The Importance of communication skills for engineers

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“I contend that we (engineers) are undervalued because of our widespread inability to explain what we do to the general public (and why it is so important). It is one of the hardest goals to accomplish, to be able to boil down difficult concepts into a short and easily understood presentation or elevator pitch.” Marybeth Miceli, President, Miceli Infrastructure Consulting, USA (2011)
I personally do feel that why engineers may struggle with soft skills compared to other people/profession could be due to engineers spending large amount of their time looking at problems, equations, how things work and studying them. Rather than 'studying' people. Which comes the risk of technically capable people not being able to communicate their technical understanding well. 

The engineering aspect is not just everything in the job. It is in fact people who decide what project or product gets built, how it gets built, when and where it gets into the ‘hands’ of people who uses it. Engineering involves working with other people to figure out what to build and what the right solution is.

To me, the best engineers there is are the ones who can express their thoughts just as well as technical concepts clearly to anyone. Even non-technical people/general public.

Comments

  1. Brad Blackstone27 September 2019 at 22:02

    Thank you for this insightful explanation of the Miceli statement.

    ReplyDelete

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