The Communicative Engineer : How to Ask, Listen, Write, Speak, and Use Visuals

Application-oriented communication guidebook designed for engineering students and practitioners to improve their asking, listening, writing, speaking, and use of visuals

Practicing engineers spend about half their time communicating ideas, facts, and feelings but invest only a small part of their formal education learning how to communicate. The Communicative Engineer addresses this gap. When used as a textbook for students or resource for practitioners, this book shows engineers in all disciplines how to use five communication modes―asking, listening, writing, speaking, and visuals―to participate in or lead successful engineering projects and achieve professional success and significance.

Written by a highly qualified author with six decades of relevant experience, The Communicative Engineer:

• Illustrates, using examples, the benefits of communication knowledge, skills, and attitudes (KSA) and the costs of poor communication
• Presents communication fundamentals and goes well beyond theory by illustrating numerous applications
• Describes the five modes of communication, including their pros and cons, and offers detailed advice on when and how to use them
• Prepares readers to use or participate in various communication forms such as interviews, letters, meeting minutes, memoranda, oral examinations, proposals, question and answer sessions, reports, resumes, speeches, and texts
• Profiles excellent engineer communicators to serve as exemplars and references memorable speeches from within and outside of engineering to provide examples
• Provides thorough documentation of content for readers who want to dig deeper into selective aspects of communication

Supplementing the scientific and technical education of engineers, The Communicative Engineer offers engineering students and practitioners in all disciplines the parallel communication KSA needed to fully realize their potential. Given technology’s ever-increasing role in society, the communicative engineer will be prepared to fill leadership roles.

Stuart G. Walesh, PhD, PE, Dist.M.ASCE, F.NSPE, has six decades of experience in government, academic, and business sectors, during which he served as a project manager, department head, discipline manager, author, marketer, litigation consultant, sole proprietor, instructor through professor, and dean of an engineering college. As a member of various organizations, Stu coached junior professionals in areas such as communication, team essentials, project planning and management, and effecting change.