One Halloween while helping my mom pass out candy, I saw a kid in a cute Bugs Bunny costume. The costume was made out of nice material instead of the weird smelling plastic mask and the stiff vinyl bodysuit. See Exhibit A for an lovely example of a vinyl Darth Vader costume. What’s up with my reaction in the photo? I wasn’t happy someone took my picture before I could get my mask on.

I can’t recall exactly how the cute Bugs Bunny costume looked except that it wasn’t the vinyl most of us wore those days unless we were lucky enough to have a parent who could sew or pull pieces together into a clever costume. It was probably some variation of these bunnies.

That costume stuck with me. When it came time to pick a costume for the following Halloween, I told my mom I wanted to be Bugs Bunny. I smiled as I pictured myself wearing that awesome costume instead of the plastic vinyl mashup.

What did I get?

This:

Think I was a happy wabbit?

Mom and I both understood what “Bugs Bunny” meant. The problem stemmed from her not knowing about the costume I saw the year before. And I didn’t provide more details because I assumed she’d find the right one. The costume I wanted was probably not available in any store. There I go again with an assumption that it was a homemade costume. The only way to find out was to ask the girl about her costume.

Assumptions lead to disappointment. How do we know what to communicate to a coworker, client or colleague? We’re stuck in our heads that we forget the other person doesn’t know XYZ. Learn to over-communicate and remember the other person may not have all the facts you do. Another helpful tool is to share examples. For a web design project, for example, clients can make a list of websites they like and explain why they like each one. Maybe it’s the color scheme in one design, the layout in another, the writing in another.

Sometimes it takes practice and experience. One client has a unique way of communicating his wants. He’s not a poor communicator, but a different type of thinker than I am. Not good or bad. Just is. That’s where understanding personality types helps. When he hired an intern, she confided that she had trouble understanding what he wanted. I admit feeling relieved knowing it wasn’t me and helped her learn from my experience.

Overcoming assumptions sounds simple. However, some folks think you’re not a self-starter if you keep asking questions and talking about it instead of running with it. Some fear asking too many questions reflects poorly on their abilities. Which would you rather have? Someone who erases assumptions with conversation and gets it right the first time, or someone who gets right to work and produces plastic vinyl results?

“If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?” – John Wooden.

How can you communicate better to avoid assumptions?

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2012 Meryl Evans

When people say they don’t get Twitter — it’s because they need to be more proactive. Twitter doesn’t work if you lurk, post updates, and do nothing else.

What I’ve learned after using Twitter for a month:

1. Follow unto others as you would have them do unto you.
2. @comment others to make the most of the experience.
3. Link to your stuff — smartly. Frequently linking to your stuff leads to unfollows. Besides, it defeats tweet purpose.
4. Don’t take non-responses personally. Conversations fly on Twitter, so people might miss it or simply receive too many @replies to respond to every single one.
5. Be patient in getting the hang of Twitter. Twitter’s help is helpless and it has a few quirks for a simple app.
6. Avoid addiction by taking care in using addicting apps like Twhirl and other cool Twittapps or else Twitter will suck you in for more time than you can afford. I curb addiction by checking in twice a day (start and end of day) and no in-between (except weekends).
7. Use your name or else people won’t know who you are. I started with Content Maven and no face photo. Hey, I didn’t know better at the time.

Does Twitter help your business? Well, I haven’t landed clients or talked much shop through Twitter. But Twitter helps freelancers and solo enterpreneurs feel like we have a little office environment, which produces noise that makes you feel like you’ve got co-workers nearby.

Twitter also offers a nice way to connect with friends and colleagues while meeting new folks. I’ve asked and answered personal and professional questions, which can be valuable or simply fun. I asked a question about examples of good online help and one person responded not to use Twitter’s as an example of how to do it. The irony.

Management using jargon like blue sky thinking, brain dump, thinking outside the box, get our ducks in a row confuse staff more than encourage them. We may have heard “thinking outside of the box” for years (I met that term in my first job out of college), but BBC News reports these terms don’t go over well with employees.

“Thinking outside the box” doesn’t sound bad. I think it’s a simple phrase that reminds us to try to brainstorm different and uncommon ways to deal with something or to find a solution. Perhaps, employees believe management is trying to impress rather than communicate when using jargon. Maybe not the “box” one specifically, but others they encounter.

As a long-time process manager, “best practices” appeared in my work all the time. It still does. But it’s the one phrase I can’t find a better term for. It says exactly what we mean… “best practices” for doing something. To explain it another way would take more words.