Maksym Labyk CS-205

Professional Communication
Good communication skills are crucial to any profession and any professional
duties. Whether sitting in a meeting, attending an interview, or sending an email to
a client, communication is of vital importance. Professional communication is
defined as oral, written, digital, or visual forms of information delivery in
a workplace. Professional communication also involves various forms of speaking,
writing, and responding within and beyond the workplace environment. It is used
in memos, letters, business proposals, and press releases.
there are actually five types of communication: verbal, non-verbal, written,
listening, and visual. Verbal communication occurs when we engage in speaking
with others. It can be face-to-face, over the telephone, via Skype or Zoom, etc.
Some verbal engagements are informal, such as chatting with a friend over coffee
or in the office kitchen. What we do while we speak often says more than the
actual words. Non-verbal communication includes facial expressions, posture, eye
contact, hand movements, and touch. Whether it is an email, a memo, a report, a
Facebook post, a Tweet, a contract, etc. all forms of written communication have
the same goal to disseminate information in a clear and concise manner – though
that objective is often not achieved. The act of listening does not often make its
way onto the list of types of communication. Active listening, however, is perhaps
one of the most important types of communication because if we cannot listen to
the person sitting across from us, we cannot effectively engage with them. We are
a visual society. Think about it, televisions are running 24/7, Instagram is visual
with memes, videos, images, etc., Think about from a personal perspective – the
images we post on social media are meant to convey meaning – to communicate a
message.

For myself, as a programmer, I singled out 4 basic soft skills. First skill is self-
awareness. Healthy self-awareness in a developer looks like a software engineer
being confident in the things they know well but humble when they have an
opportunity to learn.  The second skill is critical thinking, that is paramount to
software development as a whole. Out of every other soft skill, this one, in
particular, will have the greatest effect on how your developer tackles complex
issues and to what extent they’re thinking outside the box. The third one is
accountability. When a developer takes ownership of their mistakes the rest of the
team can take advantage of that example to identify similar mistakes later on. The
last skill is time management. It is a critical soft skill when it comes to software
development.