Part one of my series on communication for the mechanical engineer can be found here. 

Part two can be found here.

Affirming Others’ Ideas

• You won’t read any ME job descriptions searching for someone who is affirming, but you’ll recall working with someone who is for years to come. It’s refreshing, and I’d argue necessary, to lead a team of design engineers with affirmation. Too much ego will sour a brainstorming session and steer the solution toward that of the most senior, most acclaimed, most vocal, or most connected individual. The business, the team members, and society will not benefit from solutions that are selected in this manner. 
• It doesn’t take long to affirm someone’s ideas, but it can be easy to forget.
  • Be mindful to affirm any part of the idea you like before providing constructive feedback.
    • Sometimes, critical feedback isn’t appropriate.
      • Ideation brainstorm sessions should EXPLICITLY be non-critical.
        • It’s extraordinarily difficult to ideate and judge simultaneously. Research on brainstorming is unanimous on this point.
      • Learn to yes-and.
• Affirming someone in advance
  • “I think you will be a huge benefit in this brainstorm session; please attend!”
  • “You’re gifted at … and we need your help thinking about…”
  • If your peer is exceptional at coming up with ideas but requires solitude and time to do their best ideation, give them advance notice and prompt them to come prepared with X number of ideas. This communicates consideration, respect, and faith in their skill set.
• Affirming someone after the fact
  • “What I like about that is…”
  • “I see this working well with…”
  • “Wow, I wouldn’t have thought of that; nice work!”
• You can’t always be critical and expect it to be received well.
  • Author and psychologist John Gottman writes at length about “relational capital” – a concept for considering the health of a relationship in financial terms of withdrawals and deposits.
    • Deposits are positive interactions that strengthen the relationship (acts of kindness, expressing gratitude, etc.).
    • Withdrawals are negative interactions that drain the relationship’s emotional reserves (criticism, frustration, failing to keep promises, etc.).
    • He recommends a minimum ratio of 5:1 positive to negative (or deposits to withdrawals) interactions for a healthy relationship.
• Tricky instances when it’s still worth looking for opportunities to affirm
  • When their ideas pale in comparison with other options
  • When you see a fault in the idea
  • When the delivery was poor and required much clarification

Accepting Praise

• Sometimes it feels so awkward to receive praise, particularly if it is public and lengthy—you feel captive in an uncomfortable situation. You may think, “If I seem to be basking in the limelight, I’ll appear arrogant, but if I seem sheepish and jittery, I’ll be embarrassed.” The good thing is, it doesn’t have to be a big deal…
• Just take the feedback with gratitude and move on. Someone else’s praise of you should not affect your sense of self-worth or perceived value.
• You don’t need to have a “proportional” or “perfect” response.
  • Gratitude response
    • “Thank you.”
    • “I appreciate that.”
    • “That means a lot.”
    • “That’s wonderful to hear.”
  • Humble response
    • “[person’s name] also deserves recognition for…”
    • “I couldn’t have done … without you/my team/my family/etc.”
• Steer clear of false humility; you’re not fooling anybody.
  • “False humility is pride in disguise when we externally put ourselves down while inwardly harboring feelings of superiority.” – Tim Keller

