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 think that this statement accurately describes the situation that engineers around the world face. Often time while we are able to understand the topic at a deeper level due to the background of knowledge that we have. Explaining it to investors or the general public might be harder as they might not have the same background of knowledge that an engineer has on the topic to be able to understand the concepts and technical details of certain inventions.

For example, if we (engineers) explain about how we applied the concept of "Statics and Dynamics" into our robot project to a fitness coach, they wouldn't be able to absorb any information because they have entirely different professions.

Thus, it is important that as engineers we need to have an imperative level of communication to be able to convey our key points to the target audience in a way that is simple enough for them to comprehend, resulting in more potential investors.

Comments

  1. Brad BlackstoneJanuary 12, 2024 at 9:26 PM

    Thank you, Syahmi, for the detailed post.

    You write as follows: For example, if we (engineers) explain about how we applied the concept of "Statics and Dynamics" into our robot project to a fitness coach, they wouldn't be able to absorb any information because they have entirely different professions.

    And so? What then? What if you really want that person to understand, and he/she really wants to know. What then?

    ReplyDelete

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