EP 04 (en): Communication through writing as a consultant
Episode 04 en anglais
Communiquer via l’écrit en tant que consultant(e).
Disclaimer: Our recording software encountered data corruption problems on one of the tracks. Unfortunately this cannot be repaired by mixing or editing, as it is the file itself that is affected. We apologize for this inconvenience. The forthcoming podcast, to be released on July 22, was previously recorded under exactly the same conditions, and the sound is perfectly audible. Unfortunately, we have no explanation other than network problems between recording and file creation.
In this episode we talk about written communication as a consultant. How do you communicate your needs to management and operational teams? Let's take the case of a website migration as an example. Between the management team (C-suite) and the developers, the way of presenting yourself is not the same. Of course, we also look at the differences in usage between email, conversational applications (Slack) and project management tools (Trello). Slack is for fun, Trello is for facts.
Judith Lewis on Linkedin, 🐦⬛ Twitter.
Transcription
Syphaïwong :
Hello.
Judith :
Hello, hello, how are you doing?
Syphaïwong :
How are you? Fine, but I'm sorry, who are you?
Judith :
Oh my gosh, I don't know. Who am I? Where am I? Why am I here? Now, the one thing almost never do is introduce myself. Hi, I'm me. I, hi, I like chocolate and wine. My name is Judith. Judith Lewis, you can use the search engine of your choice to use the search function to look up Judith Lewis and chocolate or Judith Lewis and wine. I judge both white and chocolate because I'm super judgmental. Also judging the search awards globally. So whether it's APAC or US or UK, I have clients all over the world. So I have expertise in the variety of different markets that are currently serviced by the search awards. I've been doing it since 1996 before there was a Google, but search engines did exist. They weren't great, but they existed. And then I kept up with it. I have a degree in psychology and a background in programming. So it was kind of like accidentally the perfect way to get into digital marketing. And nowadays I'm a consultant. I get pulled in generally on a retainer to work with clients, doing everything from skills assessment to recruitment, from creating strategies through to helping train the staff on how to implement. So hopefully that wasn't too long.
Syphaïwong :
wasn't too long but I hope this podcast wouldn't be too judgmental today
Judith :
Well,
Syphaïwong :
I think that we met about one year ago in Paris, in the beautiful Paris, a city of lights.
Judith :
I remember, yeah, and Aleyda Solis introduced us.
Syphaïwong :
So I was interested in talking to you about something that happens that gives me a lot of questions every day. This is how to communicate properly with people. This is more difficult than we expect. First.
In our job, we mostly communicate through writing, email, tools, etc. Or even sometimes some WhatsApp messages, which is awful for work. And so, and because you made a talk in Brighton about migration.
Judith :
Yes. Yep.
Syphaïwong :
yeah, some catastrophic, some horror story in migration story, which end not very well. So,
Judith :
Yep.
Syphaïwong :
and I had the feeling that you talked mostly about the fact that those people didn't listen to you. Was, am I right?
Judith :
Well, I now feel like my parents, both of them, at every point in my life. Judith, if only you would just listen. Well, now I'm the person that's not being listened to, mom and dad, so congratulations. I graduated. Yeah,
Syphaïwong :
Hmm... I told you so.
Judith :
my parents are both saying, yeah, you didn't listen to us either. So I'm going to go ahead and say that. I think that with migrations and not being listened to, I actually gave a story at SC on the beach very recently. And the story was that the client did not communicate with me a critical change to the homepage because he knew if he asked me, I would say no. And he knew it. And so he refused to ask me until after it went live and our rankings tanked on some very key internal linking elements that I'd put in there. And I said to him, I'm not going to fight with you on this because all we ever do is disagree. And so let's agree to disagree on this, but I can't live with this through the holidays because your sales will not be high enough to have justified this homepage change." He said, but I like it. I like it. And I said, that's great, but it's bad for SEO. So I, you know, I not only do communication elements get lost, but sometimes clients refuse to communicate because they know I'll just say no. But in their hearts, I hope that they realize the reason I'm saying no is in their own interests of money making. And not just because I say no far too often. Which could be part of the problem.
Syphaïwong :
you're really talking like a parent, like
I am saying this just for your own good, it's not just for me, it's not about, it's not that I don't like it but it's not good for you. This ice cream, I like ice cream too but now you eat too many ice cream.
Judith :
Yeah. I don't want to clean up the vomit in the back of the car. So can you please not eat the third or fourth ice cream?
Syphaïwong :
Yeah, so did you eat another ice cream? No, I did not, but you know you did.
Judith :
Yeah.
Syphaïwong :
Yeah, and this is the same situation actually.
Judith :
It's very close,
Syphaïwong :
It's very close. Because we are talking about the fact that we need to communicate, but if people don't want to, we can do nothing.
