An Engineer’s Playbook for Formal Communication in the AI Age

Senthil Kumar

2025-09-17

Why am I even speaking on this topic?

• Once upon a time, 15 years ago ….
• I started my role as a Market Research Analyst in a Procurement-focused Management Consultancy Firm.
• Typically, a Management consultancy has a team of Consultants and an army of Market Research (MR) Analysts.
• My first company combined the role of both Consultant and MR Analysts into one.
• As a Consultant and a MR Analyst, I had a ton of opportunities to hone my communications skills

Why am I even speaking on this topic?

• 💼 My Career: If I were an Asset Management Company, I’d have primarily invested in momentum funds.
• 🔄 Career Transitions from one momentum to another: Management Consulting → Analytics → Data Science → Deep Learning → Generative AI

• 🥖🧈 Early Roles: My bread and butter in the first two roles - Management Consultancy and Analytics - depended heavily on communication skills!
  
• I made cold-calls, sent lots of cold emails, prepared tonnes of reports and gave an equally substantial report explanation calls to clients in senior levels

The Four Pillars

• Active Listening 👂
• Mindful Reading 📖
• Deliberate Writing ✍️
• Clear Speaking 🗣️

• Your mind voice: “Just fancy, empty adjectives 🫙”
  
• But really, it’s about making everything active and intentional
  
• Practical tips and hacks coming up in the next slides 🚀

What does it take to become a better communicator?

• All four forms of communication are deeply interconnected 🔗
  
• Better listeners become better speakers 👂➡️🗣️
  
• Better readers become better writers 📖➡️✍️
  
• Strong writers often become strong speakers — and vice versa 🔄

1. Active Listening

Typical Instructions for Active Listening

• 🧘 Be present
• 🤔 Stay curious
• 👍 Acknowledge (nodding, verbal cues)
• 🔁 Reflect in your own words

• Thanks, but no thanks 🙅
  
• These tips are hard to practice—especially for boring topics 😅

Listening - With Imaginative Subtitles

Activate Imaginative Subtitles

My go-to active listening hack for boring topics:

• 🎬 Run a mental subtitle track

  • Words scroll across your mind’s screen on a black background
  • In a cursive, homebrew-style font
  • Sprinkled with emojis 🥤✨

• 📝 Make nouns stand out in bold and spice up adjectives with italics

Listening - With Spectrogram

Listening — With Spectrogram 🎶

• In your imaginative Netflix mind, let the bottom strip run a Spectrogram 📊
• Actively notice every inflection in speech instead of just absorbing it subconsciously 🎧
• Is the delivery fiery like Virat Kohli 🔥 or calm like Dhoni 🧑🏼‍✈️🆒?
• Use it to gauge the passion in the speech — flat, wavy, smooth, evocative, or full of highs and lows 🌊

Listening — With Toastmasters-like Metrics 🎤

Side effects of running mental subtitles:

• ✅ Spot grammatical slips
• 🔢 Track filler words — the classic “Ah Counter” (my favorite!)
• 🔁 Notice stammering or repeated sentence starts

Listening as Toastmasters — Grammar ✍️

• Common slip-ups: “I can able to…”, “She did not completed this …” ❌
  
• Unless you’re Sachin 🏏 or ARR 🎶, speaking correctly matters in the long run ✅

Listening as Toastmasters — Ah Counter 🔢

• My favorite metric: the Ah Counter! 🎯
  
• Filler words like “like”, “you know”, “but umm…” 🙃
  

Listening as Toastmasters — Crutch Phrases 🪃

• Common fillers: “Actually”, “At the end of the day…”, “Honestly speaking…” 🗨️
  
• Are some of these phrases being overused? 🤔

Listening as Toastmasters — Stammering ⏸️

• Examples: “I-I-I think we should…” or “So, so, so the plan is…” 🗣️
  
• Often caused by rushing thoughts or ideas racing ahead of words 🏃💭
  

Why Toastmasters-like Active Listening? 🎧✨

• It’s not about finding faults 🤦‍♂️💥
• These hacks help you become less self-critical ❤️‍🔥
• Nobody’s perfect—and that’s perfectly okay 👌🏼
• But acknowledgment is the first step to improvement ✔️
• Often, the simplest solution is just pausing more ⏸️

Experienced Listener — Inferring Styles from a Speech 🎯

• Deductive ⬇️ — Top-down reasoning
• Inductive ⬆️ — Bottom-up reasoning
• Git Workflow 🔀 — Branching paths and merges …
  

Speech Style - Deductive: Top-down Approach

• “We need to refactor the payment module [main point].
  The current code has duplicated logic, poor error handling, and makes onboarding new developers difficult [details].”

• 👉 Here, the decision/action comes first, followed by supporting evidence

Speech Style - Inductive: Bottom-up Approach

• “The payment module has duplicated logic, poor error handling, and is hard for new developers to understand [details].
  That’s why we need to refactor it [main point].”

• 👉 Here, the evidence builds up, and the conclusion is delivered last.

Another Good Style: Trunk and Feature Branches

Hybrid Speech Styles

Real-life: Most talks are like a hybrid of deductive-inductive.

