Soft Skills

[deanwebb]

Knowing when to change gears from technical, engineering discussions to high-level project/ops/management communication is one of the toughest skills to develop, especially for an engineer.

I *want* to go down the rabbit holes as soon as possible, BUT... I've had to develop an instinct for saying, "Let's set up another meeting to go through the engineering specifics of this solution" or something like that.

[Dieselboy]

My last employer in London put a group of us through a workshop. On the workshop was a successful business guy (the dad of the wife of one of the guys that owned the company), a psychologist and a voice actor guy. They had us do all of these excercises which related specifically to going to customers and helping them understand problems and why we were there. It was really beneficial to me and completely changed how I approach things with customers now. I can really dumb things down in a non-patrionising way.

[deanwebb]

I can really dumb things down in a non-patrionising way.

^THIS

Being able to do that is the key to being able to interface with management and other teams/departments.

[icecream-guy]

by plugging the thingie in the whathoozit?

[Otanx]

I am facing the conclusion I need to work on my communication skills. I had some PTO recently, and had sent emails to several people on tasks to complete while I was out. When I came back into the office one person had done their tasks. Everyone else had either "not seen" my email, thought someone else on the email would do it, or some other excuse. Thought of the quote "If you ran into one bad driver they are a bad driver, if you ran into 100 bad drivers then maybe you are a bad driver." So if one person didn't understand my emails it would be on them. However, 8 or 9 people didn't understand my emails so maybe it is on me. I asked our PM who was cc'd on all the emails to give me some advice. Will see what she says.

-Otanx

[icecream-guy]

I am facing the conclusion I need to work on my communication skills. I had some PTO recently, and had sent emails to several people on tasks to complete while I was out. When I came back into the office one person had done their tasks. Everyone else had either "not seen" my email, thought someone else on the email would do it, or some other excuse. Thought of the quote "If you ran into one bad driver they are a bad driver, if you ran into 100 bad drivers then maybe you are a bad driver." So if one person didn't understand my emails it would be on them. However, 8 or 9 people didn't understand my emails so maybe it is on me. I asked our PM who was cc'd on all the emails to give me some advice. Will see what she says.

-Otanx

more than likely, most didn't even bother to read them,  happens to me all the time.  Now I am not my brothers keeper, nor do I follow up with others on their assigned tasks, not my job. but I do end up sending multiple emails like one a day, or several times per week when I need something.  People tell me that is not the way to go, need to communicate with email, IM, and followup with a phone call, when things are important,   having said that what is important to you may not be so for others.  but for me, email is my paper trail and task management system. I am anal enough to BCC myself on every email and use outlook flags and categories to know what needs to be worked on. that way I don't have to look through sent email to find ( I hat the though of moving sent items to inbox, then i lose records for what I sent, and then can never find them.

[Dieselboy]

I've had this experience. How great/nice would it be to say to your team "we need to get these 10 things done asap, pick what you want to do and go for it!". But the reality is, people are either too busy or it's convenient for them to say that they didnt see the mail.

It looks like you have one guy on your team that respects you and his job. Make sure he doesnt leave your company. I dont know if he's new or old or whatever but that guy sounds like me back in my first IT job. I didnt realise years back when my managers said how I was good at my job - I was just doing my job. But now I understand.

So what I tend to do now is set up a quick meeting (as quick as possible so people dont fall asleep) and I assign people to tasks and set due dates. Then I can ask questions why it hasnt been done - not to tell people off or cause problems, but really to find out if there are blockers inhibiting progress. That way, people can't say they didnt know about it / didnt see it / thought someone else will do it. Setting the due date with them is important and that they agree upon it as a realistic date. I work for a software company so we have daily SCRUM meetings and it was not enough to just discuss what we need to do in the call. Setting the asignee and date wa enough and the ticket system with the assignee also helps.

Books help but I'm not a huge book reader. It was hard to read more than a few lines when I was a kid like I couldnt focus. It's not bad now but I've tried to set up Windows Narrator to read to me while I'm reading to help me sink it in and stop me drifting onto other thoughts while my eyes follow the words. One book I need to read is "how to win friends and influence people". I have the PDF ready to go on my phone. Also I have one of Tony Robbins books. Another great book to read is called "how to be a 3% man". It's written as a book to get chics but the reality is it's not. I mention all of these three because they're all related.

[deanwebb]

Regarding Ristau's methods: that is what you gotta do. CYAWP. Cover Your A$$ With Paper. Always. If your firm has a mandatory inbox cleanout rule, you archive that stuff to a PST. I hate PSTs, but if I have to use them, I use them.

[icecream-guy]

Regarding Ristau's methods: that is what you gotta do. CYAWP. Cover Your A$$ With Paper. Always. If your firm has a mandatory inbox cleanout rule, you archive that stuff to a PST. I hate PSTs, but if I have to use them, I use them.

if you are in O365, PST's have probably been cut off, like in my work place.  lucky we have no mandatory clean out rule. for some it would be against the law..gor the higher up feds. whom might say important $hit.

[Otanx]

Thank you all for the feedback. I always CYA. Email, logged chats, etc. Phone calls are followed up by "As we discussed on the phone" emails.

I talked to my PM, and was told my emails are fine. The issue is that I don't have any authority over anyone. I am just a senior technical person. None of these people report to me. All I can do is complain to their boss who knows everyone already has 150% work loads. They know if they don't do it I will just handle it when I get back. Her one suggestion was to put in a deadline before I need it so I have time to escalate when it does not happen. This is something I usually do, but didn't this time because I was on PTO, and wasn't going to follow up. My PM said to do it anyway, and to make sure she knew which tasks I assigned associated to what projects, and she would follow up while I am gone. I have some more PTO soon so we will try this again. Maybe it will be better.

Still going to work on communication. I think I can do better.

-Otanx

[Dieselboy]

Priority levels. My low priority work gets backed up. I can explain why something needs to be done sooner and this helps the guys push their lower priority work back. I did need to explain some things though, like how the guys in one office in a different timezone need to do certain work first so that they can work with someone else in another office in another timezone while the working hours are overlapping. Some things seem obvious but not always to others.

Have you thought about giving your work to your boss and let him assign it out as the authoritative person.

Regarding email, I use a clean inbox. Only mail exists in my inbox which is pending action. Otherwise I hit that archive button and forget about it. It really helps. Gmail (I use g.suite) has the ability to schedule sending of a mail which can help. For example sometimes you may be working when someone else is not. They can receive the mail, read it then forget about it by the time they get to work. I would schedule mails like this to be sent / received during their work hours. I have even forgotten about the mail that I sent (eg, sent on thursday or friday for delivery monday 9.15am) and then soon after the sent time I already have what I need. 

[deanwebb]

Regarding Ristau's methods: that is what you gotta do. CYAWP. Cover Your A$$ With Paper. Always. If your firm has a mandatory inbox cleanout rule, you archive that stuff to a PST. I hate PSTs, but if I have to use them, I use them.

if you are in O365, PST's have probably been cut off, like in my work place.  lucky we have no mandatory clean out rule. for some it would be against the law..gor the higher up feds. whom might say important $hit.

And programs to prevent intellectual property loss will also now block the old trick of BCC'ing your private email address.