Very early in my educational and career life I was taught that, “you can’t survive on technical skills alone.” As I became a part of an active work force I couldn’t have agreed more with that statement. Most jobs require the person to have good written and oral communication skills. Oral communication becomes more important at the workplace and in many cases supersedes written communication in many ways. It is a very common perception (there may be some truth to it but if I may I will call it a misconception) that from PC support specialists to C++ coders, technical people are infamous for their lack of communication skills and that’s a polite way of putting it. We, technical people, seem to build a guild of mentality where we value our work knowledge more than our relationships with others. However, more and more technical professionals are now being put in positions where they are required to apply solutions to business and work with internal and external entities to make it a success.
I have tried to break through those stereotypes by taking many educational and professional development courses. Some of those are as follows:
- Applied Human Relations
- Business Communications
- Organizational Behavior
- Human Resource Management
- Suited for Success: Business Etiquette
- Art of Listening
- Learning the business communication that works
All these communication skill development courses have taught me how to communicate with technical and nontechnical business entities. As a result I know that chip means wood chip in a forest industry sector and chip means potato chips when working at a food manufacturing sector. I also have learned that listening is a very big communication skill that helps end users to be more comfortable with you. I also know that when talking on the phone I have to treat them as if the person is right in front of me.
From my work experience, I have learned that you have to be very diplomatic when it comes to supporting a controller of a multinational company or a lumber grader, or a doctor or a student. You can not use the same type of attitude towards everyone while supporting them or trying to understand their problems.
I have learned that by successfully getting my message across, I can convey my thoughts and ideas effectively and take advantage of a bigger resource pool. I also have experienced that when not successful in communicating those ideas and thoughts, that can cause a lot of troubles including roadblock for a project or communication break down.
From both professional and educational experience, I have learned that to deliver my messages effectively I must commit to breaking down the barriers that exist within each of the stages of the communication process (including source, encoding, channel, decoding, receiver).
I have also learned that sometimes too much information can be a problem as well. It is best to be mindful of the demands on other people’s time, especially in today’s ultra-busy society and work places. I also need to understand my audience’s culture, their expertise level, their motivation to listen to what I have to say. I must make sure that I can converse and deliver my message to people of different backgrounds and cultures within my own organization, and in my own country and based on the industry I am maybe even abroad.