148: Differentiate Or Continue To Suffer

<p>Education can be a barrier to intelligence sometimes.  This is often the case with people educated in very hard skill disciplines.  They are asked to absorb vast amounts of complex information and to follow strict procedural structures.  The rote learning aspect becomes paramount.  This is fine and will get you graduated out of varsity and into the real world.  With so much invested in technical knowledge, initially, other skill sets are not fully appreciated enough.</p> <p>Soft skills, such as communication, are not highly valued.  The thinking is that this is rather fluffy stuff.  Serious people are knowledgeable about deep technical subjects and how they transmit that knowledge isn’t all that important.  “Engineers understand engineers, so you don’t need good presenting skills”, is the type of logic you will hear from these failed communicators.  The quality of the data or the advice is considered to the key thing, not the delivery.  Anyway the delivery bit to them smacks of conmen, carnival barkers and dodgy sales types who talked you into buying that timeshare you never use, while you were relaxing on holiday.</p> <p>I was reminded of this recently when talking with a very highly technically skilled executive.  I have actually seen this person present and he has vast amounts of data at his ready command.  He is steady, reliable and a bit dull.  Normally being a bit dull mightn’t be a problem, except in his profession the competition for advice is fierce.  He isn’t the only one running around with tons of great data.  Gathering potential clients together and giving them a snapshot into how brainy you are is a great prospecting tool in his profession.  You would think that intelligent people would be able to work out that the delivery of all that brainpower was a competitive edge.  An edge that needs to be really finely honed, maintained and if possible extended.</p> <p>In the course of our conversation, I was suggesting that he could do some presentation training and this would help him stand tall amongst