Professionalism is not only about knowledge!
Let me tell a story from about 7–8 years ago. I and my SO from that time were walking in a mall and we accidentally met with his friend. He was angry because he couldn’t find any food that he wanted to eat. I knew a good restaurant within 10 mins and I advised him to go there. He replied rudely. “But I wanted to eat pasta now!” I asked my SO what that was. My SO said: “He does not need to be friendly, he is in IT, and he doesn’t deal with people.” The friend wanted to hire me. Even though I was a fresh graduate, I said no.
Many engineers think that if they don’t deal with people they don’t need to be nice, because they are dealing only with machines and they think that communication is an overrated thing. Au contraire! Just think about it. You go to work, you do some pair programming, you ask for help from the infrastructure guy, and you ask questions from colleagues.
Communication is the most underrated thing in an engineer’s life, and if you do it properly you look more professional. Professionalism is not only about technical knowledge.
1o1: the magic words: pls, thx, sry
Something that I learned is that if it has a 3 letter abbreviation, it’s important. Don’t forget the 3 magic words: please, sorry, and thanks. I’ve experienced 3 hour long debugging sessions without saying none of these words to me and I made the most effort and all of these had their place in the conversation. Use these words. You won’t be disappointed. People will be nice even if you are who made the mistake.
Also, if you find a problem, be nice. I was attending an ISTQB training. It’s a course for a tester certificate. Even on the course, we learned how to tell people they made a mistake. Nothing personal, not adding anything, just tell them that they made a mistake, don’t make fun of them, nothing. Just the cold truth.
Level up: how to say what you think
Developing your communication is a good thing, well, it’s exceptional and you should do it. Read books, go to training.
At a former workplace, we had a so-called peopleware training and they encouraged us to attend. We learned how to give feedback, how not to overthink what others tell us and how to think about communication in general.
If you need just one keyword: assertive communication. It’s extremely useful and it helps a lot even in the everyday life. However, it needs a lot of practice.
All in all,
Proper communication adds a lot to professionalism. Please don’t forget, that we are all humans and we have feelings. We need help and we need kindness. Sometimes kindness is the biggest help you can provide to your mates. Play nice!
