Why engineers should learn to communicate | Kit Barritt [Inspirational Interview]

Somebody's got to try them out, somebody's got to be the, the groundbreaker, and I'm more than happy to do that. Trying to do it all yourself means that the— whatever it is that one's trying to do, you're reliant entirely upon yourself doing that, and that isn't good in the long term. I needed to do was to get a core group of people inspired and committed so that It didn't need me.

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, people watching another episode of Inspirational Interviews. And today I have a very special guest with whom I've been connected since the start of 2020. It's my honor and privilege to introduce to you Mr. DTM Kit Barrett. Kit, welcome to the show.

Thanks, Haritosh Srivastav. It's an honor, great experience for you. Thank you.

Thank you. So Kit, this is one of the shows that I host where I get people who have inspired me in some or other ways, and I get a little bit closer to them, get to know their stories, their journeys, and also try to get some inspiration out of that for our audience. To start off the interview, I would like to ask you about your your life journey and kind of things that you have done?

So right from when I was a little kid, my interest was in science. My first idea of a career was to be a scientist. That was mostly because at the time I hadn't heard of the term engineer. So I was very clear right from the age of 9 or 10 that I wanted to work in a technical field. And so that made it really quite easy through schools that I knew what I wanted to do. And I found that, if I'm being immodest, I found school relatively easy. And so I had time to do additional study. And so, for example, at the age of 14 or 15, I was going to night school to learn electronics. Which meant that I actually studied the first part of an electronics degree before I was 15. So, and that was just, you know, I wanted to know about stuff, and that interest in finding things out and going finding things out has stayed with me. I still want to know stuff. I want to know how stuff works. I want to make things work better. So although at my core I'm an engineer, I then use that to help me with all sorts of other things in life. So I did an engineering degree, of course. My interest is also in television, so I started working in the broadcast industry. Both of my parents are teachers or educators, and I managed to, or found I dropped into that also very easily. So although, um, I'm properly qualified as an engineer, almost as soon as I could, I was passing that knowledge on. I was working as a trainer, working as a technical trainer, traveling all over the world. That was just brilliant. That, um, you know, my 20s, I started regularly, like every week I was flying off to some, some new place. Um, that opened the world to me that going and visiting people all over the world, trying to work out how best to communicate with them and pass on that sort of knowledge to them. I absolutely loved it, that it was both technical but I was also interacting with people, I was helping them, and I then continued doing that from being a technical trainer myself. I was then running running training, so working as a training manager, and that became more about the stakeholders, understanding the drivers of people beyond just simply learning the technical things. So I then moved on a little bit more and did a couple more degrees. I did a Master of Science degree in Technology Management, which allowed me to look at things in a, in a different way. And, uh, helps me understand the people issues of technical things. And that has been a real eye-opener, and it's changed the way I think about stuff. Of course I'm interested in the technology, but, um, the, the technology is nothing without the people. And a lot of engineers forget that. And certainly when I was younger, I was only interested in the nuts and bolts and resistors and the transistors and stuff, you know, the technical stuff. But now I'm much more interested in what drives people, what they want out of technology, and I add to that communication. That clearly without that communication, that understanding, that technology doesn't necessarily deliver what it could deliver. And so now I'm working again as a technical manager— sorry, technical training manager. And again, that's all about understanding people's knowledge needs, working out how best to fill those and delivering, delivering that, and working out in particular at the moment how to do that when we can't meet face to face, which is what we used to do to deliver training courses.

Awesome. So a couple of things that I really picked up is one is that, no, you started exploring Word at a pretty young age, and, and you said whenever you went someplace, you started exploring new things and people and other things, and that helped you. And the thing is, no, even though you are from technology background, and I'm also an engineer now as a manager, but yeah, there's always a people side of things. So technology is great, but you need to have people. With technology without people is nothing. So thank you so much for that. Now, let's talk a bit about Toastmasters. I know a bit about your introduction to Toastmasters. But for the audience's sake, would you like to tell us how did you got introduced to Toastmasters and how has your journey been?

