Strategical communication for engineers

Table of Contents

TL;DR: As engineers, we face various challenges where soft skills like empathy and effective communication matter alongside technical expertise. Understanding diverse decision-making approaches and managing contextual emotions is vital. To tackle this, a three-dimensional approach includes awareness, toolkit, and practice, which can impact customer and employee satisfaction, stress levels, and ticket resolution times.

🤔 Problem statement
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As engineers, we always strive for value generation for both the company and our clients through technical excellence. Each engineer has an incredible wealth of knowledge and experience in technology management. Additionally, in our daily routines, we are constantly challenged not only by new technological challenges posed by our clients but also by other situations arising from our interactions with them and the contexts in which they find themselves, testing our ability to cope with stress in extreme situations.

For example, in DoiT, in a given month, we may have dozens of urgent tickets that test not only our technical skills but also our soft skills, such as empathy and emotional control; for instance, when a client has deleted the production database and does not have a backup.

For the former, we are accustomed to studying, searching in the cloud partner documentation, and conducting proof-of-concept tests, but for the latter, there are no certifications, and we need to get used to training them.

If we look at the value generation scale according to Harvard Business Review in their research, “The Elements of Value [1]”, our technical skills focus on generating functional value. Still, there are other ways of creating value that we can enhance, having to do with effective communication based on our target audience and what they want to achieve (their job to be done [2]), which is not always functional but can also be emotional (e.g., pleasing their boss). We need to keep this in mind when influencing their decision-making.

According to studies in cognitive psychology [3], there is an interconnection between cognition, emotions, and human behaviour. Some individuals are more prone to base their decisions on factual data and logical analysis (data-driven profile). In contrast, others may be more driven by their emotions and feelings (emotional profile), and others may still be more action-oriented and focused on immediate problem-solving (action-oriented profile). These different ways of thinking and behaving are influenced by a combination of biological, psychological, and environmental factors.

Another aspect arising from our work is that the tickets have minimal context, and much information is lost, especially when transmitting how the situation makes the customer feel (Mehrabian rule, 93% of the information is paraverbal [4]) and that predisposes us to a complex and uncertain situation when managing some tickets, especially the most urgent and complicated ones.

🎯 Proposed solution approach
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In my humble opinion, the solution lies in training and exposing ourselves to such situations in a way that we are capable of managing them, just like when we perform a technical PoC for a client or study for the latest AWS certification, because ultimately, in stressful situations, your level of competence is reduced to your level of training (the “performance under stress” theory [5]).

In this line of thought, I would propose an action plan in three dimensions to tackle these challenges:

Awareness: aiming at understanding that people have different internal wiring. Some resources that could help achieve this dimension include: 1) Recap of takeaways from Erin Meyer’s book, “The Culture Map"2) Consciousness of biases: Fundamental attribution error, regression to the mean, etc. A good source of this information can be the book “Thinking Fast and slow” by Daniel Kahneman [6] or the Farnam Street books about mental models [7].3) Empathy and rapport-generating techniques: active listening, mirroring, and labelling, as Chris Voss details in his book “Never Split the Difference” [8]4) Have an understanding of techniques like DISC [9] or OCEAN [10] methodology or similar.
Toolkit: Creating a toolbelt that allows the teams to:1) Identify these situations, for example, using the Cynefin framework2) Identify the type of interlocutor using DISC or OCEAN3)Tools for individual and team introspection: coaching and mentoring using the GROW methodology
Practice: Training these skills:1) Workshops for identifying profiles using DISC or OCEAN and play roles2) Internal coaching/mentoring workshops and programs using the GROW methodology3) Chaos engineering workshops

With this approach, the following key metrics at the business level could be impacted:

Customer satisfaction level
Employee satisfaction level
Employee stress level
Ticket resolution times

In a nutshell, the solution outlines an action plan in three dimensions for managing work-related stress situations: Awareness of cultural differences and empathy-generating techniques, Toolkit as a set of tools for identifying situations and interlocutor profiles, and Practice as training in skills. The initiative could be measured by customer and employee satisfaction levels, ticket resolution times, and the speed of knowledge dissemination within the team. Does this resonate with you? Leave me a comment or drop me DM.

NOTE: This article was originally published here