2. Second Pillar: Mindful Reading

Importance of Writing for Better Reading Comprehension ✍️📖

• The world is flooded with content — whether from humans or AI 🌍💨
• The real question: Are we truly efficient at reading comprehension? 🤔

Mindful Reading — Breaking Down Long Reads 📚✨

• Problem:
  • Long messages, reports, research papers, or documents can feel overwhelming 🤯
  • Passive scanning/reading gets you nowhere ❌
• Accountable Reading Hacks:
  • 📝 Headings Only — jot down one-word summaries
  • 😀👎❓ Emote It — copy each para/bullet and react to it
  • ✍️ Selective Self-Writing — add your own comment/summary to key sections

Mindful Reading — Visual Structures 🧩

• Use Flowcharts or Tables to simplify complex text
• Tools: Pen & Paper ✍️, Mermaid Charts 🪄, Excalidraw 🎨, Draw.io 🖥️, etc.

3. Third Pillar: Writing

My Motto on Writing ✍️✨

• Time spent writing is never wasted ⏳
• Writing is how I learn 📖
• Writing is how I think 💡

Avoid Agenda-less Meeting Invites or Hi!

• Avoid sending a meeting invite which does not have an agenda
  
• Never, ever send Empty “Hi/Hello” and waiting for others to respond. Always add an one-line context

The Importance of Writing Before Calling ✍️ → ☎️

• Yes, call and explain things 👥 — but prepare a pre-meeting write-up (if not for others, for yourself ).
  
• A short write-up before the meeting helps everyone align better ✅

Document-Driven Meetings — Any Takers? 📄🚀

• At Amazon, problem-solving meetings start with a structured written memo instead of a slide deck 📝
• The two-page memo received over 50 comments 📑📝 before the call

• The engineer felt disheartened initially 😓 but soon realized the writing and thinking required significant improvement 💡

Fourth Pillar: Speaking

Achieving Exceptional Speaking Skills 🎤✨

• Mastering listening, reading, and writing is key to exceptional speaking 👂📖✍️
• No matter where you are now—never underestimate your long-term potential 🚀

Meeting Room Conversations vs Public Speeches 🏢🎤

• Chasing public speaking perfection is a wrong goal (for most of us) ❌
• Nobody wants a Sashi Tharoor-style monologue in every day meeting discussions 😅

• Instead, let us focus on making everyday meeting room conversations effective!

How to Improve Meeting Room Conversations

• Improve your speech following the Toastmasters metrics
• Use the Speech Styles to make your thoughts coherent
• Practice thinking on your feet, which transfers to public speaking naturally 💡

Status Update Calls

• This is one of the most frequent calls as Software Engineers
• Let us look at the steps to master these calls

Status Update Call Template

• 1. Starting the Update 🎬
• 2. Acknowledging 👍
• 3. Transitioning 🔄
• 4. Answering Questions ❓
• 5. Closing & Next Steps 🏁✨

Status Update Call Hacks

• 1. Starting the Update 🎬
  • “To kick things off…” 🏁
  • “At a high level, here’s where we stand…” 📊
• 2. Acknowledging 👍
  • “Makes sense” ✅, “Fair point” 💡, “That adds up”, “You are right”

Status Update Call Hacks

• 3. Transitioning 🔄
  • “If we zoom out to see the big picture…” 🌐 | “If we drill deeper 🔍”
  • “That brings us to the next point…” ➡️

Status Update Call Hacks

• 4. Answering Questions ❓
  • “If I read your question correctly, you are asking…” 👀
  • “It’s a valid concern. I don’t have a concrete answer right now, but I’ll research and circle back.” 🔍
• 5. Closing & Next Steps 🏁✨
  • “Here’s what we’ll tackle next…” 📌
  • “I’ll follow up with an email …” ✉️

How to handle difficult conversations

Some Funny quotes

When Someone Puts A Gun to Your Head 🔫

Why Sheldon does not use cuss words

Like a Tree Standing in a Torrential Downpour

Handling Difficult Conversations — Scenarios ⚡️

• Scenario 1: Person A interrupts you midway — how do you respond? 🤔
• Scenario 2: Person A pressures you with an unwise timeline — what’s your move? ⏳
• Scenario 3: Person A puts you down publicly — how would you tackle it? 💬

1. Person A interrupts you midway — how do you respond? 🤔

• 1. Calm Assertive Pushback
     

• Hold that thought—let me finish this and then we’ll come to it.

• 2. Defusing the heat
     

• I hear you, I was coming around to that point anyway

2. Person A pressures you with an unwise timeline — what’s your move? ⏳

1. Buying Time Without Sounding Defensive
   

• I’d prefer to give you a realistic answer, not a rushed one — let me circle back by tomo.
  

2. Acknowledging Pressure, But Reframing
   

• I understand the urgency, At the same time, I want to make sure we don’t cut corners.

3. Person A puts you down publicly — how would you tackle it? 💬

1. Acknowledge but Reframe
   

• I hear your concern. I think it’s best we look at the and resolve the issue

2. Take the High Ground but still Reframe
   

• Thanks for the feedback. But I am avoiding explaining my past efforts to keep this discussion constructive. I’d rather want to look at future steps of resolution

Conclusion

What does a good communicator need?

• “Active” Everything - Listening, Reading, Writing and eventually it will show up in your speaking
• Have a holistic goal on communication