Things I wish I knew before being an junior Dev: Communication

Vukani GcabasheVukani Gcabashe
8 min read

Hi,

Those two letters can be a start or end of a bad day. How? because most people think greeting is the only thing they should know concerning the "communication" subject in their life.

Communication is not speaking / talking, and what someone said isn't enough for you to totally understand the depth of what they meant, so I want us to explore possible how we can research communication and why it can be our advantage.

I wont even attempt to describe what communication is but its clear that we need to do this right no matter who you are to actually understand people, get along with people, and in most cases for you to get things done and being a developer is no exception.


Benefits of Good communication skills:

  • Personally

Image description

  • People will respect & trust your more.
  • People can share your perspective without fighting to understand you.
  • You can get what you want without arguments, rejection & resentment.
  • You will grow quicker & have much greater access to resources.
  • You will have more genuine & healthy relationships.
  • Professionally

professional setting

  • You will be exposed to a healthy network of people.
  • You can work with a team or even lead one successfully.
  • You will can become efficient & grow your effectivity
  • You will be able to learn / teach faster.

How to grow communicate skills:

  • Maintain a Growth Mindset:

    • Only a person who is ready to grow themselves will see the need & the way to grow their skills in communication, & so we start there.
      • Everything in your life stars with the corresponding mindset, how about you look at your idea about communication, think critically about how you approach communication as a subject / tool in your life.
      • This mindset alone will allow you to understand other people's intension & if they are worth focusing on or not.
      • Growth as a mindset is the mother of the sub-mindset of communication, so having your growth mindset probably has shown you that you need to grow you communication skills.

comunication](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/6z4bjd8uamlrdmno9uzk.jpg)vukani.hashnode.dev

  • Researching:

    • Research will help you understand how good your communication skills are & how much room for growth is there as a start.
    • Do an introspection & find out how much value you will get from becoming a good communicator.
    • Reading books on personal growth books, for me growing my communication skills started with reading the book How to make friends by influencing people & it change my perspective on people & that's the first time I changed the way I handle people & conversations.
    • Listening to podcasts & also interviews about topics you like or of people you like will help you pick up the correct /professional way to interact with others that creates a respectable, lovable & charismatic image of who you are.
    • With the people you keep around you, listen to how they speak or respond to you & try & understand what that means about your com skills.

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  • ##Learn To Listen:

      - This one is special point because Listening is a skill that we all need to learn & re-learn over time.
    
    • Firstly focus on listening to yourself, your feelings, your words, your ideas. Practicing to listen to yourself will really open up the range & quality of the things you communicate to other people.
    • Listening being one thing that's resurfacing in the book How to make friends by influencing people shows how important it is to communication & also for your own personal health.
    • 75% of unsuccessful interactions happen because of miss-communications & being a good listener means you will understand people & situations better allowing you to have a greater success rate with your communication.
    • Make habits that bring clarity & stillness in the mind, & trust me this will help you listen better, again you cannot hear anything new if the old things in your mind are too noisy.
    • For me personally listening showed me that I was failing to make solid & logical decisions, that I had some negative self talk going on within me stopping me from communicating effectively & confidently throughout my life, another important thing that blocked my good coms was being selfish & expecting a lot from people who owed me nothing & that had to stop.

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  • Be Realistic:

    One thing that makes certain people approachable is they quality of being down to earth & being realistic, down to earth.

    • I find it very attractive to be a person who is open to the truth & willing to handle life as a whole as it is without needing to modify it or or people in it.
    • In a way being a realistic person will allow you to deal with situations not people & also handle situations according to what's happening in that moment, in that room, which is one thing that is important to shape how you communicate.
    • Most of us interact with others with an agender for either them to do something you want, & being realistic, being present in that context of the interaction & actually proposing something that's realistic which will not get in the way of another person's energy or purpose.

  • Have Presence:

    • Having presence means being there, being a person who has integrity, confidence & clarity.
      • It also means actually reading the situations you are in before engaging in communication.
      • In a way growing your communication needs these things & these things need your communication.
      • Invest in things that will grow your confidence & integrity, & this will allow you to communicate better.
      • When you connect with others show that you mean what you say or do & stand behind your efforts, do not waver.
      • Invest in having a clean & respectable track record, this does boost how you feel & how relevant you are & this without a doubt will boost confidence & communication.
      • Knowing what you stand for will always allow some levels of coms that will not be open to you if you don't have solid ground on which you stand

@https://https://www.instagram.com/nqubekogcabashe/instagram/nqubekogcabashe presence

Roots of communication blockages:

Image description I realized that I personally have things that block my ability to communicate better and these I realized can hold back other people if there is no self introspection done. So lets explore these points.

  • Selfishness:

    • Its easy to judge a fail in communication to being the other person being the problem, but its important to accept that both people can be blamed & that both can be said to be selfish & being one sided.
    • This is why the book How to make friends by influencing people references twice the ability to stand in the other persons shoes as being a very important move to try when dealing with others, being sympathetic.
    • Another thing that happens in many interactions is direct & non-constructive criticism between people causing an unsuccessful communication, & that comes from having unrealistic expectations to a person.
    • I want to stress that being selfish is another mindset that even though indirectly, it is opposite to the growth mindset, & so it will destroy your communication.
    • So please, learn to communicate selflessly & depend on no one, keeping in mind to avoiding making commitments to others or giving out your time and energy without reason.
  • No Vision:

    • It can only make sense that being a person who doesn't want to be open-minded will block you from being able to connect & communicate with certain types of people.
    • The thing is a visionary can speak to anyone, & a non-visionary can only speak to another of its kind, & my friend it will help you a lot to go out & speak with people who will stretch your mind & experience, & ultimately this will help you a lot more than communication goes.
    • People without vision tend to get lost trying to please others or trying to see things in a perspective that isn't their own stopping them from
    • Look at your life & envision the best version of you, then work your way towards becoming that without stopping before its complete.
  • Lack Of Direction:

    • being a person who has no direction / clarity in life or a task will cause you to fail to communicate good.
      • Unclarity & being directionless causes people to loose personal respect, integrity & confidence - & that will make you bad communicator.
      • I also see having no clear path making you be the type of person bumping into everyone & trying to fit into everything without success.
      • Find your ground, find your purpose in life & let that be the thing you are focused on & working towards, this does not directly affect you communication skills but one day you will see how it affects you indirectly.
      • Find a way to allow people to pass through you without moving you from our own direction or goals & also keep clear that you don't need to damage other trying to maintain your own direction towards goals.
  • Lack Of Confidence:

    • Lack of confidence does stale the communication, it lowers integrity & also makes a person dull to listen to.
      • So its important to focus on what makes you confident & what makes you feel & look good. You will thank me later.
      • There are things one cannot hide / act, & having confidence is one of them. What's crazy is that the less confident you are the harder it becomes for you to relate with other people, especially the confident ones.
      • Confidence isn't something you can act till you have but you can definitely work on it, grow it by exposing yourself more to things that give you good vibes & help you feel good about you. I rather it be something internal not physical.

So I do return to the facts here that you will become a better you, and a better developer if you connect with other people and also communicate well with them. I am requesting you work on this personal project and see if it does not grow your network and give your access to more resources and also see if it doesn't make things happen smoother around you.

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Written by

Vukani Gcabashe
Vukani Gcabashe

This is Vukani Gcabashe, a software engineer / software developer living in South Africa. I am committed to Inspiration Starts Here but also practice programming by making websites or web applications on contract. I love what I do & trying to be quite good at it but getting there is a process, but we can do it together.