Interpreting the Unwritten Rules or are they Guidelines

How many times has an innocent comment or statement resulted in unnecessary conflict and confusion in a team? How unsettling is it when you make a suggestion which you think will improve some aspect of the work being undertaken and the reaction is explosive, almost violent - what did you say that was so wrong, how could you have been so badly misunderstood? Even in the most collaborative and communication intensive team there are lots of "rules" which people need to learn about how to work together. In distributed teams this gets magnified and intensified due to the myriad filters and layers of meaning we unwittingly apply to communication. In this talk Shane presents examples of how the most innocent of question or suggestion can send teams into a spin, and suggests a number of techniques to help create an environment where real communication can happen, irrespective is your team is co-located or distributed