The importance of communication skills for engineers

 “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)

This quote is trying to say that turning complex ideas into simple concepts is a challenge faced by engineers.

In my opinion, I feel that as an engineering student, we developed a habit to communicate using technical languages to convey our ideas. This habit comes from speaking to others who are knowledgeable in our field. Therefore, when it comes to explaining our ideas to the general public, we tend to struggle with having to turn these technical terms into laymen’s terms. This is similar when it comes to breaking down complex ideas too.

Comments

  1. Brad BlackstoneJanuary 12, 2021 at 10:30 PM

    Thanks, Jia Yu, for this initial post. I appreciate your thought on this quote. I hope to discuss this in class.

    ReplyDelete

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