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Minority Engineer Magazine, launched in 1979, is a career- guidance and recruitment magazine offered at no charge to qualified engineering or computer-science students and professionals who are African-American, Hispanic, Native American, and Asian American. Minority Engineer presents career strategies for readers to assimilate into a diversified job marketplace.

This magazine reaches minority engineers nationwide at their home addresses, colleges and universities, and chapters of student and professional organizations.

If you are an engineering student or professional who is a member of a minority group, Minority Engineer is available to you FREE!


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SHED BAD COMMUNICATION HABITS

One or two bad communication habits is all it takes to cause a lifetime of trouble. And with today’s quick and easy methods of communication, it’s all too easy for bad habits to work their way in. You overreact to an Email— not for the first time—and send off a furious and damaging reply. Your spouse accuses you of not listening (again) and you have to sheepishly admit (again) that she’s right. You offend your “friends” or followers on a social media platform with yet another ill-advised attempt at humor. Or you can’t resist a snarky comeback to a difficult customer’s provocation, even though you immediately regret your words. When bad communication habits take over, the reputation you worked so hard to cultivate takes a beating.

“Bad communication habits are the punishment that keeps on giving,” says Geoffrey Tumlin, author of Stop Talking, Start Communicating: Counter intuitive Secrets to Success in Business and in Life. “Even if you suffer from only one bad habit, it can recur in dozens of conversations and cause damage each time. But the good news is that by eliminating a single bad habit you can prevent many future problems. In fact, nothing else you can do gives you as much bang for your buck as resolving to eliminate a bad communication habit. Tumlin shares seven of the most common bad communication habits.

• Bad Habit #1: Letting the Neanderthal pick your words. Word selection is better left to our more analytical modern brain, because the Neanderthal prefers to club first and ask questions later. A simple but powerful way to improve your communication is to stop talking and think for a minute whenever you’re frustrated.

• Bad Habit #2: Using authenticity as an excuse for bad behavior. Smart communicators realize that by focusing on what they want to accomplish instead of what they want to say, they keep their conversational goals in their rightful place—above their feelings in terms of priority. Poor communication—when your words hijack your goals— isn’t a trait; it’s a choice.”

• Bad Habit #3: Multitasking when we should be listening, make a concerted effort to reinvigorate our listening skills. Intentional listening will make you more present in conversations and will decisively improve your communication.

• Bad Habit #4: Asking faulty questions. Questions aren’t always neutral. They make some of your conversations better, but as you’ve probably noticed, many questions make a surprisingly large number of your conversations worse. Faulty questions contribute to many conversational failures and can add anxiety, defensiveness, and ill will to interactions. In general, the more you query simply to indulge your personal cravings to get an answer, to hammer home a point, or to satisfy a narrow personal interest, the more your questions are likely to stifle dialogue. It’s better to focus on what you can learn from or about another person and to ask questions that reflect a broad curiosity about the person or topic you’re discussing.”

• Bad Habit #5: Meddling. Our quick, cheap, and easy digital devices allow us to have far too many unnecessary conversations, engage in way too much unnecessary collaboration, and get our hands (and thumbs) on too many irrelevant issues. That’s why smart communicators, like smart doctors, have a good triage system— its categories are Now, Delay, and Avoid—to focus on the most pressing issues, while delaying or ignoring less important matters.

• Bad Habit #6: Fighting with difficult people. At the end of a conversation, the difficult person remains the same, but often you are in a weaker position. But giving up your desire to ‘win’ by imposing your will on the other person can realistically and consistently improve your communication with difficult people. When you find yourself with no choice but to interact with a difficult person, have modest expectations, avoid tangents, and stay focused on your end goal.

• Bad Habit #7: Overreacting. Excessive force frequently causes a destructive cycle—attack, retaliation, escalated attack, and escalated retaliation, etc. No matter how justified you may feel, the bottom line is that using excessive force isn’t usually a winning strategy. Exercising restraint during a contentious interaction is challenging, but try to apply the least amount of interpersonal force and intensity necessary to accomplish your objective. Be the calm, controlled, and stabilizing influence on a conversation that’s become heated so you can minimize the chance of permanent relational damage.

 

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