By Ignite Excellence

In the last six months, I had the pleasure of being invited to speak about influential communications at both CEO and FIDIC conferences. In my conversations with the delegates if I heard “engineers are terrible communicators” one more time, I was going to scream. As it were, I don’t think anyone would have heard me because these engineers were all too busy communicating!

I have never met a group of people who demonstrated more interest, empathy, and engagement in a dialogue than these engineers. Does this surprise you? My bet, it does.

Question: Who do you feel is a better communicator? Is it the person…
that speaks louder then everyone else?
who never asks any questions?
that only talks about himself or herself?

Answer: None of the above.

Communications is an exchange between two or more people of ideas and energy, with the intent of understanding each other. It is not about being loud, or self focused.

The most important element of communications is the ability to actively listen and understand another person's perspective. Remove ego and a few other distractions and you have a good listener.

Engineers are not bad communicators – or should I say, they are no worse than anyone else.

Ignite Excellence Inc. has trained over 10,000 people across all industries and most people have the same challenges. They assume that what is important to them is important to another, which acts as a barrier to effective listening. If you stop assuming, it is amazing what you hear and what you learn. Mastering this technique will ignite conversations that are focused on the other person.

I believe engineers have a leg up when it comes to influential communications. The reason? They are process-driven. Similarly, influential communications is the unique blend of process and psychology. If you are more process-driven, it is possible to become an effective communicator without begrudging your introverted nature. Influential communications is repeatable and always focuses on the other person.

So… Get out of your own way! Start believing you are a more effective communicator than you thought. Now lucky for me, communications is like playing golf. You rarely perfect it and you improve drastically when you have a coach...

Ignite Excellence is a training and development company specializing in influential verbal and kinetic communications. Ignite Excellence develops the skills of CEO members to win and maintain business, build stakeholder perceptions and strengthen internal communications so individuals can Influence. Differentiate. Engage. Suzanne Stevens is the President & Founder of Ignite Excellence Inc. She can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it