Sysadmins are now interacting with employees more than ever – so it’s imperative that they learn how to effectively communicate. We’ll explain how they can.
As a sysadmin, it can be difficult communicating with non-technical employees. They lack the understanding of your organization’s backend that you have, and if they do have technical knowledge, it’s usually just enough that they can cause some serious damage if left unchecked. It can often feel like you live in an entirely different world from your users – and talking to them seems impossible.
Thing is, you need to learn how to do so. As the role of the IT professional shifts from gatekeeper to enabler, it’s important that you learn how to pare down your technical knowledge so that it’s understandable to laymen. For a sysadmin, communication skills are no longer optional.
So, with that in mind, let’s talk about what you can do to improve yours.
Write Better Emails
First thing’s first: even as we start making the shift towards realtime communication methods like messaging and SMS, email still remains one of the chief ways employees keep in touch with one another internally. It’s important that you understand the components of a good email – because otherwise, yours will probably be ignored. Sysadmin and reddit user Hellman109 has some great advice to that end:
- Open with what you want: Give people all the critical knowledge they need to know within the first few sentences; the why, how, and when of your topic. The first sentence needs to set the stage, and the following sentences should give more information.
- Let people know why they should care: Once you’ve gotten the core details out of the way, it’s important that you explain to employees how they will be impacted by whatever’s going on. Contextualize your email so that employees understand its importance.
- Propose a concrete deadline, and give them a chance to respond: If you need people to respond, make sure you tell them that – and give them a deadline. Be reasonable about it, and understand that not everyone can respond immdiately.
Cut Down On The Jargon
Jargon is great if you’re trying to convey complex topics to someone with your level of expertise…but not so much if you’re talking to a layman. When discussing the details of a system update or scheduled downtime with non-IT employees, avoid using highly-technical language, lest you make them feel stupid.
“Jargon could make you sound like you know what you’re talking about, but it can also teeter on the edge of talking down to people,” writes Fathom’s Caroline Bogart. “If someone doesn’t understand what you’re saying, they’re not going to feel very intelligent.” And if you make them feel unintelligent, they’ll be frustrated; that frustration will carry over to their interactions with you.
Seek Feedback – and Listen To It
It can be tempting to assume that because you’ve a strong base of technical knowledge, you know better than the end user. That’s a dangerous assumption to make – no matter how much of an expert you are, you’re still human, and therefore fallible. What’s more, if you don’t consider the perspective of the end user, how can you be certain the systems and solutions you’re using are suitable or acceptable?
You can’t.
Closing Thoughts
Communication is no longer optional for a sysadmin. Moving forward, you’re going to be interacting more and more with the end user. It’s imperative that you learn how to do so – because otherwise, you’ll never get past the cliche that everyone hates IT.