Judith :
It's true. And it's the same with migrations that I was talking about. If the developers don't want to communicate with the SEOs because they think they know best, then there's not a lot that we can do about it because they'll just push it to live without telling anyone. I was at another conference and one of my colleagues said, I have to go for a minute. And then when she came back, she'd had a long conversation with the CTO, so not like anybody junior, about the fact that a a platform migration had happened that afternoon and she hadn't been informed and there were errors and some de-indexing of part of the site. And she said, I really wish you would have told me beforehand and the CTO said, I didn't know either. So sometimes it's not even that the people in authority are doing stuff. Sometimes it's like more junior level. People are just like, well, I think I can do this. So I think I'll just go off and do it and be awesome. And then when it fails, they're like, I. get why we shouldn't have done that now. Lesson learned, you know, we can all make mistakes, right? Maybe not, especially if it loses us lots of money.
Syphaïwong :
Working with people is so difficult.
Judith :
Only we were all machines. But you were kind of asking me about how do I communicate with devs? I mean, donuts help, but obviously, in these days of remote working, also wasabi peas. So I found the perfect balance is some wasabi peas, some pretzels and some donuts because I cover off almost all the devs that way and they're all happy with some element of food that I've brought and I feel like bribing people into listening to me is sometimes the best way. But obviously when we have to email people because we're not physically there, I've got a client in Singapore, I'm not there. I can't bribe the devs and the devs are not necessarily working in a way that I understand either because they work. to a different way of thinking. And so I really find it challenging to communicate with them, but that first introduction is the most key part of the communication, whether it's on something like Slack or it's on email, the way you introduce yourself into the group has to be sort of person dependent. So when I talk to devs, I'll often talk about the languages I learned. I'll talk about how long I spent developing stuff that I used to hand code HTML just for fun, to build websites. You know, like I'll big up my tech credentials, the years that I spent learning programming languages as a start. I won't talk about my psychology degree, but if I'm talking to somebody in business, I'll talk about my specialized honor psychology degree, the number of years I have in business, how many different businesses I've been involved in, the different verticals, how much money I've made for clients, etc. So each different... audience, like, you know, we work with in SEO, we work with personas and we design content around personas. Same thing, you know, I talk to a dev and I talk to them one way and I talk to the CEO or CMO and I talk to them a different way. So that first introduction, that was really critical because if I'm with my SEO or digital marketing hat and I'm like, well, you know. I've built all this stuff and content and I built lots of links and made lots of money. The devs are going to be like, yeah, whatever. And I'm making a gesture with my hand that is obscene. So let's not make a video of that. But if you say to the devs, well, I built all of this from scratch and I did this and I did that and you're talking to them in their language on that first communication, when you're saying, hi, this is who I am. I've joined the team. It's really exciting. In fact, maybe don't say it's really exciting. And just like you outline. the level of communication that you're comfortable with and talk about GitHub commits that you've done or whatever, you can communicate like that with the devs, but if you try to do that with the CMO or CTO or CEO, that's not gonna fly. CEO especially, when you talk about GitHub commits, they're gonna be like, what are you even? What's a git? Have you just sworn at me? So pick your audience and when you're... Doing that introduction, remember, it's a one-shot deal. You mess that up, I shall say, as she very quickly catches herself and not swear. If you mess that up, you won't have a second chance at a first impression. So a lot of the devs that I still work with that respect me are because that first introduction, I gauged my audience and I communicated, and it's the same in email outreach. Maybe a little more difficult to do cold email outreach for link building, but it's the same thing. Pick your audience, understand your audience, communicate with your audience in the way that they expect. So when it comes to migration time, the devs are like, you know what? Judith knows what she's talking about. So if I communicate with her that I'm doing something, I know she's not just gonna come back and say, oh well, X person online said that we should do it this way. You know, as we've all heard from various people, they'll know that I'm gonna come back at them and say, okay, that's excellent. The type of thing that I'm looking for in a push to live are these elements being in place. I can give you the tools or I can do it myself. You're really pressed for time. Let me do that and help you out. That practical communication level works really well. If you've got most devs are time poor. So be specific. I will waffle with a CMO, won't waffle with a dev. And you'll find that the communication becomes easier without the donuts, wasabi peas and pretzels.
Syphaïwong :
Waffle ?
Judith :
Waffle is to use additional words that aren't necessarily necessary to communicate your point. So when you talk the way I normally talk, which is to use many, many words to communicate a single idea, then that's called waffling. And what we're
Syphaïwong :
Okay.
Judith :
Doing is we're couching the idea in extra words. And devs are gonna be like, yeah, whatever, I've got time for none of this, can you just get to the point? Whereas a CMO or a CTO or somebody in the content team, somebody in the link building team, if you don't communicate with them in a softer, what I would call softer, so a more wordy way where you couch your words more emotionally, they can feel offended or they can feel like you're abrasive or you're not communicating with them appropriately because they... expect a much more emotionally based communication level. So by choosing your personas, you get the communication right.
Syphaïwong :
But actually this is just social skills, a lot of social skills I think,
Judith :
Ha ha ha!
