The topic of “how to communicate well” came from real feedback: the earlier theme-based one-on-ones (the competency model) were judged as “a bit too abstract overall,” so this more practical topic—one people actually wanted to discuss—was born. It aims to solve two things: “not knowing what to talk about” and “not saying things clearly.”

The hardest part of communication is often not “whether something was said” but whether the other person received the same thing. A practical order is: clarify first, then give feedback, and only then commit. Clarifying means confirming that you haven’t filled in the story yourself; feedback describes impact rather than judging the person; a commitment should be small, clear, and renegotiable.

Preparing Your Own Feelings

First, think through your specific difficulties in communication; ideally, have a concrete case ready.

  • What is the specific difficulty you’ve encountered in communication? Can you give a recent example?
  • Which conversation do you feel you handled well? What made it good?
  • What form of communication tends to work best? How do the daily one-on-ones feel? Which issues do you think are suited to a one-on-one?
  • Which conversation was more effective? Which one was ineffective (too abstract)?
  • How do you communicate with other RDs, PMs, and UI designers? How does your approach differ?
  • When an argument or conflict happens, how do you usually resolve it?

Points to Discuss

Start from “how to communicate in concrete scenarios,” then move on to methods.

  • How are communication skills cultivated and trained?
  • What is the difference between communication and expression? (Communication is setting aside disputes and developing together; expression is summarizing and stating.)
  • How can you ask questions and get answers more effectively?
  • What are the concrete elements of empathy and putting yourself in the other’s shoes? Given the other person’s context, goals, and thinking patterns/decision tree, how do you infer a path to “achieve both their goals and your own goals”?
  • How does “impression” determine the efficiency of communication and thereby influence decisions? Which conflicts are unresolvable, and how should they be handled?

The Minimal Loop of a Conversation

Start by confirming that the other person received the same thing you meant. When you hear “this direction is wrong,” you can ask: are you referring to the goal, the current plan, or the pace of execution? What phenomena are you basing this on? What do you want to decide first this time?

Feedback can use the “observation–impact–request” pattern:

After the last discussion, the key decisions stayed only in the chat (observation), so later participants had different understandings of the priorities and did two rounds of preparation redundantly (impact). Going forward, could we record the decision, the owner, and the deadline in three lines at the end of each discussion (request)?

A commitment should include the action, the time, and the conditions for renegotiating—not just “I’ll follow up soon.” A good conversation can even end with “no commitment for now”: when information is insufficient, capacity is lacking, or boundaries are unclear, filling in the conditions first is more reliable than reluctantly agreeing.

Venting and Feedback

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