You're undermining your career growth if you aren't investing in becoming a better communicator.
It's not good enough to lurk on Slack channels and DMs or to settle on communicating via those hilarious GIFs you post. And, I hate to break it to you, but those progress updates in the team's dailies just won't cut it, either.
While it's true that these are all examples of communication, mastering them won't help you to get ahead professionally.
Simply using the tools isn't enough, nor does it help when you use them ineffectively.
Because, without the means (i.e. skill) to convey it effectively, your message will fall on deaf ears.
If you're anything like I was, you may feel you have nothing important to say, that you don't need to hog the attention, or even that you don't have a message to share in the first place.
Sadly, I've got to break it to you: you certainly do have one (and it's a good thing you do).
Because, in your career, you are the message.
And if you fail to represent yourself convincingly, that message will be lost in the noise.
Opportunities will slip through your fingers.
Your fate will be in the hands of others.
Your career's progress will slow to a crawl.
One major factor in my struggles to get promoted was that I often failed to express myself when I could have.
I was unwilling to assert myself or to risk confrontation. I wouldn't advocate strongly enough for my ideas. I didn't have the articulation necessary to convey them appropriately when I did.
So, no matter how capable I was at writing code, I wasn't going anywhere.
Eventually, I learned to stop neglecting these essential skills. By embracing the chance to develop my communication abilities, I became a more effective professional and began to find life generally more rewarding.
Find Greater Satisfaction and Be More Effective in Work and Life
It's been said a million times that human beings are social creatures.
We're wired that way.
Fostering meaningful relationships is the single, most important indicator of longevity1.
Yeah, that's right: good relationships are more important than diet, exercise, sleep, or any other single factor when taken alone2.
So, it pays to have the ability to build and maintain strong relationships.
To experience those upsides, you must be a good communicator.
Communication is at the heart of any relationship. It's how you understand the needs of people around you.
You need it to get what you want.
And help others get what they want too — an objective you should value highly.
In professional settings, strong communicators convey credibility, competence, and authority — characteristics that are the currency of career progression.
So, take the time to upgrade your communication foundations and become a leader in your team.
You'll have more of a say in your day-to-day work, leadership will notice you more frequently, and your teammates will recognise you far more than they do now.
Develop Communication Skills That Make a Difference in the Long Run
There's no need to be a charismatic extrovert to be a top-class communicator.
Believe it or not, good communication isn't about being the center of attention. Instead, the purpose is to accurately convey the right information to the right people at the right time.
A talented communicator can just as easily be subtle and understated in their approach as they can be bold and direct.
I've always been comfortable chatting with people I know well, so it's not like I couldn't communicate at all. My problem was that I wasn't leveraging practices that made me an effective communicator.
To secure a Staff+ Engineer position, you must systematically improve your communication fundamentals.
When you do, you'll encounter success more frequently in any communication medium or scenario than you could otherwise manage — whether that be posting Slack messages, writing code reviews, or speaking at Tech Team all-hands meetings.
There's far more to the topic of communication than I could ever hope to cover in a single guide. So, we'll keep it focused on a few high-leverage practices designed to produce long-lasting gains.
Train these practices until they're a part of your daily routine to realise the benefits. Think of them as the social equivalent of lifting weights in the gym — try not to miss a day!
Apply Structure to Your Thoughts with Writing
“Writing is thinkingi. To write well is to think clearly." — David McCullough.
We can harness this idea to become better communicators.
You're probably already writing in some form or another every day.
Even so, write more.
Seek out opportunities to express your thoughts in written form.
Be active on Slack3. Write memos. If you can, write articles on your company's blog. Whatever form it takes, get writing now.
Make it a habit to read what you write out loud. Doing so will help you recognise when your prose is off. You'll find yourself correcting many issues with your writing's flow.
Finally, pay attention to any feedback you receive for your writing. Be that for Likes, emoji reactions, or comments and replies. Try to identify which pieces of writing most resonate with your audience.
Learn to identify what works — and what doesn't — then adjust your approach accordingly.
As your writing improves, you'll find that your internal thoughts and verbal communication will benefit as well.
You'll have a clearer vision of your path ahead and be better able to define the steps you'll need to take.
When I was looking to move up to Staff, I began actively writing agenda notes for our engineering guild meetings and emailing summaries of those meetings to the whole organisation.
By writing in a medium intended for others to read, I had to think carefully about how I expressed technical content to non-technical colleagues. Additionally, I put myself in a position where leadership had greater awareness of my efforts.
Through these efforts, writing helped me become a better communicator and enabled me to increase my profile significantly.