Syphaïwong :
But this is because we have to adapt to our target, not the target of our audience, but the same for me. We have to, we need to adapt and to make them feel that we know what they are experiencing every day in their jobs, like to make them having credit for you. Okay, this is a dev. What do I need? I need that this dev will trust me. And he will trust me if I can show him I'm able to show him that I know what I'm talking about when I, for example, ask for a technical specification or something, something different on the website. Yes. HTTPS is good or not. I need to know what I'm talking about and I need to show him to. to have like this confidence with him. And the CEO, this is not his problem, he just wants things that are working making money. Yeah, and yeah, but it's just so short-term, but I think through writing, it's very difficult because since the pandemic, of course, but even before, we have a lot of communication, communications through writing, through emails, for example. And there are some people that I have never met in the real life, and I work with them every day. I have, for example, one of the biggest clients of our agency. We never met them, and because they are in a different country, this is more difficult. But we feel close to them. And, but how did we do it? How do we make it? uh like that like the this things that we I think the waffling is very interesting concept because it's like choosing when you need to waffle or not I like I love this work thank you.
I was thinking about the waffles the cake and but maybe if you with some people you need to offer and for some for other people you don't have to offer if you offer you will be like it's not it's not a good idea i think and yeah for example in like what i hate is maybe on the Kanban how you say the Trello style.
Judith :
Yep, yep.
Syphaïwong :
Let's say like this the I hate when people talk too much on a Trello dashboard because, okay, I have a card for a task in some case of, for example, migration. This is a task for migration. Okay. What do you have to do? Why do you have to talk so much about one thing? Because this kind of dashboard are meant to be very simple. and to be very ready to use, I would like to say. But an email is maybe a conversation. So it's a bit different. On an email, you have to introduce yourself, of course, but you have to say, how are you? How are you doing? I hope this email finds you well. This is very strange. This is very, very weird. What the email is finding me? What?
Judith :
I don't know how it found me, but I've been hiding from the police for years, so this is a problem.
Syphaïwong :
There's a problem. I disappeared so the email found me today.
Judith :
Yeah
Syphaïwong :
Thank you. But this very, those, all this very politeness thing, how to be polite on an email, how to be polite. I think maybe for example, I'll say, oh, how are you doing? I'd like to check the title of my, of my, of this server launching pages for tomorrow. And this will be very unpolite to say, oh, how are you doing? could you change on a Trello dashboard, on a cloud, on Trello? For me, it would be very unproductive, because I just need to be quick to see what I need to do, what I have to do, and to apply it quickly. But on an email, if you send me like, these are 25 landing pages. You need to please update those titles, I would be upset. I think.
Judith :
Yeah, it's, I think, hi, how are you doing? I hope this email finds you fit in well is kind of an email template. I get a lot from PRs because I blog, so I get a lot of PR emails. But a lot of the communication from developers won't say, hi Judith, how are you today? My cat was sick all over my desk and so I've just been cleaning it up, but then that made me think of you or whatever. And... There's none of that kind of polite chit chat of, hey, let me preamble my request with this. So I get a lot of emails that are like, hi, Judith. We noticed that the operation of this particular module wasn't efficient, and so what we've done is changed it. Will you please QA it? And I'm totally, that for me is a perfect email communication because it's to the point, it says hello, like hi, Judith, so. It's not like to random person X, but it communicates what they need me to do. But if it's on a Trello card, then that's perfect because hi at Judith or hi at DeKabbit. This is this, this is that. Can you please QA it? And then it comes to me and I then have to pass it or fail it. And then it goes on. But I wouldn't want them in a Trello card about, I don't know, replacing content to say, hey, Judith, I hope you are fine and fit and well this beautiful Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday evening, or whatever day they wrote it on. I have really enjoyed reading some of your correspondence with other people on this Trello ticket. It has been very educational for me. Blah, Blah. That would drive me nuts. Tell me what you need me to change or tell me what needs to go into and what's going on and concurrently at the same time. I wouldn't communicate with the content people in a waffly way on a Trello card, but I would in an email. I'd say, hey, what's going on? Oh my God, is this heat crazy or what? It's just chucked it down here. I've been working on the website and I noticed that there were these things that were wrong. I'd just like to go in and change them, but I know it has to go through you guys. So here's my list. So for content people, I'd add the preamble of, hey, isn't this weather crazy? And then for devs, I'd be like, hey, this is wrong, or this is right, thanks very much. Let's move on to the next ticket or whatever in email. But on Trello, it should be, like Slack is for chat, right? Slack is for chat, Trello is for facts. Let's not confuse the two channels.
Syphaïwong :
And this is interesting because by listening to you, because I love to listen to you, by listening to you, I was really realizing that maybe it's about, it's something about what is appropriate depending of the space, the space like a general concept, maybe the space like at home or in a restaurant. And here we are talking about the space like in an email, on a dashboard, on Slack. And it's inappropriate to talk about your personal life on a Trello dashboard, because when you connect to your own dashboard, what you want to do is to get the job done. You want to know what task were assigned to you. This is what you need. And on Slack, you need... maybe some to be chatting because it's meant for this. But I think it's about what's appropriate or not and sometimes in some email I found some people very intrusive with me. Maybe it's about my personality of course but for example when in French the tutoie, the vouvoir, I know you are learning French currently but how If someone say me, tell me. If someone tell me to in the first email and I don't know him, I hate that. For me, it's so intrusive. It is so unpolite. This is so we are not friends. I don't know your face. I don't know your name. And you are you are writing my you are spelling my name wrong. This is a very bad strategy to connect with me. And this is the hard not to be interested When you want to... Sometimes I ask people, Oh, how are you doing? But this is very sincere. I think it, I feel it. I want to know how they are doing, because I need to know how they are doing to communicate with them in the right way. Not to be too rude, not to be too... I don't know, too waffling. I love. I will use this every day from now on. Waffle. And, but yeah, not to be too interested. I think this is very difficult and even more so when you are from different culture. For example, in your case, you are from a beautiful country, which is Canada.