Yeah, sure, thanks. So both my parents were members of Toastmasters, and my introduction to that was that my father was trying to build some lights for his club and wanted me to assist building some light, but wanted some lights that did something rather more than simply had on/off switches for them. But it's quite difficult to time speeches and watch them and so asked me if it were possible for me to make a set of lights that timed themselves. Now this was the mid-'90s, I was back in the country, worked a little, lived abroad, so I'd come back into the UK, and so I designed and built a computer-controlled lighting system and needed to see whether it worked properly. Again, the people aspect of it, the user interface. So I took it to a local Toastmasters Club, got friendly with the people there, thought I would go back, and so became a member of the nearby Toastmasters Club. I had 3 teenage children at the time. After a couple of years of doing that, life got in the way. There was no evening when I wasn't driving some child to some after-school activity or other. Yeah. And so it wasn't possible after a few years of being a member, being a VPE, being a president, being an area director, for me to continue because I simply couldn't. But, uh, so I had a period of time when I couldn't go, but I still, whenever I was traveling abroad, I would find clubs in the cities that I was traveling and go visit them. It was a brilliant way of filling an otherwise boring evening. Then when I went out to the Middle East, I was asked to help out with the club there and joined again and started once again picking up my Toastmaster time. So I've been in Toastmasters, started about 20 years ago, but there's a period of about 8 also years in the middle where I couldn't attend.

Thank you, that's a really, really long time in Toastmasters, and I've learned a lot from you. My next question is my favorite question about failures. I mean, a lot of interviews, people talk about success and rather boast about success, but one of the things I particularly, uh, talk to people is about their failures, one or two failures that they encountered, and what were the learnings out of those failures. So Would you mind sharing one or two of your failures?

Yeah, sure. So I used to work for Sony, and I tried setting up a club, Toastmasters club, in Sony, obviously called Sony Speakers. What else could it be called? Um, thank you. Yeah. Um, and, uh, I got the buy-in from the company, from the HR department, and I started running some meetings. And what I found was that if I wasn't there— and I was doing overseas trips at the time— that the meetings really didn't happen. That what I needed to do was to get a core group of people inspired and committed so that it didn't need me for the first 6 months to be present. By the time it became apparent that, that if I wasn't there, it wasn't going to run. That the meetings, there'd be sufficient meetings that hadn't run, that weren't successful, that we lost that stride. What I learned is get the people on board first. That although it's a little difficult, trying to do it all yourself means that the— whatever it is that one's trying to do, you're reliant entirely upon yourself doing that, and that isn't good in the long term. So my longer-term lesson is that if you're trying to run something, it's much better to spread the tasks out, to assist other people so that you can step back as soon as possible and be available to help, rather than trying to run it all yourself.

Um, I think that is very applicable for anything that requires more than one people. If you're having a group or team Yeah, you need to set up the right foundation, right team, and then start building. You don't want to build an empire on a very weak foundation so that with the wind it can blow out. Okay. Thank you for sharing that experience. So my next question to you is in terms of coronavirus, which I hope is going away, what has been your journey? I know you have been quite involved in a lot of Toastmasters and conferences and also If I have to ask you about one or two takeaways for this whole 2020, what do you think it would be?

