Of course, soft skills matter, but which ones? In my opinion, every engineer should be better at these two: active listening and clear communication.
Listening isn’t just about hearing; it’s about being present processing information, and asking the right follow-up questions. Too often, we listen passively, just waiting for their turn to speak and sometimes even hoping that we need not speak at all :) Instead of listening passively, listen with intent.
Clear communication is all about conveying ideas, decisions, and information easily clearly, and unambiguously. Be concise, structured, and complete; and say just enough to get the point across without unnecessary fluff. Apply this for your meetings, slack messages, or even documentation.
One thing I proactively do is to observe and measure the number of clarifications asked in my communication. If there are too many such questions, then my message probably wasn’t as clear as I thought it was. I go back and iterate on it and ask myself
- did I really listen?
- did I really understand what I was talking about?
- did I communicate it well?
This happened to me recently, so, coming from my personal experience :) I am a work in progress, and will always be :)