But did you feel that you had to learn, to really learn? social skills when you move to Europe, for example.
Judith :
For sure. I believe that the culture, while we share a common language, the underlying basis of the culture is very different. One of my biggest pieces of culture shock is something that no one sees if you live here, which is that there is definitely a class system, but it's so ingrained in the UK and it's so not ingrained in North America that it is it was a huge culture shock, the class system that there is in the UK, which doesn't, nobody is like, oh, you can't be, go from lower class to middle class, or you can't go from middle class to upper class. No one speaks about it like that, but there is a definite hierarchical class system that exists in the UK that is a huge culture shock to get used to when you get here. And also that from Canada or from Toronto, and especially in an area of Toronto that I used to hang out in was settled by Quakers. who are not known for their drinking. So our social activity tend to circle around coffee shops. You come to the UK, everything circles around the pub. So it's just the culture itself was quite jarring and different without even switching languages. And so I did have to relearn cultural imperatives, so to speak, how things work in the UK versus the US and Canada. But also one of the things I learned was in trying, not just trying to relearn French, because you're brought up with it in Canada and you don't, you're not taught it in a way that adults are taught it. So you are brought up just, it's a second language. You don't think about it. But other languages have far more words to explain things than English does. So for instance, you were saying about utilizing to as opposed to vous, and we don't have a differentiation in English. between the formal you and the informal or friendly you, everything is just you, which is a failing of the language. But we use fewer words as well to express bigger concepts, whereas because we rely a huge amount on unspoken assumptions, which just leads to chaos and disaster. But in other languages, you actually have to explain things. And... So you use more words, not you particularly you you, but in other cultures and languages and areas of the world, whether it is in English or not, sometimes in English, you use more words in other areas to explain a concept or notion in order to communicate than you would in, let's say North America. And when we move to Spanish or French or what else, how I looked at Italian, there are more words. to explain the exact same thing. So when I get up on stage and I'm being translated like I was recently into Spanish, I have to slow down. Why? Because there are more words flying around about what I'm saying than I'm using. So if they wanna keep up with me and I make jokes with GIFs and timing is very, very important. So if I want them to keep up with me in this. audience to get the joke. I have to really slow down and think about the fact that 16 words were just used to explain my three-word concept. And it changes the way you approach life and the way you approach communication when you realize these things. So I think also sometimes in English, I'm sorry, North America, we can be a little bit lazy and North American centric. I'm sorry, North America. I know I'm making a vast gross generalization and not everyone is like this, but it's a little bit that we're lazy about the way that we communicate. And we don't think about how they communicate in the Far East, for example, versus the European Eastern versus Western. And then of course Britain is just a crazy place to communicate with. So like I don't think we, I think that sometimes we think about the fact that the color orange could have political... as well as religious connotations. But like North Americans, we're just like, well, it's orange, so like, you know, get over it. So I don't think we're culturally as sensitive because we're not exposed to it the way we are in Europe.
Syphaïwong :
But it's already very difficult to communicate with someone who is from the same area as you. And so with someone from another country, it's even difficult and you have to be very careful about that. I'm very scared when I need to send an email to one of my foreign clients because I hope that I'm not doing something inappropriate. and that I'm understood in the right way, and that we are not creating like a big quiprocal that would create a very huge catastrophe. But this is a bit scary not to be understood. But we have to jump in the, we say in French, jump in the water. Se mettre à l’eau.
Judith :
Yeah.
Syphaïwong :
Because if we don't, we, if we don't try, we do nothing.
Judith :
If there was one way, if there's one thing that I would recommend to people working in agencies with global clients, if there's one thing and it's not cheap, but if there was one thing I could recommend, it would be to buy etiquette books for the area that you're looking to sell into or selling more into. So look at etiquette in China versus etiquette in Japan. versus etiquette in Eastern Europe versus etiquette in Western Europe, or specifically if there is a specific country you're going into hot and heavy, which again, this is a euphemism that could go either way. And it's meant to evoke a sense of going into a marketplace with a lot of enthusiasm and looking to win a lot of business as opposed to what the other way. it could have been interpreted. So if you're gonna go into a market with enthusiasm and gusto, buy the etiquette book for that market and understand, for instance, in the Far East, don't eat while you're on Zoom. I don't care how hungry you are, don't eat while you're on Zoom, don't drink while you're on Zoom, you just leave that food out of picture and other things that are expectations because we don't really realize it. I'll pick up a mug during a... I just did a board call, so I'll pick up a mug of tea and I'll be drinking it on the board call. It's fine in the European, well, at least very specific UK context, but it would not necessarily be fine with other cultures. So if you're going to go...
