How to Communicate With Impact as a Software Engineer

Guest post by award-winning author, Jay Sullivan

Hi fellow High Growth Engineer, Jordan here 👋

As part of the month of collaborations, I couldn’t be more excited to feature Jay Sullivan, the author of the famous book, Simply Said: Communicating Better at Work and Beyond. I’ve long recommended Jay’s book, which taught me much of what informs my writing both in this newsletter and at work.

Today, he’s going to share how to frame your writing, speaking, and any communication to increase your chance of getting what you want.

Without further ado, I’ll pass the mic 🎤 to Jay 👏

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As an engineer, your life is steeped in complex data, code, and analysis. Because of that, it’s easy to put too much focus on those details and not enough on what your audience cares about. When you put too much focus on those details, your message isn’t clear and it makes it harder to get what you want.

At work, you don’t get rewarded for being smart. You get rewarded for having impact. To have impact, you need to get other people on board with your ideas.

Time and time again, I’ve seen these 2 steps achieve that:

1. Identify what your audience cares about

2. Use language that puts your audience’s needs first

Let’s jump into exactly how to apply these steps to communication in your career.

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🔬 Identify what the audience cares about

Let’s say you want to introduce your organization to a new AI tool, ChatGPT Enterprise. Your focus will change based on the audience's needs. 

Each audience cares about different pieces of your proposal:

You can make tables like this to know who cares most about what

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to the ChatGPT Enterprise presentation.

How it starts before you speak

It starts with the very title of the presentation. Your instinct might be to title the talk with the name of the product, “ChatGPT Enterprise.” That title is about the content you are about to share 🙅‍♂️

Instead, if you name the talk, “How AI Will Improve Our Revenue,” and you’re speaking to directors and managers, your title is about the audience and something they care about. In addition, it reminds you as you craft your points, to talk about how ChatGPT Enterprise benefits your audience rather than the mechanics of the software.

A personal story

I once coached the CIO of a global bank, preparing him to deliver a talk to hundreds of junior employees at the bank as part of a panel on career development.

He had been asked to share his own professional journey from entry-level software programmer to the C-suite. His initial draft was to talk through his resume, which was interesting but not something most of his audience could replicate. There was no learning point.

We reworked his talk so that instead of talking about his path, he shared three attributes he has that he thought would be helpful for his listeners. In reflecting on his career, he determined that he had been successful because he was:

1. Hard-working

2. Constantly read up on new tech trends

3. Accepted assignments no one else wanted, which helped him learn

Those were three attributes that were real learning points for his audience. When we debriefed after the event, he said his fellow panelists just reviewed their resume, and that his talk stood out to the audience as far more helpful.

He focused on the audience rather than himself.

📣 Use language that puts your audience’s needs first

When we speak at work, we can only talk about one of three things:

1. We can talk about ourselves

2. We can talk about our content

3. We can talk to the audience about the audience

Those are our only three options – ourselves, our content, our audience. 

Well, nothing personal, but no one cares about us when we’re speaking. I talk in front of groups of lawyers, consultants, fintech executives, and other professionals multiple times a month. No one has ever come to a class for me. And no one comes to your meeting for you. Sorry.

They don’t care about our content either. Chances are you became an engineer because math, physics, and an instinct for solving complex problems drive your thinking and your sense of success. Your content is not only important; it’s crucial. But it’s not the most important element to share with your audience.

Instead, our audience cares about how our content impacts them, which is different from our content itself. So, the goal is to always talk to the audience about the audience.

You talk to the audience about the audience when you find this intersection

❌ What not to do

Easy to say, but what does that mean in practice?

Most people start talking at a meeting by saying one of:

• “What I want to share with you…”

• “What I want to cover today…”

• “What I want to tell you about is…”

They start with, “What I want,” as if anyone cares what we want. Again, nothing personal but no one cares about what you want.

Remove that phrase from your delivery. It’s not helpful.

✅ What to do

Instead, start with, “What I thought would be most helpful to you today is…”

When you start with that language, two things happen.

1. First, you’ve told your audience that you put all your focus into what’s helpful to them

2. Second, and more importantly, if you have the phrase, “helpful to them” running through your head before you even get in the conference room or on the Zoom call, you start challenging everything you’re about to share and the way you’re about to share it based on your only legitimate reason for being in the room, which is to be helpful to someone else.

Using “helpful to you” instead of “what I want” raises your value as a professional.

