right damn it", and if the blind person turns left and falls into a pit. Such a guide will get mad and wave his hands: "Not that right, over there, come on there!".
An experienced assistant will immediately put himself in the blind person's place and say: "Here you need to slow down, turn left about 30 degrees, feel a bump with your right foot and carefully pass it".
Don't be an asshole who thinks he's the smartest in the room. The main wisdom is to be able to remove this wisdom from your head in time.