Syphaïwong :
I wasn't aware about that. I wasn't aware at all about that. Because like for me, drinking water is about survival. So I need to survive, so I need to drink water. But I know that I wouldn't drink alcohol, or a cocktail, maybe or a glass of champagne, except if we're celebrating something. But for me, it's natural to drink water. I can't. I can't stop drinking water because I can't stop breathing. So I wasn't aware about that at all. And maybe for very long meeting, not drinking water during maybe one hour, it's a nightmare.
Judith :
I've so on the one occasion on a call with Singapore that I had to have a drink of water because I was really, really dying. I said, I'm so sorry, pardon me for a moment. I just need to take a drink of water. And they're there. They were fine with it. But on in general, I would not eat or drink while I was on a call with somebody in the Far East, just based on the etiquette books I've read now, they could be wrong. Don't forget. I mean, I bought a book. I don't know who the author is. So I've never met them in life.
Syphaïwong :
But I think it's very safe for you to do that, to read some educate books and to apply them during a video call, on an email, etc. Because it's very safe because you know you are in the good, you are doing things properly.
Judith :
Yeah.
Syphaïwong :
Sometimes maybe the person you are talking to, maybe it's a more relaxed person, and it's fine. Okay, that's good. But you know that you are doing good and... that everything is going to be fine. And this is, this builds your confidence to communicate with them, I think.
Judith :
Absolutely, especially on video calls. Just being culturally sensitive and not... So I always, I try to be balanced in life because I did my degree in psychology. So I would not, I mean, I'm in Europe, I'm in England. So I'm in Europe, but I would not wear a shirt that left my shoulders or arms uncovered if I was on a video call with someone in the Middle East. Not... because somehow I think I'm being corrupted and I must do what's best for them. I'm being culturally sensitive and I know that I will make the person on the other side of the camera uncomfortable. So I'm doing something that I know will not make them uncomfortable and that's the way to win money and business. So.
Syphaïwong :
Yes, yes. Yes, I understand, but I think I wouldn't wear anything that's with my shoulders uncovered, because maybe because I'm a woman and I don't want to be to look seductive. Because it is quite difficult today to be a woman in this world in 2023, because now before, when it was not maybe a woken people. you knew that okay if this man is very too nice with you maybe it's because he wants to hitting on you to hit
Judith :
Yeah.
Syphaïwong :
on you but today we don't know this is this is okay i agree that is fine but now i have to be careful to not to not to let people think that i want to maybe flirt with them for professional uh for professional issue if this is very i have to this is very tricky to get this good balance between being nice, being nice, not being too nice, being a bit pretty, to look clean on the camera, to look clean and if they can't smell, make them feel that you are smelling
Judith :
Hahaha
Syphaïwong :
good.
Judith :
Thanks for watching!
Syphaïwong :
You say that's the feeling that you are the sort of person who takes shower, you see?
Judith :
I'm a long bath kind of person, but yeah, no, I get it. It's a non-verbal communication clue. So the way you dress is part of how you communicate with people. So non-verbal communication clues are one of the most important things in business as well. So for a dev, if I'm in with a bunch of devs, so let's say I have a client in Europe and I'm going to visit them and let's say they're in a warm area of Europe. So. south of France, Spain, Italy, something like that, Portugal, whatever. Let's say, so I'm going to go visit them. It's the middle of summer. Now there is a conundrum because as a woman, I'm like, are you kidding? I don't want to be sitting around sweating in jeans all day. But if I'm going there to speak to the developers in all likelihood, I am going to dress in jeans and a t-shirt because that's what the outfit the developers will be most likely to perceive me. in a friendly way. If I go in shorts or capris and a blouse, like a dressy, but short, like I'm wearing today, you can't see, I have a light, very airy shirt on that enables airflow and it's very cool. But if I go in there like that, I'm too dressy. And the perception of who I am and my role in the company changes suddenly just through nonverbal clues. Now, I could talk about GitHub commits till the cows come home. But because the first thing they saw when I walked in was my capris and my flowy top, I'm perceived differently. So it's a balancing act where the nonverbal clues are as important as the verbal clues. And this is something I'm doing with Wix is like talking about nonverbal communication. If you're delivering a report to the devs about problems with their pushed alive, you go in one way level of like communication way of dressing. If you're going to talk to the CEO about how the progress is going with the project, you will dress and present completely different information, completely different because the nonverbal communication has to be I'm a professional. I know what I'm doing with the CEO. And the communication with the devs has to be I'm a professional and I know what I'm doing. But at their level.
Syphaïwong :
Yeah, it's very true. And afterwards, when you are sending them an email, they will remember how you were dressed. They have this image, this picture in their head. Oh, Judith, the one woman who came with a very long blazer to ask for us some new optimisation. Who is she? Who? Whoever is she How does she know? Yeah, but I'm curious about what you would think about the emojis in the emails.