Difficult Conversations

• See the book on the subject; literally, you need this book.
• Three “conversations” happen within a difficult conversation.
  • Conversation #1: What happened
    • The cold, hard facts of what happened
    • Unfortunately, bias and memory fail to authenticate our recollection of what happened; we’re rarely 100% accurate.
  • Conversation #2: Feelings
    • The emotional reaction to what happened
    • Due to the aforementioned bias/memory concern, this emotional reaction is to what one “heard,” not necessarily what was actually “said.” Rarely does correcting someone’s recollection of events change their emotional response.
      • This is where it’s important to understand the distinction between intent and impact.
        • 
        • When our impact doesn’t represent our intention, it’s easy to get caught up in our own “feelings conversation,” but we must not forget the feelings of the other person. Empathy and curiosity can go a long way in understanding the impact of our words. 
        • Give this a read.
  • Conversation #3: Identity
    • The personal conclusions drawn from the interaction.
      • “I’m not worth their time.”
      • “I guess I’m a failure.”
      • “They don’t think I’m good at my job.”
• Knowing these three conversations doesn’t make one impervious to the common pitfalls. I frequently get hung up trying to explain my intention or correcting the details, which has never helped. Being right in conflict, but being the only one who knows it, matters little… And do you know you’re in the right?
• For a masterclass on the subject, well worth the time, read Difficult Conversations.
  • “Focusing on blame is a bad idea because it inhibits our ability to learn what’s really causing the problem and to do anything meaningful to correct it.”
  • “The more easily you can admit to your own mistakes, your own mixed intentions, and your own contributions to the problem, the more balanced you will feel during the conversation, and the higher the chances it will go well.”

The Importance of Tone

• Tone changes the heart of your message.
• You CANNOT read tone into a written message. You do not know what was intended until you hear from the author, preferably in person.
  • I was quick to jump to conclusions about written tone early in my career. I don’t recall a single time when I spoke with the sender that it was intentional. Engineers and busy executives/businesspeople value succinct language. This does not mean they intend to be domineering or rude. 
  • Always assume positive intent.
• It’s easy to give a tone without realizing when you have strong feelings about something.
  • Having received bad news
  • Having received good news
  • Having been scared
  • Having been interrupted
• Tone has a time and place.
  • Presentations need tone inflection to not be mind-numbing.
  • If you shared an ongoing hardship with someone and they responded in a flat tone, you’d likely feel ignored, alone, and hurt.

Delivering Bad News

• Best done in person
  • Recall the front-page test.
• Eventually, you just have to count to three and do it.
• Mentally empathize with the other person before doing so. How would you feel? What would be going through your head?
  • Recall the and-stance
    • “We appreciate all the hard work you put into your proposal, and we had to select another vendor. I’m sorry.”
• Other examples:
  • “I have some news to share with you…”
  • “The project failed catastrophically.”
  • “The project went over budget by 10%.”
  • “I forgot to account for … in my design.”
  • “The vendor won’t be able to deliver on time.”

Responding to Others’ Disappointment

• Empathizing with someone’s disappointment can be very disarming, even if they’re disappointed with you or your work. If we jump from their feelings conversation to our identity conversation, we will talk past each other and risk ongoing hardship.
  • “I would feel similarly if I were in your shoes.”
  • “I think that makes sense because…”
  • Practice active listening by repeating back what they expressed.
• If we made mistakes, we should own them and make sure we’re learning from them.
• Recall that provisional self-esteem is not healthy.
• It is important to understand how to process failures: 
• 

Two-Minute Pause

• When worked up with emotions, we should NOT be sending recorded communication (and we should also probably avoid in-person dialogue). When you’ve drafted a message in a heightened state of emotions, step away and go on a walk. When you get back, reread your message and see if the tone is appropriate for the professional nature of your work. Additionally, give it the front-page test.
  • This has saved me from many disasters.

Giving Work to Someone Senior to You

• Before I graduated from college, in my internships, I was asked to delegate work to individuals many years my senior. Here is what I learned about this very uncomfortable but not uncommon experience:
  • It’s worth going gentle with the ask and heavy-handed with the gratitude/praise.
    • “____ asked me to see if you’re willing to tackle XYZ. Do you have time to work on this?”
    • “Would you mind…”
    • “Thanks, boss.”
    • “I appreciate you.”
    • “You’re the best.”
  • Give them credit.
    • Privately let their boss know.
    • Publicly give them recognition.
    • This works well for any coworker, regardless of seniority.
  • See also asking others for input.
  • If you’re not their boss, you’re asked to delegate work to them, and they refuse or push back/delay, their boss will eventually need to be notified. 

