Friday, September 24, 2010
Free writing
Communication skills are very important for an engineer. An engineer should not only have technical knowledge, he should have other skills too. Communication skills are required to interact with others and develop networks. Until a person knows how to communicate well with others he is not able to present his view point clearly in front of them. Technical knowledge is of no use if you can't communicate it to others. Engineers need to interact with others to make and build new things or projects as this work can't be done single-handedly. Many a times, situations arise when a person has to address a group of people and unless he has good communication skills he can't do so. Some important communication skills can be public speaking, soliciting feedback, conflict resolution, interviewing, instructing, and giving orders. As students, we might think of other students as competitors and feel that communicating with them can be harmful, in the sense the other person might steel your idea etc. but as we grow up and mature we get to know that until and unless we work together we can't succeed in life.
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Examine the statement: "Technical knowledge is of no use if you can't communicate it to others." In my opinion, there is a distinction that needs to be made here: technical knowledge is only useful to the self if you can't communicate it to others. Is this "selfish innovation" a good thing or a bad thing? Let's make that same distinction using two men and a fish.
ReplyDeleteMan #1 is a pretty smart guy. He learns how to build a fishing pole. However, he doesn't talk much and can't teach his fellow man how to build one. Nevertheless, Man #1 can now catch quite a lot of fish. He's doing well for himself on this little island.
Man #2 is a little less intelligent. He's still trying to catch the fish with his hands, but they keep slipping away. Thus, Man #2 has very few fish.
What results from these divergent conditions? Maybe Man #1 simply gets all the food he wants, and is a very happy man, while Man #2 just keeps living as he has done for years, relatively content. However, another possibility is that Man #2 gets jealous, and steals from Man #1, or possibly even kills him. In general, history has shown that if one group is far disadvantage, it will be angry about it. How about lost opportunity? What if Man #2 would have made even better improvements on the rod once he learned to make one? Then the two of them could have had tons of fish.
What do you think? Should Man #1 learn to communicate and share his fishing pole making method with Man #2? Why? To what degree should we share ideas? Why share? Is it just to make things "fair"?
You said that "Technical knowledge is of no use if you can't communicate it to others." That may be true when you're working in a team, but it's certainly not true in general. If you're working alone, designing a product or blueprint, something along those lines, then that technical knowledge is of great use.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to agree with the two above comments in that technical knowledge can be of use even if you can't communicate it to others. If you have the knowledge then you will be able to do the project but others won't be able to help you because you won't be able to explain your progress or status of the project. But I also see your point in that the knowledge is of no use if you can't communicate it. For example if our professors couldn't communicate their technical knowledge it certainly wouldn't be of any use to us because we wouldn't be able to learn it.
ReplyDelete-Tom G.
As students, we used to compete with each other. That's what we were taught in school and what we try to do in college. But, you are right, one cannot succeed without others. I think this is what college life teaches us. The students that that learn this lesson, would reach success much faster than others.
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