Further Resources for Learning Effective Communication Skills
In this question, Alex answered that the key insight behind rapid career growth is good communication.
He points the reader to the "Effective Communication for Software Engineers" course and some other resources.
I feel like a ton of effective communication is tacit knowledge, and so finding a good way to teach it outside of observing those who are already good at communication in the context a job is tricky. Specific case studies could be really helpful. I think Alex's course and the other linked resources were a really good introduction to effective communication, but if this is the key skill behind great performance I want to learn more! I've put most of the tips and tricks that Alex taught into practice at my current job and it's really improved my performance and my managers' trust in me already. A huge mindset shift for me was that it's better to risk over-communication than under-communication; it's better to be aligned but slightly annoyed by receiving a lot of messages than not aligned.
My question is: What is a good way to go about building my effective communication skills? Are there more really high-quality resources you recommend for building good communication skills?
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Discussion
(2 comments)- 15 months agoTech Lead/Manager at Meta, Pinterest, Kosei
I'm glad that you got value from the communication course! And I think your point about tacit knowledge is well-taken: often it's the "invisible" context that makes a message so much more effective.
I have a few ideas:
- Beyond learning from the communication of others on the team, you can observe their behavior to pickup relevant context and culture. I call this Talk & Observe.
- Manufacture low-stakes way to get more practice at work or other contexts. e.g. join a code quality committee at work, or lead a info session on Taro (https://www.jointaro.com/event/deploy-ml-models-from-lab-to-production/)
- 1
5 months agoTech Lead @ Robinhood, Meta, Course HeroI'm so glad you liked the course! To be 100% honest, the course is pretty dated (it's in my backlog to redo the entire thing with in-depth examples and much higher quality overall), but the bones behind it (i.e. the core knowledge) are still good.
So communication is a very, very, very broad area. I don't have many more ultra-tactical resources like the communication course which cover exactly what to say and how to show proper body language, but there are a lot more resources in Taro about the more "macro" overall parts of communication.
The next macro part of communication I think you should get good at as a junior engineer is to establish a bigger presence for yourself in meetings. I recommend these:
- "How can I be more active in meetings and earn the respect of senior engineers?"
- "I struggle to come up with things that add value to a meeting - What do I say?"
On top of that, I recommend becoming very skilled with 1 on 1s as well:
- [Masterclass] How To Have Impactful 1 on 1 Meetings - This is another thing I really need to convert into a course
- "How to have more impactful/deeper Taro 1:1 member match convos?" - Very tactical advice that just applies to 1 on 1s and trust-building overall