Well, for a start, I started a job under lockdown. That is a very, very weird experience, that to get a job during lockdown and to start it without actually going to a place of work. It is a bizarre experience. But the very first thing that I did was to use my, my technical knowledge, my experience of WebExes and so on, to help the company do their communication online. I was writing some guides to Zoom, I was coaching people and doing online presentations, and so making that work. That meant that I was using my Toastmasters experience at work I could then use my work experience with Toastmasters as Toastmasters went online, and so because I was writing Zoom guides and so on for work, I was then also writing Zoom guides for Toastmasters, and because I just like to explore technology, it meant that trying to do things online for the first time— somebody's got to try them out, somebody's got to be the groundbreaker, and I'm more than happy to do that. Figure out how Zoom works, work out how best to use it for Toastmasters. But the most best thing about it is that I was missing my friends in Qatar. I lived for 3.5 years in Qatar, I was the president of the club there, and it's an 8-hour flight to Qatar. I can't easily just go and visit my friends in Qatar for Toastmasters meetings. Meeting. So the fact that we could meet online, the moment they went online, I saw that they were going online. I'm still a member of their WhatsApp group, and so I could meet them online. I could help them with their initial online meetings, and I continue to keep in touch with them. Indeed, I'm running their contest for them. They needed somebody from outside the club to help run their contest, there was really only one person they were going to ask to do that. It was just a question of my availability, and I, I was free. So the fact that I could keep in touch with them— there's some other people I know in, in Thailand, um, so I helped run some contests in Thailand. I'm involved with, with clubs, um, as you know, members in the US. It's just brilliant that the, the the world of Toastmasters is suddenly expanding because you don't have to be physically present. It means that I can meet up with people who I haven't seen for ages. We can invite people who used to be members along to meetings to join up without, you know, they've moved away, they can still come and join. It's just, it's just brilliant. Um, and the fact that I can the groundbreaker working out how to do things. There's plenty of people who've done this, but I'm one of them. I can learn about it and then help other people to run their meetings successfully, work out how, how to overcome the limitations of online presentations and online contests. You know, it just, it's so, it's just so works for me that it's a techie thing, but it's involved in communication and helping other people people and training people and documenting and so on. So I just, I love it. I put quite a lot of work into it, but that's because I really rather enjoy doing it.

Definitely, definitely. And that we all know that, and we know you are the tech guru for all this Tech 91 in Toastmasters. But yeah, I love the fact that, yeah, why a lot of people are not taking it in the right spirit if we look at it in from the different glass you have more opportunities to connect. I know I've been part of— I mean, yeah, every week I'm into India, UK, and US, which in practical terms is not possible if I have to physically travel. But now I can visit. I just have to be in front of a laptop and log into Zoom or any other platform and get there and get almost similar experience. So yeah, that's a lot of opportunity. So thank you so much. And I know you have been trying all the new features. Anytime a new feature come, I know Kit would be trying. So That, that's great to have you in our club as well.

Great.

So as we are closing in towards the end of the, this interview, I would like to ask my last and final question is that if Kit has to give a couple of tips for any young engineers or other professionals who are either in their final years of studies or they are just starting their career, what would be those Certainly the lesson that I've learned is that, um, if I'm talking to other engineers, that engineering may be interesting, but you need to understand the people aspects of engineering.

It doesn't matter how great a product is, if people can't figure out how to use it, if you can't show them how to use it, it's a, it's a piece of junk. And that, um, I know as a young engineer myself, I really wasn't interested in that people side of things. But to be successful, and to be successful as an engineer, you do have to have— you do have to engage with that people side of the job. And, um, if you— however brilliant you are as an engineer, if you can't communicate that, then it's, it's simply just in your head. And that, that will limit your ability to get on in life, that will limit your ability to, um, to be fulfilled, unless you just want to sit in a back room tinkering away, um, which is not a great way to, uh, to do things. And I've met in my, in my life many brilliant engineers, brilliant designers who were completely incapable of communicating their designs. And that's, you know, that's not brilliant. So to be successful as an engineer, you need to have communication skills. That's writing skills, speaking skills, and thinking about the stakeholder aspects of the technology.

Thank you so much, Kit. That is very profound. Yeah, unless you connect with people, you can't sell whatever engineering miracle you make. So thank you, it was such a nice experience to have you in this show.

Thank you very much. I've also taken some inspiration from you, so this is a bit kind of mutual, but I think you're very inspirational. Thank you very much.