Interpersonal skills needed for Network Engineers

Mon Feb 18 19:23:31 UTC 2008

>R.  Irving wrote:
>
>   Looking for tech's that are "person" people defies the root 
>demographic profile. Person people
>are extroverts, good technicians more often than not, are 
>introverts. Seeking the
>Courtesan with the genuine heart of gold, as it were, is not only 
>one of the oldest failings,
>but probably ranks among the most common... (At least in HR 
>departments :-P )  .
>

I throw this out there to the rest of the techs on this list:

The problem there is that someone that is a good really tech and even 
a really good people person eventually learns to hate people, or they 
end up going insane. Probably both.  This is because they perceive 
the people they deal with all day long are idiots that don't actually 
want to be helped.  Or more often than not, don't want to hear what 
the real problem is, nor do they want to take the effort to help 
themselves.

Being a tech that also has decent people skills, I have this "going 
insane" problem myself.  When someone asks me to help them solve a 
problem, and asks "what's wrong" and I answer with "It could be about 
1000 different things.  It's impossible to tell until we narrow it 
down. So let's get started so we can figure it out," a significant 
percentage of people  (certain personality types) hear "I don't know 
how to fix the problem. [ I'm an idiot]."  They become hard to deal 
with because they don't want to listen to what their perceived idiot 
of a tech has to tell them.  Why would they want to go through 
troubleshooting techniques that some idiot is telling them to do when 
that idiot just said that they don't know how to fix it?

Some of those types of people actually want to be lied to.  "Oh, I 
know how to fix that... do this... oh, didn't work?  Ok, do that 
instead.... ok, I know how to fix this... try this now...."  Some 
people like this.

Some people hate being lied to. They'd rather hear the first approach.

It entirely comes down to the interpersonal communication version of 
impedance mismatch.  As long as the tech and the customer have a 
similar impedance, all is well.  But when they're not matched up 
right,  the transmitter (the tech) transmits harder, and more signal 
bounces back from the transmission line (the person on the other 
end).  Eventually, it burns out the transmitter.  Impedance mismatch.

Figuring out what kind of person you're dealing with before fixing 
the problem is the issue.  And it's hard to do.  Matching up the 
right "problem haver" with the right "problem fixer" is the crux of 
the issue.  That's why having a front line of "people person" types 
to sort out the chafe solve the easy problems, and adapt their 
impedance to match the customer, and be smart enough to forward the 
hard ones on to better techs works so well.

It applies to all techs.  Computer, car mechanics, doctors, etc. 
Imagine a doctor that is so tired of dealing with patents that don't 
want to take the effort to help narrow down a problem, that they just 
prescribe 6 different pills in a shotgun affect to make that person 
go away and quit bothering them.  :-)

-Jerry