Judith :
Um, so I'm a fan of the emoji because my writing style can be very curt and abrupt. So I can often not write enough to be understood because don't forget other languages, way more words. So I can sometimes fail to communicate that I am communicating a particular thing humorously or. I'm just joking with them or I'm teasing, you know, that sort of thing. So I could say something and it not be taken in the joke or the level of levity I'm hoping. Or I could be asking a question because I genuinely don't understand, but it could be taken as in, well, you don't know what you're doing. So I'm asking you this question because clearly you don't know what you're doing. So emojis can help us say when we're asking a question we genuinely don't understand, emojis can help communicate. humor, they can help communicate those nonverbal clues that we give every single day. And in fact,
Syphaïwong :
Mm.
Judith :
I used GIFs to help me with at my last talk that will soften the blow that otherwise might have been taken very offensively, because we're showing that we're human and we're trying to communicate something that would have been communicated by, like, I don't know, like, and, you know, by the eyes looking up. and the hand, the chin in like, really, I just, I have no idea what's going on here. I'm really confused, can you help me out? And that is with the emoji of the guy with the, or the emoji, male or female, it depends on how you wish to gender your emojis, with the hand with one finger extended and one thumb extended at the area that would nominally be an emoji's chin area, and then the one, the eyebrows up and sort of with a quizzical look on the face. that can help.
Syphaïwong :
Like a shortcut, maybe?
Judith :
It's like a shortcut. It's the ability of me to communicate with them that I really have no idea what I'm doing here and why I'm here and why my parents are now telling me I told you so. So emojis, but not with the CEO. None of the C-suite should ever see an emoji in their email unless you are really closely friendly with them. and I just don't want to go there. That's a whole other political can of worms. So unless you're really, really close with them and they're like best mates or something, emojis just don't. Don't with the professional. If you need to go with devs or content writers or like a lower level of people that you need to be more personal with because you need to communicate with them as a human, please emojis. With the, and not in Trello cards. No emojis in Trello cards. That's for Slack. Slack is for gifs and emojis, Trello is for facts. Anybody like the C-suite or somebody who's paying you money, avoid the emojis. Be very succinct and communicate professionally.
Syphaïwong :
Yeah, because there are a lot of people who are blaming me for being too rude in my emails, for not being nice enough, but usually I just answer them that I'm not nice every day at work, so it's just the way I am. So it's not that I'm not nice, but I'm very focused on facts. So it could make me not nice enough for people, you see. And but someone advised me to use more emojis in my email. And this is very unnatural for me to use emoji. And I feel like I'm forced to do it. So it's not maybe some there is some hypocrisy in my email. And I have a very big difficulty to interpret the email with emoji. because I don't know if it is sincere or not or maybe there is some irony. It's very difficult for me. It's like I think a mess on a mess. It's like throwing alcohol on fire.
Judith :
Cowboy emoji, firecracker emoji,
Syphaïwong :
Yes,
Judith :
lunch bento box
Syphaïwong :
What does it mean? What does it mean?
Judith :
about? We're gonna go rob a bento mission? I'd like, what is,
Syphaïwong :
I was just asking you for the Google Search Console access.
Judith :
Ha!
Syphaïwong :
Why are you sending me an emoji of eyes looking on the left? Why? Is it are you happy or not? Do you want to do it or not? Will you do it or not?
Judith :
Yep.
Syphaïwong :
I need facts. Please help me.
Judith :
Yes!
Syphaïwong :
And this is just purely confusing.
Judith :
Yeah, yeah, the side eye, the emoji of the eyes looking to the side has so many meanings.
Like in a slack conversation, often it'll mean I'm keeping an eye on this or I'm watching this conversation because it's important to me. In other areas, I mean, I've used it as like a side eye as in WhatsApp. Mainly my emoji uses WhatsApp. So I will use that eye. side looking sideways when I'm criticizing somebody's life choices without actually criticizing their life choices. I just use that emoji. And that is just, you know, I'm judging you and your life choices.
Syphaïwong :
Now I just want to check if you already sent me this emoji.
Judith :
Search.
Syphaïwong :
So... Search. Rechercher. But yeah, it's very confusing. And from its difference between... Uh-huh. Ah. Oh. And... You see, it's the same... Not world, but the same... Blah, blah, blah. But with
But it's very difficult to give some emotion on an email. You just want to add, yes, you want maybe just to say, OK, I need this. I'm in a good mood. I like you. Don't worry. I'm not blaming you for anything. Everything is fine. It's OK. Sometimes maybe I just need something like that, like maybe a red, not a red, but a green flag. somewhere on the image. Okay, everything is fine. You see, like the thing on the top of the head of the sims, see how
Judith :
Oh yeah!
Syphaïwong :
I'm in a good mood. I'm not in a good mood. It's okay, no, you have to be careful because now we see that this, there may be is a situation now, but I'm still okay with it if we can resolve it very quickly. Or, oh, there is a situation I need to... See, it's not the same. And this could be written the same way on an email. Like,
oh, I see a problem. I need to solve it. I need to... What could you do? What can you do?
Judith :
Yep.
Syphaïwong :
And as the same email, you can say two very different things. And this is quite scary for me.
Judith :
Yeah, so if we kind of took, so I've spotted this problem, I think it might be an issue, we need to deal with this. If we put that all into one sentence, it's kind of very cold and calculated. If you say, I've spotted an issue, and then leave a line, a line break, do the thinking emoji three times, and then on another line break, you say, I think this might be an issue, and then another line break, and you're like have the, you know, the scream guy three times saying,
Syphaïwong :
Yeah.
