Verbal and Written Communication Skills
I think people read this blog because they take pride in their work and want to become better at their chosen profession. So here’s my second piece of non-technical advice: The importance of improving your communication skills can not be understated. I don’t care how strong of a technician you are, if you can’t communicate effectively with your peers, you won’t be able to succeed in this profession. In the old days, you might have been able to get by with just your technical skills. That is definitely not the case in today’s business world.

Take a look at your last performance appraisal forms, I’m betting that most of the criteria you are being judged upon depends upon communications. The key words and phrases to look for are “ability to work in a team environment”, “keep supervisors informed”, “maintain good communication with the user community”, “ensure the content of the communication is at the appropriate level for the intended audience”, “provide system and user documentation for projects and system enhancements.” I pulled all of the aforementioned phrases verbatim from one of my own past performance appraisals. I reviewed all of the criteria that I was being evaluated upon and found that almost ninety percent of the items depended upon verbal or written communications.

If you don’t have good communication skills, all is not lost. Like anything else, these skills can be learned. I still consider myself to be only a fair writer. I am in awe of people like Craig Mullins who can just sit down and let the words flow. I often find myself agonizing over every word and sentence. When I first started working in a corporate environment (20 years ago now), my writing skills were terrible. My original career was not database administration, it was construction—a job that didn’t require you to excel at written and verbal communications. One on the job accident, 9 operations and 11 months of vocational rehabilitation training later and I had a new career as a COBOL programmer. I went from working with a construction crew to working with computer programmers. My first employer was a very large and somewhat stuffy financial institution. When I was employed there, men couldn’t leave their floor without wearing their suit coat.   That’s the way it was in the 80′s.

I quickly learned that getting caught wiping your computer screen off with your tie didn’t really show your managers that you were good at thinking “outside of the box.” That was about the only thing I thought that piece of knotted cloth around my neck was good for. For the first six months, I refused to tie them. Being the non-conformist that I was, I just loosened them up, slipped them off and hung them up. Saying that my communication skills were rough around the edges when I started my career would be an understatement. But I had the good fortune of having a manager that understood the importance of both verbal and written communications. I would write a memo, she would correct it with her red pen and send it back to me for a rewrite. Many of them had a “Nice Try!” and a smiley face on top.

After becoming exasperated because of the numerous rewrites (and seeing all of those smiley faces), I thought I had better improve my writing skills. I read books, practiced writing, and became involved with as many company newsletters and related communications as I could. When I asked to join a newsletter, I always started with “I’m not the greatest writer, but I’m trying to learn.” I also asked my peers that worked on the newsletter to critique my work. The more I was critiqued, the better I became.

The same was true with public speaking. My first speech could be described as being “somewhat less than stellar.” Craig Mullins would gently prod me from time to time until he finally convinced me that speaking was something I should be doing from time to time. Craig promised to sit in the back of the room for my first speech and give me hand signals if I was speaking too fast, too slow, too loud or too soft. Halfway through the speech, my knees were knocking and his hands were in constant motion.

I found that like anything else, experience helps. But I will say that my speaking career was not without excitement. I learned that you really shouldn’t drink a carbonated beverage wearing a tie mike that is attached to a set of 6 12-foot speakers. When I was done chugging the pop before the speech, I looked around and saw everyone laughing at the noises I had just made.

I also learned that some podiums are on wheels and those wheels aren’t always locked. I started my first sentence, leaned against the podium, and it began to move. I tripped a little trying to stop the podium from moving and ended up heading for the end of the stage at a very rapid rate. It was a raised stage too, about six feet higher than the first row of seats. As I quickly approached the end of that raised stage, I noticed that the people in the first row were making motions just like the extras did in the old Godzilla movies- right before they got stomped on. Lucky for me one of my work buddies in the first row had the good sense to jump to his feet and stop the podium (and me) from killing a few members of my audience.

At a very large conference, the speaker (who now works for a competitor of mine), that was using the room before my session, left with the tie mike.   The moderators and technicians searched but couldn’t find a spare in time.  What they did find was a 4 foot corded mike that they plugged into the middle of the floor.   I then gave half my speech to 500 participants bent over at the waist.  Luckily, they rounded up the cordless version.   I got over those little snafus and kept plugging away. With each subsequent speech, I started to improve.

The point I am trying to make is that you can improve upon your communication skills. IT shops are no longer evaluating technicians purely on their technical skills. I have seen the soft skill evaluation pendulum swing a little more each year. It is the total package of skills that you bring to the table that you are being evaluated upon. We all know the importance that our technical skill sets have upon our success in this field. But you also need to be well rounded in all of the skill sets your managers are looking for.

In my next set of blogs, we’ll look at some of the different mechanisms we will use to communicate to our customers.  Whether your customer is across the hallway or across the globe, these mechanisms can be used to coordinate your activities with others and keep your customer’s informed of your progress.

Thanks for Reading,

Chris Foot
Oracle Ace
Director Of Service Delivery