Speaking Up About Ethical/Safety Issues

• It is your ethical duty to the public to speak up against safety or ethical concerns BEFORE an incident has happened. Make sure your concerns are professionally recorded in writing and sent to someone in a position to take swift action on the concern.
• If you’re able to immediately resolve the concern with a reasonable level of safety, do so immediately, even if permission has not been given.
• Do not trust an entity that doesn’t take swift action on legitimate safety/ethical concerns. If this is your employer, find a new employer ASAP!
• From Engineer to Win by Carroll“ Smith—“Murphy’s last words were, ‘Never underestimate the power of group effort to botch up even a good design.’ What can happen here is that the designer may be simply too lazy to bother calling out a specific radius on a machined part. His rationale goes like this, ‘Joe is a good machinist. He knows better than to make a part with a sharp corner. Not only is there no need for me to call out a radius here, but, if I do, Joe is liable to feel insulted.’ So the radius callout is left off the drawing. When Joe is making the part, he thinks, ‘It sure looks like this part needs a radius here. But Peter is a damned good engineer; if he wanted a radius here, he would have called one out. So I’ll just make the part to the print’. So the radius is left off the part. Bill, the mechanic installing the part, thinks, ‘Boy, this looks wrong! But Peter designed it, and Joe made it—they are both competent and experienced, so it must be right. I’ll just put it on like I was told to’. So the part gets on the car… The last words on the subject of component failure are usually those of the driver. Inevitably these words are, ‘Oh, shit!’ These have been the last words of far too many of my friends.”
• “Although environmental and consumer safety concerns are every employee’s responsibility, engineers are uniquely positioned with the power and knowledge to create, identify, avoid, and correct such problems—an incongruous reality. Regardless of the size of your employer, never forget that you contribute to making decisions, whether the results are good, bad, or catastrophic.” – The Unwritten Laws of Engineering

Keep Your Supervisor Informed of All Critical Project Changes

• Days before a deadline is a bad time to share a delay you’ve known about for weeks.
  • Time affords options: re-scoping, shuffling resources, budget changes, project extensions, alternate vendors, expectation setting, etc.
• Whoever is responsible for—or a stakeholder of—your project should be notified immediately of critical changes so they can weigh in and execute appropriate counteraction to minimize risks.

Humor at Work

• Share things that make you laugh at work.
  • Sign up for https://www.gdandtbasics.com/readlines-newsletter/ to receive a weekly engineering comic among other insights
  • Make sure you know these things before stepping on a job site #welding #shorts
  • https://xkcd.com/1741/ 
  • 
• Sharing laughs with your colleagues helps reduce stress and increases the sense of bondedness.

Being Concise

• Saves time
• Provides clarity
• Communicates confidence
• It’s often better to be asked to expound than to be cut off or be told after a lengthy monologue that the audience was already aware.

The Contract is Gospel, Customers Won’t Read It, and You’re Likely Screwed

• Contracts are legally binding, and your employer has one with its customers.
• Whatever it says is the obligation that both parties have to one another.
• In my experience, there’s usually something the customer hasn’t read or considered that will send the project to a grinding halt in the final 20% of the timeline. 
• If your employer needs the remaining contract money or to appease the customer, it will likely become your problem to make lemonade out of oranges at the 11th hour—even if it means the only winner is the customer, even if the contract is designed to prevent exactly this from happening. Welcome to engineering.

This concludes (for now) the series on the utmost skill in engineering—communication. Don’t perpetuate the stereotype that engineers are bad communicators by ignoring this skill in your ongoing development. As always, these skills will become intuitive with practice. Focus on a few items at a time and give yourself grace as you’re learning.

Here’s a small sampling of topics I will discuss in the upcoming posts:

• The Cold Hard Reality of Engineering, the Iron Triangle
• Painful Lessons and How to Learn From Them
• The Mechanical Engineer’s Bookshelf

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