Strip Out the Context for Greater Clarity
If you're the type who tends toward perfectionism, there's a strong chance you pad explanations with unnecessary contextual information.
After all, you want to be sure there's no ambiguity in your message, right? So, you pack every possible piece of relevant information into your content.
What you don't realise when you're doing this, however, is that you're sacrificing the clarity of your main point.
It's buried so deeply under all of that context that listeners might miss it altogether by focusing instead on some part of the context you're explaining.
Context is secondary information.
It's often redundant.
Remove it if you can.
If you absolutely must add contextual information, do so by following on from your main point. You shouldn't lead with it if it means drowning out the substance of your message.
And, if you're worried you're not painting a complete picture, trust the audience to clarify when you've missed something essential. Feedback will enable you to refine your approach — if you take it on board.
By reducing your reliance on context, you can say more with less. You can express your ideas with greater clarity. You can ensure your main point has the impact it demands.
As any modern writer will tell you, it pays to be economical with your word choice because doing so allows your words to pack a bigger punch!
Actively Listen to Put Your Audience at the Heart of Your Attention
If you're unfamiliar with Active Listening, you may still assume that listening is passive.
After all, all you have to do is sit there and let your partner empty their mind at you while you nod your head and say "uh-huh" every now and then.
You'd be wise to revise that assumption.
The best communicators know that to listen well is to be proactive. It is to put your communication partner at the heart of your attention.
That's because the goal of your communication shouldn't be to get what you want, instead, it should be to fulfil your audience's needs. When you're good at giving them what they need, you'll usually get what you want as a consequence — and you'll have them on your side when you need something in the future.
You should try to "seek first to understand, then to be understood" as Stephen Covey wroteii.
When you're engaged in a conversation, give your full attention to what your partner says.
It's good practice to repeat what they've told you back to them in your own words. It forces you to lock your attention into what they're saying and makes it clear to them that you've taken their words to heart. You'll also remember what they said far more accurately than you otherwise would.
When approaching a conversation — before a single word is even spoken — think about how you want your audience to feel and act.
For example, if you're upset with something a teammate has done, is it more important to you that you're proven right or would you actually prefer they behaved differently the next time?
Two completely different things.
Going in with an aggressive "I'm right, you're wrong" attitude might win you the argument but you'll only succeed in building resentment in the long term.
Maybe you will succeed in subduing them to the point where they think twice about doing the same thing in the future.
But it's just as likely that their resentment towards you will lead them to double down on that undesirable behaviour just to spite you. Not to mention, that they may even find other ways to express their negative impression of you.
However, if you asked yourself why they acted the way they did, perhaps you may realize that they'd been having a bad day. Maybe they'd had some personal difficulties or they were struggling to solve an important problem.
By understanding their underlying situation better, it would then be possible to demonstrate compassion and understanding, instead of confronting them and making things worse. You'd build goodwill and they'd be far more receptive to your message when you explain how their actions affected you.
So ask yourself: “If the roles were reversed and someone else was trying to convince me to act a certain way in this situation, what actions would they have to take to encourage me to do so?”
Focus on the needs of your partner or audience. Show that you're listening and you've got their backs and you'll earn yourself an ally — or even a friend.
This focus on mutually beneficial outcomes — as opposed to one based on naked self-interest — is at the heart of active listening.
Become an Effective Communicator to Accelerate Your Growth
The techniques I've explained above won't make you a master communicator on their own but each of them will produce cumulative benefits over time.
Leverage written communication to codify your thoughts and give them structure and focus. Eventually, you'll internalise these lessons to the point that you will simply think in clearer terms.
Simplify your message by stripping non-essential details and notice how people engage more enthusiastically with your content.
Orient your communication efforts towards your audience and see the depth of your relationships grow when people respond to the attention you give them.
Given time, each of these strategies will amplify the others to profoundly improve the way you relate to people. You'll get your point across more effectively and people will be more receptive to it. You'll make more friends — including those who can influence your career's trajectory.
A software engineer who becomes an effective communicator will shift onto a new path, one with a much steeper growth curve.
Doing so won't necessarily produce a profound change overnight but, as with any great journey, you cannot complete the final step if you haven't taken the first or the one after that.
I call these practices strategies and not tactics or techniques because their purpose is to produce a fundamental change in your nature over time and, in doing so, establish a new foundation to realise new opportunities.
They are not superficial solutions designed to produce short-term gains. They're investments that will open up new avenues of growth and possibility in your life — avenues that will only continue to proliferate with time.
So start practising today, become a better communicator tomorrow, and choose a more dynamic future for your career and life.