The most important skill an engineer will ever have

DRAFT for Fred to edit.

Engineers are collectors. Another software package. Another standard. Another ticket, another course, another qualification. Each one is real and each one is useful. You can keep stacking skills for your entire career.

Here’s the uncomfortable part. None of them create value until they reach other people. The design has to be approved. The risk has to be understood by someone who doesn’t speak engineering. The crew has to buy in. The board has to say yes.

All of that happens through one skill.

Communication is the foundation, not a soft extra

• Leadership comes from communication. Setting a direction, getting people to follow it, holding a team together when the project goes sideways. All of it is communication.
• Storytelling comes from communication. The objective of every project is a story: where we are, what’s in the way, what we’ll do, where we’ll end up. Tell it well and people align. Tell it badly and you get four different stories at four different levels.
• Influence comes from communication. Being right is not the same as being followed.

What the research says

When Google studied what made its best managers (Project Oxygen), it ranked eight behaviours. Coaching came first. Communicating well, including listening and sharing information, was in the list. Having key technical skills to advise the team came last.

Closer to home, Engineers Australia’s own reporting on employer surveys shows engineering graduates score highly on foundation and technical skills, but lower on collaborative skills. That’s where engineering faculties are now adding more focus on communication.

The career pattern

Most engineers I know got promoted for being technically excellent. Then, overnight, they were judged on something else: running meetings, presenting to clients, leading people, telling the story of a project. Nobody trained them for it.

That’s not a flaw in engineers. It’s a gap in how we’re trained. And it’s a skill, which means it can be learned, practised and measured like any other.

Where to start

1. Pick one real conversation coming up this week.
2. Work out the one sentence you need the other person to remember.
3. Say it first, and land the last word. (Tip 7 and Tip 3.)
4. Record it in the practice room and listen back.

Then keep going. The free library has everything you need to work on it yourself.