I recently tutored two American students who graduated and transitioned into design. One with an extremely high level of design, but she lacks self-confidence and always feels that her work is not good enough. The other, has average design work, but he is very confident, or frank, during presentations: "I did an extremely poor job at this step, I don't even know what I was doing."

As a tutor, my task is to help boost the former's self-confidence and enhance the latter's design skills while trying to make them see the strengths they already possess - those are the diamonds in the sand that they often overlook.

Improving skills and making advancements isn't difficult: provide observations, ask for reasons, then offer suggestions and demonstrate a few examples, that's all. They usually get the hang of it. But making them see their strengths is challenging. It requires designing some communication strategies that will allow them to discover it on their own, instead of me telling them directly. This is even more challenging than expressing disagreement (debate) or persuasion.

When considering such issues, the grammar and vocabulary used in English communication will no longer be the focus for me because there is simply no time to ponder over these. The emphasis should be placed on designing your communication strategy and verifying whether the other party can understand my message. Another crucial point: in the design process, an imperfect conversation is always better than a perfect monologue.

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我刚刚辅导毕业的两个转型设计的美国学生，一个印度女士，设计水平非常高，但却很缺乏自信，总是觉得自己做得还不够好。另一个墨西哥男士，设计做得一般，但演示时很有自信或者说是坦承：“这一步做得极差，我也不知道我在做什么”。

作为导师，我的任务就是帮助前者提升自信，帮助后者提升设计，同时想办法让他们俩能看到自己已经有的优点，那是沙中的钻石，但自己往往视而不见。

技巧与提升不难，给出观察，询问原因，再给出建议，呈现一些例子，就行。一般都能领悟。让他们能看到自己的优点，这个很难，需要设计一些沟通的策略，让他们自己能发现，而不是我直接告诉他们。这比表达不同意见（辩论）或是说服还难。

在考虑这种问题时，使用英语沟通时的语法啊词汇之类，就不会再成为重点了，因为根本来不及考虑这些。重点放在设计你的沟通策略，并验证对方是否能理解你的信息。另外很重要的一点：在设计过程中，不完美的对话，永远都比完美的独白要好。