Can you talk the talk?

We've all the heard the saying, "You talk the talk, but can you walk the walk?"  It’s a close cousin to “put your money where your mouth is.”  It’s intended to goad someone into action, because “talk is cheap”.

There are a lot of people in the technical space that pride themselves on being doers and not talkers.  Sometimes people who are introverted, whose fight or flight reaction kicks in when they need to talk with someone outside of their inner circle, will begin to justify why they don’t need to interact with other human beings.  “I let my actions speak for me,” they think to themselves, “I’m a maker, not a taker.” 

I’ve been there, holding an irrational disdain for salespeople, because they sell and profit off of the product that the engineering team built.  But for me it’s mostly jealousy, because they make their own schedule, while I am expected to be visible and in a chair for 8 hours a day. 

Several years ago, I took steps to steer my career down the management track.  And it didn’t feel natural.  I didn’t take to it.  I was working for MegaCorp and saw how little they valued the smart engineers, treating them as pawns on the board.   And I didn’t want to be a pawn.  So I got my MBA and got sent to leadership courses by my employer.  But I eventually was drawn back to software development, and it felt right.  

But the game hasn’t changed.  There are still plenty of highly intelligent, timid engineers who are happy to stay out of the chatter and politics.  And if one is truly happy in that position, then great.  But if you’re not, then I challenge you to invert the question.  It is no longer, “You talk the talk, but can you walk the walk”.  It becomes, “You walk the walk, but can you talk the talk?”

Talking and communicating in a confident manner is not just mindless banter, not just small talk.  It needs to happen, for a host of reasons.  The thing that engineers need to understand is that communicating with other human beings equates to getting things done.  And if you can form thoughts and arguments in your mind that are well thought out, and you can put them on paper, then you can look someone in the eye and verbalize them too.

I believe that there is a decently sized contingent of tech workers who are frustrated with the false dichotomy that you must either be an engineer OR a business person, but you can’t be both.  We’ve all heard something along the lines of “If you have technical chops and business acumen, you’re a rare double threat and opportunites abound for someone who fits that profilie.”  But, in my experience that turns out to only be the case if you make those opportunities.  They’re not just out there waiting to be filled.