Awkward silences and negotiating schedules
I’d like to jot down some things I’ve learned over the course of the year as a work newbie. Here’s #2:
2. Don’t be afraid of awkward silence, when negotiating schedules
When my team started on a project, the engineers and project managers didn’t seem to understand that we needed TIME to design page layouts and modules. They were focused on the functionality, and attention to form-making seemed very weak.
Consequently, we were often asked to do the impossible: “Can you come up with a design for this page, and deliver it ASAP? We’re making this request now, but it’s already late. Can you do it ASAP? The engineers are waiting and the front end coders are without work before you give them something to code.”
It was frustrating as user experience designers, to have to argue for the value of our existence and our rights to a proper schedule.
Still, when it came to negotiating deadlines with other functions in our project team, it was very difficult to give into the pressure of time. It was somehow our fault that we needed time to design things. We knew this atmosphere had to be corrected by educating the whole team about the design process. But, to me as a newbie, it was physically difficult to endure the presence of a roomful of people surrounding my little team, or to withstand a long silence of tension over the phone, if we were setting commitments over a conference call. I was constantly feeling apologetic to everybody about having become the burden and the obstacle to a speedy execution.
One of the best things I learned from my boss is how to handle pressure gracefully. She, my boss, is a composed human being. By nature, she is never rushed or moody. It’s a mystery as to how she never seems to get angry or upset. I once did see her get disappointed over an employee, but never have I seen her visibly emotional.
Anyway, when I first joined her team, the long awkward silences that she created in phone conferences would make me antsy and restless in my chair. Our project manager would be on the other line, overseas, and we’d be sitting in our office with the mute button. The project manager would be asking us to deliver some designs at too tight a deadline, and we would try to get more time. The PM would suggest a date, and we’d just wait for minutes, in silence. (or, we’d be discussing amongst ourselves over the muted speakers) This prolonged silence, with tension, was uncomfortable.
But, by focusing on our needs first and calmly discussing our timeline helped us create the proper designs and deliver results, which everybody was satisfied with at the end. If we had negotiated a schedule that we felt nervous about, then the situation would have only gotten worse.
There are times when I think that user experience design can be better integrated into an agile development process — without us having to be the black swan(or, rather, sheep!) that behaves differently and demands things that the others don’t. But that’s a different story.
According to negotiator Herb Cohen, you should not to be the first to break the awkward silence. The other side will finally have to say something, thus giving you valuable information that may give you an edge in the negotiation. The scheduling part for a project is the stage where you make your bed before lying in it. If it’s not done right, the whole thing can go awry. To do it right, you need to negotiate with your teammates, and sometimes you need to protect your team by not giving into emotional pressures. Enduring long awkward silences in the process, takes courage and self-confidence.
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Tags: agile, design, internet, negotiation, user experience design
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