Judith :
we need to deal with this. And then, you know, please, can you help with this or something like that? By breaking it up like that, what you're doing is you're forcing the person reading it to actually take a break during the line reading. So mentally, psychologically, and this is me leaning into my psychology degree. So there you go, parents, it was not a waste of money.
The The forced break between the first line and the second line and the third line with emojis in between that communicate personality and that communicate emotion help slow the person down, first of all, so that you're not reading it all in one line and going, oh my God, it's a panic. And it also communicates that while it could be serious, you're not sure and you've slowed them down. And so you've also slowed down their consumption of that. And then the bit at the end where you're able to then communicate that it should be looked into soon, but you're not clear on the prioritization of this issue. But to you, it seems like it could be highly impactful to communicate that because what you're saying is I'm seeing something, I don't know if you can see the same thing, but to me it's going to lose us a about three quarters of a million dollars or euros or pounds within the next six months. So I feel like it might be important. That would be like, oh my God, to most people. But what you're doing is you're slowing people down when you're reading. So if you look at if you look at that, that kind of thinking of slowing people down when they're reading it, it creates less panic. And there's less. There's less stress in it as well. So when you say something really quickly in a single line, it demonstrates a level of stress and a level of panic, it's almost because you've said it all really quickly together, but if you break it up and push it apart, you're communicating less stress, less panic, because you forced the slowdown. So there you go, parents, psychology degree, well put to use.
Syphaïwong :
So it's like maybe playing with the rhythm of your email,
Judith :
Yeah, exactly.
Syphaïwong :
how they would read it if it is very short, very straight to the point. It could communicate like, I don't have time. I have no time for this. You need to solve it now. Yeah. OK.
Judith :
But if you also remember the eyes are drawn to color. So first they'll see the emojis, believe it or not, and it may be within a second. The first thing that somebody's going to see in an email is the color. So they'll see the emoji in your email, they'll see the color of your signature, they'll see the color first, and then they'll start from the top and they will in languages that are Latin based, so English, French, Italian. etc. This does not hold true for the Middle East, nor does it hold true for the Far East. So out the window for anybody who's not based in these Latin-based languages, but they'll first look at the picture, but only briefly subconsciously they'll have registered it, but then they'll start at the top, left-hand side, and they'll start scanning down, but they'll
Syphaïwong :
Mm-hmm.
Judith :
dwell on pictures as well, and they will absorb them as a different form of language. So you're actually making them switch languages, so it slows them down even more.
Syphaïwong :
So I could maybe I could set the mood on the email by maybe one emoji because they will see the color first,
Judith :
If you want to see more of this, go to the link in the description.
Syphaïwong :
firstly, and then they will read that. OK, everything is fine.
Judith :
Put an emoji of somebody smiling and happy and dancing around, but just above that put you're fired. That might not go down as well, but it will at least soften the blow a bit.
Maybe I could put the poo emoji and I'd be fine.
Judith :
Just joking. Poo emoji.
Syphaïwong :
No, emoji. Or maybe an emoji that had no sense at all. I mean, yeah, you are talking about migration and you put a cake emoji. What?
Judith :
Yeah, well, that could be interpreted as everything's okay.
You know, the clubs from the cards, you could put the club emoji in there of the or the ace of spades emoji or something that would really confuse people light bulb emoji ace of spades emoji firecracker emoji.
Syphaïwong :
Yeah, but it's not our goal to be confusing. Yeah.
Judith :
I just spent five minutes trying to understand. Just tell me what it means. Oh, I just did that for fun.
Syphaïwong :
It was funny, don't you think? Yeah, but we need some fun, I think. We need some fun, and that's, but in the appropriate place, space. We need
Judith :
Definitely.
Syphaïwong :
some fun on Slack.
Judith :
Yeah.
Syphaïwong :
We don't need some fun on Trello.
Judith :
No sweat on Trello. Trello is for facts only. Of you put stuff in backlog, don't try to make it better by putting a smiling emoji because it's not gonna make me any happier. Especially if it's mission critical and they're like, I don't have time to deal with this. I'll tell you what you don't have time to deal with, the fact that we're gonna lose three quarters of a million euros next week if you don't do it. So hey. Maybe don't put it in backlog, please? Maybe? Pretty please?
Syphaïwong :
I think that I met some devs who didn't want to apply some recommendations just because they didn't want to. They did not like to do it. Just being lazy because I... And this is annoying. There are no logical reasons. I can't deal with that.
Judith :
Yeah, yeah.
I recently had an instance where the devs, they actually weren't, they didn't have the technical capabilities to actually implement something. And so they said it wasn't critical. And I said, if we do it the way that you're currently building it, it's actually going to result in reduced visibility because of the problems that the Google crawler is going to have with accessing different areas of the site as a result of all of the links being in JavaScript. and it being really difficult to download JavaScript file because I don't know what you've done to the server, but my goodness, can you not make it go faster? So we did end up losing visibility and they did have to apply a hot fix really quickly.
