Stand Up!

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Stand Up!

Udi Dahan

AS ARCHiTECTS, MAny oF uS HAvE gRoWn from highly technical positions where our success was derived mainly from our ability to talk to machines. However, in the role of architect much of our communication is now done with our fellow human beings. Whether it’s talking to developers about the benefits of employing a specific pattern, or explaining to management the cost-benefit tradeoffs of buying middleware, communication is core to our success.
Although it’s difficult to measure an architect’s impact on a project, this much is clear: if developers consistently ignore an architect’s guidance and management doesn’t buy in to his recommendations, the “rightness” of his guidance will do little to advance his career. Experienced architects understand that they need to “sell” their ideas and need to communicate effectively in order to do that.
Many books have been written on the topic of interpersonal communication, but I wanted to call out one simple, practical, easy-to-employ tip that will dras- tically increase the effectiveness of your communication, and, consequently, your success as an architect. If you’re in any situation where you’re talking to more than one person about your guidance, stand up. Whether it’s a formal design review, or an informal discussion over some diagrams, it doesn’t matter. Stand up, especially if everyone else is sitting down.
Standing up automatically communicates authority and self-confidence. You command the room. People will interrupt you less. All that is going to make a big difference to whether or not your recommendations will be adopted.
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??You’ll also notice that once you stand, you’ll start making more use of your hands and other body language. When speaking to groups of 10 or more peo- ple, standing up will also help you make eye contact with everybody. Eye con- tact, body language, and other visual elements account for a large portion of communication. Standing up also tends to change your tone of voice, volume, pitch, and speed: projecting your voice to larger rooms, slowing down to make more important points. These vocal elements contribute substantially to the effectiveness of communication.
The easiest way to more than double your effectiveness when communicating ideas is quite simply to stand up.
Udi Dahan is The Software Simplist, recognized by Microsoft Corporation
with the coveted Most Valuable Professional award for Solutions Architecture now three years running. Udi is a connected technologies advisor working with Microsoft on WCF, WF, and Oslo. He also serves on the Advisory Boards of the Microsoft Software Factories Initiative and the Patterns & Practices’ Prism Proj- ect. He provides clients all over the world with training, mentoring, and high-end architecture consulting services, specializing in service-oriented, scalable, and secure .NET architecture design.