Meeting Report – Communication workshop for Engineers
| January 26, 2014 | Posted by Frank Gomez under PES |
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Communication workshop Image 2
Communication workshop Image1
Role of Communication in Engineering
Date: 01/25/2014
Venue: PIV3 Assembly Room at SCE,
Pomona, CA
Attendees: 13
Speakers: Tribhuwan Choubey & Kathy Lazarus
Meeting Notes:
Tribhuwan Choubey welcomed the audience and emphasized the importance of effective communication in the life of Engineers; be they students or professionals. The myth, prevalent during pre – 1990 era, that Engineers only need sound engineering skills to carry on in their professional life and acquire communication skill is not essential. Today’s business needs have crossed the boundaries of proprietary operations to global operations. This has also brought in the needs for global exchange of ideas. Today’s engineer is an active partner in a cross functional team and is expected to sale his/her project proposals to management as well as collaborating effectively with peers.
Attendees were encouraged to participate effectively in the workshop and freely exchange their ideas in the group. Two videos were shown during the workshop.
One video was a training video showing example of briefing of maintenance crew, before they are dispatched for their maintenance assignment. The video showed importance of effective communication between the members of the maintenance crew. The video exposed several traits of effective communications like free exchange of ideas, acknowledgement, asking questions and looking out for their team members’ safety.
Other video showed example cases of fatalities in risky outage maintenance on high voltage transmission lines. The video showed mishaps of bucket truck hitting high voltage transmission lines and tools recommended by OSHA to mitigate these risks.
Attendees were asked to communicate amongst themselves about their apprehensions on communications and recite their own experience on communicating with their peers, and seniors, examples of conflicts and how their conflicts were resolved in their families or work environment.
Winding up the workshop, attendees were asked to provide feedback on positives they are taking home after the workshop. Topics of interest for them were:
- Small talk
- Breaking Communication barrier
- Conflict resolution
- Active listening
- Understand different ethnic backgrounds and accent
Many wished the workshop duration would have been longer with more examples. They liked attendees’ interactions.
The presentation slides are attached with this report.