People Skills Tips for Technical Professionals
Posted in Hot Topics and New Bits, IT, People-Skills, Soft Skills on Jul 4th, 2010
My strong technical background (Mathematics) and my natural intuition about people gives me a special insight into the people skills (also known as soft skills or interpersonal skills) of technical professionals. It is a myth that technical professionals are incapable of highly social interaction. As with any population, there is a range of abilities which can depend on interest level. Many technical professionals seem to enjoy the technical/occupational skills over the people skills. Yet I see in them a wealth of knowledge and a very deep commitment to helping others.
Today, thanks to technology ironically, technical professionals must interact more than ever with all types of people and cultures globally while in pursuit of their technical goals!
So this post of people skills tips is dedicated to you, technical professionals and your people skills, in order that all can see and benefit from your intelligence, knowledge, and deep commitment to helping others.
People Skills Tips for Techies By:@J#@
#1 Collaborate vs. Control Instead of speaking through your entire thought and assuming people will understand you when you have completed it, stop along the way and welcome input, collaboration, and discussion. Else you risk alienating people who are not technical in nature.
#2 Dedication vs. Arrogance In any profession, you can choose to share your dedication to your profession with others. This choice creates powerful people skills and influence for your profession. Conversely, you can choose to look down on those who do not have your knowledge. This choice alienates people and reduces your influence. Dedication or arrogance — it’s your choice.
#3 Feelings Lead to Facts Most technical professionals are comfortable with facts and many are uncomfortable with feelings. Non-technical people are loaded with facts that you need in order to apply your knowledge to their business or scientific needs. In order to discover those critical facts, listen to feelings and then ask questions. Otherwise your discomfort and impatience with feelings, will come across as insensitive and possibly cruel. Bonus tip: To discover what they truly want, try a simple empathetic phrase: This can be … important, scary, frustrating … for you. People open up when they feel empathy, validation, and support.
#4 Willingness to Learn is NOT Weakness. My sister is a Ph.D. research scientist. A very bright creative problem solver with decent people skills. She is the first person I call when I have a scientific or medical question and she is glad to help. Yet when she faces a new situation about dealing with people in difficult moments, she calls me. Her willingness to learn and improve her people skills is NOT a weakness. Rather, people skills have increased her influence not lessened it.
What people skills tips would you like to add to this list? The sky’s the limit! Please share your experience in the comment field below.
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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach in This Technical World, delivers workshops, webinars, and training DVDs on people-skills for transformational teamwork and customer relations. BS Mathematics, Masters Organizational Psychology. See footage on this site: The People-Skills Coach.
