Being good at communication brings many benefits and the most obvious of them all is the ability to talk and listen well. This has proven extremely useful for me in my team projects, like software development. In that project, we were to build an entirely new software from sketch, and it must be different from any existing one. As a result, each of us had to generate a lot of ideas and convey it to others. Without the ability to listen and understand effective, those special features that makes our product stands out would have been crossed out at the beginning, as they were too “uncommon”. And the ability to understand others and get them to understand you is not the only thing effective communication benefits us. We still need to write documents, proposal… to convince others. That’s where the rest of the effective communication skill set comes into the picture. And we appreciate that we know it.
In short, although saying that I can communicate effective at the moment is not very true, I do appreciate what the skill gave me through my experience. Thus, I am looking forward to improve it through the ES2007S module.
Reference:
- Images taken from Fine-tooning: http://www.fine-tooning.com/Effective_Communication_L.jpg
Hi Mark!
ReplyDeleteI agree that working in groups can be a double-edged sword. It may serve as a stimulant when effective communication is occurring or as a hindrance when people working together are unable to understand each our ideas due to barriers in communication. As the world becomes more connected as a result of globalisation, the importance of effective communication plays an increasing important role, be it in engineering or even other disciplines. Like what you have mentioned in your post, I also believe that effective communication is also important in maintaining competitiveness in the economy today- to allow people to accept our ideas (which may be a new area of research or a new product)so as to gain an edge over the others?
Hi Mark,
ReplyDeleteLooking at effective communication from an engineer's perspective is a wise decision you made. It seems like a very apt example and puts across your point very well too.
Being an engineer myself, and having taken such group project modules in my university time, I realize this fact fully that effective communication is a must in group work environments. If not for this, it might lead to a lot of miscommunication, which can actually turn out to be disastrous for an engineer, and the information loss can also lead to many good ideas not being implemented. This is in fact a hindrance to the growth of a smart engineer.
However, as for the first sentence of your post, I would like to add on that even if you are a smart lone programmer, or a brilliant writer, you can achieve the heights of the fame and success you rightly deserve, only if you can communicate effectively and put forth your ideas before the concerned audience in a clear and concise manner.
It was nice reading your post, and I look forward to reading more interesting posts from you in the future.
Thank you.
Akash
@Xiu Qin:
ReplyDeleteYes, effective communication is a requirement for everyone,not just engineers. And I agree that it's a must in when we are going out to the world.
@Akash:
Yup, miscommunication can cause a lot problem, especially in group work. For instance, there was a time my teammate misunderstood my comments to "recycle" a sensor that we have built (which I meant that we could tweak the design a bit) and take every single component on it apart :(. So we must be careful of what we say.
About the first sentence, I actually meant that writers and programmers can work alone and still create good work, while engineers can't do so easily. It's because sometimes, their work require a bit of "liberalism" that is best expressed by an individual. However, they will still need to understand the principles of communication, so their work don't get misinterpreted by the public.
I guess I will need to refine my writing skill a bit more. Nevertheless, thank you for your comments :)
Hi Mark,
ReplyDeleteYour post is easy to read, concise and focused.
Your personal experience of working closely together with your teammates in the software development project is an interesting one, particularly the juxtaposition of the essentiality of face-to-face communication in the marketing process of a software that's going to enable more effective end-users and computers communication.
The cartoon insert also helped emphasized the message you wanted to get across to your reader.
Thanks for your fine effort!