Syphaïwong :
But as a consultant, you need to make some recommendations, but it's not our job. We are not devs. We know how websites are built. We know how the web is functioning, but we are not devs. And I think it's quite difficult for people who apply our recommendations to understand what is our real position. Our real position is, OK, we know. We know enough, we have enough savvy to tell you what we need to do for this goal that maybe make the website maybe faster to charge, to load. But we don't know actually how to do it. We don't know actually how you will take your mouse and your keyboard to do it on your screen. We don't know that. This is your job. And we trust you. to do it well, we trust you because we know it's like, I know that I want a good cake and maybe not too sweet. I need a not too sweet cake, but I'm not a baker. I trusted the baker to do it the right way, to choose the right sugar, et cetera. And this is the same with the dev. And I think that maybe in the introduction, you were talking about at the beginning of the podcast, the introduction, maybe this could be something we can. we can say that what is our real position. We know enough to drive some projects, but we don't know enough to apply in the details because it's not our job. And this is our job because you are an expert maybe, or you are an expert to configure some servers or some data and so on. You are the expert and I trust you. And I am the expert to say that who is able to say, I need this to load more faster, you see.
And this is quite difficult. It's about to know your own place, to know your own position, and to put it in the front to say, OK, I need this. It's OK. It's not today, the website is quite slow, but it's OK. It's fine. Today, I need it to be faster.
Judith :
Yep.
Syphaïwong :
That's it.
Judith :
Yeah. I think the so the best way I've looked at tackling that is actually also defending the devs when they're accused of not doing something correctly that they shouldn't know. So and also, you know, stroking their ego and stuff like that. You know how to do this better than I do. I can only advise you on what Google is placing an emphasis on right now and right now. They seem really hot on speed. I know the website's really fast, but what we're looking at here is, Google's now forcing us to do these changes. So really kind of like being like, oh, it's just, poor us, we're such victims. The other thing I have done is gone to bat for the dev. So I had a client once who said, why didn't they know? So it was, they had really real trouble in ranking. in other countries. They had their ads blocked in other countries. It was an alcohol brand and they were really, really struggling and they were really upset. And so they hired me to do an audit and do all these things. And within the first five minutes I said, well, you know, the Google spider only has a limited number of countries that it comes from and can crawl your website from. And so if you're implementing GOIP restrictions, it's going to be an issue. And this is five minutes in. Like we had a full day booked with them. The CEO stops me and said, well, not CEO, but the MD of divisions stopped me and said, wait, what? And I said, well, you're GOIP blocking. So you are disallowing anyone to crawl South Africa, for example, from anything, but an IP address range you have determined is from South Africa. And he said, well, why didn't the devs tell me this? I've been asking them to fix this for months. And I said, but it's not their job. to know where the Google spider is coming from. That's my job. That's literally why I have a job. It is absolutely the essence of why I have a job is because I know these things. Their essence of why they have a job is because they built you a really beautiful website that is also fast. But you told them you wanted to work in this way. I wasn't on board at the time. So what I'm doing is I'm coming in afterwards and saying, this is what the issue was. There was no one on the team that would have known this, could have known this, and you should not be penalizing your devs. because they didn't know something they weren't expected to have to know. So it works both ways. It is not a dev's fault if they don't have the requisite information from an SEO about how Google works, but they're focused on building something that's fast, beautiful, works well, works the way the client, well, their boss, wants it to work. And so it goes both ways. Don't let them get in trouble for stuff that we're expected to know, but at the same time, make sure that they're communicating with you because if there's no one on staff that's an SEO, then things are going to go wrong. Like this one client where their entire non-North American, non- and certain areas in Europe were no longer accessible. They couldn't run ads. They couldn't be found. It was a disaster, especially for South Africa. So.
Syphaïwong :
But what you are saying is, was very interesting about the CEO, because we didn't talk about it, but the hierarchy,
Judith :
hierarchy?
Syphaïwong :
hierarchy thing that sometimes someone doesn't do something just to protect himself. or to make himself, let's say, better for the CEO, for his boss. But it's, yeah, sometimes there are a lot of things in communication. And there is something we always forgot, in my opinion, that the person you are talking to, you are writing to, has its own life. its own problems, its own issues, its own goals. Maybe this dev, his goals, what his jobs is to, is to implement maybe 10 tasks today. And maybe what you need today is not, yes, it's really not a priority for him. It's a maybe priority for you, but not for him. And we forget that a lot, I think. So to finish this podcast. which is quite long but very interesting because we waffled a lot.
Judith :
Yes, we did.
Syphaïwong :
Yes, we did waffle. Oh, I love this word, waffle, like gaufre. Yes, I love it. But thank you, thank you very much Judith. Maybe a conclusion. I will begin with my conclusion and I will let you make your own. My conclusion is... not to be something whole with people. and take their feelings into consideration. Take what they need, take their own life into consideration and this will be more easier.
Judith :
I guess I would sum it up by just saying remember who you're speaking to and communicate in a language they understand. And it might be English or French or German or Spanish or Italian, but remember that language counts and your dev audience is different than your C-suite audience. So just remember who you're speaking with and speak their language instead of trying to force them to speak yours.
