Quote #7: All Communication Problems...

This photograph is one that I took of one of Nathan Sawaya's Lego Statues from when we visited 
The Art of the Brick in Cape Town earlier this year.

This week has been a hectic week, getting prepared for my trip to Germany (I can't believe I leave tomorrow!). Part of those preparations have involved making sure that our software is getting translated into German and displaying in German, instead of English.

At the beginning of the week, our German contact kept on feeding back that she was not seeing the majority of our translations appearing on her screen. And we kept on feeding back that all the provided translations have been incorporated and everything* should be displaying in German. The same message passed between us about 4 times with each of us standing their ground.

Eventually, we managed to get to the bottom of the issue, where we needed to change one small setting and then the translations displayed correctly and everyone was happy again.

I've definitely used this as a learning curve and I have a few ideas now of what to ask for in case something similar happens again so that instead of listening to reply, I can listen to understand and hopefully resolve things without each side having to repeat the same message over and over before figuring out the cause/problem. I think the most important thing about listening is listening actively and being able to ask questions that clarify things completely, rather than just accepting things at face value. It's something that I know I need to work on, but I hope I'm getting there!

* Barring small errors for spelling and/or missed translations