Engineers – Bad Communicators

I’ve been tossing around in bed for the last two hours, unable to sleep. So, I’ve decided to do something else, like write this entry. This entry has nothing to do with the reasons that I’m unable to sleep. It’s just a random entry. I’d like to talk about the false perception that engineers do not have good communication skills.

On the contrary, most engineers have very good communication skills. In fact, we engineers probably understand the importance of communication, better than most other people. Engineers work in teams. If we lacked communication skills, you can be sure that nothing would work properly. In fact, accurate communication is so important to us that we have even come up with many methods to formalise thoughts.

However, through my interactions with people from different trainings and backgrounds, I’ve come to understand why the world perceives engineers as bad communicators. I will try to share some of my thoughts by using a few examples of people who are generally conceived as “better” communicators.

Let’s take someone from a social science background, like an economist. When you try to get an economist to explain any concept, they tend to explain it in as many words as possible. I can totally understand the need for so many words, because they constantly deal with situations where conflicting arguments can be used to explain the same thing. So, the only way to share their thoughts on the subject, is through the use of many words to explain the contradictions away.

Next, let us consider some who is generally regarded as being good with words, a lawyer. Their whole life is built around correct wording. So, you can expect lawyers to use just the right number of words, as necessary, to talk about anything. They wouldn’t spare a single word more nor less than was necessary to make their case. In fact, they will even carefully choose words so that their meanings cannot be misconstrued by any party.

Now, you can see the main reason for the misconception. The number of words used. An engineer is trained to communicate in an accurate and concise manner. So, to explain something that may normally take twenty words to do, a lawyer will take exactly twenty, an economist will take forty (or more!) while an engineer will take two. Herein lies the problem. Everyone else expects twenty words and is stunned to only get two. Everyone else naturally draws the conclusion that engineers don’t have much to say and are bad communicators.

You see, when engineers communicate, we are actually communicating on two levels. The first level, is the raw speech or text or drawing or whatever, that we use to send information from one mind to another mind. This is the terribly inefficient bit of communication. There is another second level that is at work here, that is implicit understanding, which is based on analysis and synthesis. We use words in order to shape a thought process, which will then covey the true meaning.

When we communicate, we don’t normally expect to have to spell out everything, from introduction, discussion, through to conclusion. We generally expect people to be able to work the process from A to B themselves, and not have us explain everything. So, with those two words, we expect everyone else to understand what we meant, which unfortunately, is not true for most other people.

For example, if I was asked to say what I felt was wrong about our system of democracy in Malaysia, I would answer it in one word: feedback. At this point, most people would look at me and not understand what I meant, which to me, seems rather incredulous. How can anyone not see the flaw. But I digress.

However, there is a method to get us to drone on and on, with many many words. Talk to us about something that is much less intellectual. If you can catch us on a topic that we are personally interested in (could be anything from cats to church) we can have so many points to put forth that you will have trouble shutting us up.

So, what do you all think?