High impact vs. low impact communication

Let’s say I walk into my manager’s office to give her an update on the progress of a project. Susan is busy. She is dealing with a dozen important topics. I walk in and say, “Susan, I want to give you an update on the ChatGPT Enterprise implementation.” Susan is thinking, “Well let me drop everything I’m doing, Jay, because you want to give me an update.” All I am doing is interrupting Susan.

Instead, I should consider, “Why is this information helpful to Susan?”

Then, I’ll knock on Susan’s door and say, “Susan, I think you have a call later today about ChatGPT Enterprise. I thought it might be helpful to you if I gave you a quick update on that implementation.”

Susan will be thinking, “Great. Haven’t had time to think about that yet. Come on in.” I’ve positioned myself as thinking not about me, but about Susan and her needs. I’ve become a more strategic ally to Susan in accomplishing her goals.

In addition, because I’ve now thought about why this is helpful to Susan, I’ve also thought about what jargon will resonate with her, what key facts are most important to her, and how she likes to receive information, either with lots of detail or just a high-level overview.

Applying it when pitching an idea

As a business owner, I get emails from service providers every day that begin with “I want to get on your calendar to discuss <x>.”

The implication is that somehow I owe them a meeting because of something they want. It’s off-putting and tells me if I accept a meeting with them, I’m going to be meeting with someone quite wrapped up in themselves.

I react much better when a vendor begins with, “If you’re facing this challenge, we may be able to help you.”

What does this mean for you?

As a software engineer, as you consider how to communicate about a project, divide how you think about the project into three parts: 

1. How it works (the underlying tech behind it)

2. How it needs to be implemented (what stakeholders will be involved, the timing, the cost)

3. How it benefits the organization (what’s the value to the group)

Focus your conversations on benefits, timing, and cost

Then ask yourself which of these questions is most important to the person to whom you are speaking. Start with addressing that issue. Then, if you think they want a more in-depth understanding of the issue, ask, “Would it be helpful to also hear about X?” If they say “no,” you’re done. You’ve given them what they want. If you keep talking at this point, you’ll just frustrate your audience.

For example:

Jack is the head of a business unit at your organization. Jack is busy thinking about making deals happen faster. Jack does not have tech problems; he has business problems that need to be solved through technology. Jack has no clue how any of the software his group uses actual works, and nor does he need to. That’s your job.

When you talk to Jack about the latest upgrade on a key software you’ve developed:

1. Start by answering how he will benefit from the solution

2. Then ask if he wants to know how it will be implemented (or assume he doesn’t care)

He may want to know how long this will take and how complicated it will be to train his team to use it.

When you ask him, “Would it be helpful to know how many hours it took us to write and test this program and how the tech works,” don’t be surprised when he politely declines. His lack of interest is not a lack of respect; it’s Jack being efficient and focused.

Using language that is less about you and more about your audience is not about denying your own needs.

Your needs are important and have to be met. You’re just more likely to have your needs met if you communicate using terms your audience cares about.

📖 TL;DR

To communicate with impact and get what you want, follow these 2 simple steps:

1. Identify what your audience cares most about

   1. Create a 2-column table of “Who” and “What they care about”

2. Tune your content to speak in those terms

   1. Focus on benefits to them, timing, and cost rather than the internal details of the “how,” unless you’re speaking to other engineers.

   2. ❌ Avoid starting with “What I want”

   3. ✅ Instead, use “What I thought would be helpful to you”

🙏 Thank you to Jay

Thank you to Jay for his insights on a topic we could all benefit from—putting our audience at the forefront of our communication. I appreciated Jay’s examples and practical tips for how to plan and start your communication.

If you’d like to learn more from Jay, I highly recommend his book, Simply Said: Communicating Better at Work and Beyond.

👏 Shout-outs of the week

(Apologies in advance for taking some of the shout-out slots but I’m too excited to share these with you!)

• Onboarding as a Web Engineer at Pinterest by yours truly and Senior Engineer, Rebecca Yi — See what our onboarding experience at Pinterest was like and how we made it successful. You can also see the exact weekly sync template I used for my first project.

• Ask First, Code Later by

  Fran Soto
  on
  Strategize Your Career
  — Fantastic, concise article with a specific example on how asking “why” before coding saves you time.

Finally, check the two recent events I did:

1. The recording for 21 Ways to Become a Better Engineer on Taro:

2. Next, one with

   Jeff Matlow
   , author of
   The Best Leadership Newsletter Ever
   on how to build a strong relationship with your manager and manage up effectively. This is a deeper dive into the “Managing up” tips from the Taro presentation above. Tons of practical insights as always!

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