Learning Engineering Practice

Chapter 4

Neglected perception skills

Communication skills are widely regarded as being the most important competency for engineers. They are the foundation skills that enable collaboration and influence in an enterprise, the means by which engineers’ ideas are transformed into reality.

Most educators and short courses, however, only focus on one-way communication: writing and giving a confident technical presentation or sales pitch. The focus in the next three chapters is on neglected perception skills: listening, reading, and seeing.

These skills are vital for two reasons.

First, the transmission aspects of communication—writing, speaking, and drawing (or the use of graphic images and other visual content)—all depend on your ability to read, ...