8 Marks of Effective Engineering Dialogue

I am excited to be providing a new class titled "8 Marks of Effective Engineering Dialogue". This is one of my Outcome Accelerator offerings that can be performed in 2 days with your team.

I am a visual thinker, so to describe these "8 Marks" I will do it with a few diagrams...

Let's consider a piece of automation in a medical device consumable production facility. We will focus on two people working to improve this machine's OEE:

The Process Eng has been trained in Lean/Six Sigma, and the Validation Engineer is well versed in FDA regulatory requirements.

Now, the hard part: communicating between these two engineers as they work on improving the machine's OEE while maintaining regulatory compliance:

I can think of numerous debates, frustrating meetings, stress, and stalled projects when my own communication patterns would fall into this cycle.

This is my motivation for creating the "8 Marks" training: skilled dialogue = effective engineering

In our diagram between the process and validation engineers, the 8 Marks are:

Each one is a specific and actionable tool that can be immediate impact the engineering work in your organization:

1. Define Your Stories

2. Identify Your Path

3. Ask for Others' Path

4. Layer Mutual Understanding

5. Observe Before Prescribing

6. Guide by Making It Easy

7. Unlock Motivation

8. Execute Action

These 8 items spell DIALOGUE, which can be a helpful mnemonic.

In the real world, we know there many more key voices involved in a manufacturing environment:

This is why I'm such a believer in intentionally training engineers in dialogue skills. Even the best idea can be derailed by poor dialogue.

A brief overview of each mark is shown below.

#1: Define Your Stories

The stories we tell ourselves are remarkably powerful. They can determine the path of a relationship, or the success of a project, or a career. Understanding the 4 steps related to our own storytelling is foundational to good engineering. Crucial Conversations chapter 5 goes into this detail:

We often go through 4 steps inside our head:

1. You see / hear something: "John was late to the meeting by 10 mins"

2. You tell yourself a story about what you saw/heard: "John was late last time as well, I don't think he values my project"

3. You have a feeling about the story: "I'm angry that John doesn't value my project"

4. You act on that feeling: you exclude John from your next design review, saying "Since he doesn't value my project, I don't need his input"

And to make it even more challenging, the 4 steps can happen quickly in our heads: in one second we can go from seeing a fact, telling a story and having a feeling. Separating between #1 and #2 incredibly important for process engineers!

Examples of stories I've told myself countless times:

• "Larry in Validation will never sign my IQ protocol, he doesn't want my work to succeed"

• "3rd shift production leadership doesn't respect what I'm doing, they just want to have it easy while engineering isn't in the office"

• "Jane in maintenance is doing a horrible job on the monthly PM, she must not care about our goal to improve OEE"

Each of these stories drove my feelings, which then influenced my actions. And the scariest part is once I started telling these stories to myself, I would look for additional facts that would confirm my story! That is a self-affirming downward spiral that can be quite damaging.

I love this part of my class, because it can remarkably eye opening how we treat the stories we tell ourselves as facts. That doesn't mean that every story is false, it just means that we need to carefully consider each of the 4 steps when dealing with an important dialogue.

#2: Identify Your Path

A challenge in our dialogue is that we do not know what the other person's intent is. So, we try to guess and look for clues to figure it out. The trickiest part? I know what my intent is, but you can't know that since you aren't a mind reader.

Chapter 7 of Crucial Conversations says it best "most confusion occurs not because of what was said, but in guessing why it was being said"

Stating your path builds on Mark #1, with specific dialogue that clarifies what you have seen, what you are thinking, and invites the other person to add or clarify things from their perspective.

Share your facts: "I noticed.." "We agreed that.. & yet, I'm not seeing.."

Tell your story: "I'm beginning to wonder if.." "It seems to me.."

Ask for others' paths: "What's your view?" "Help me understand.."

How? With confidence and humility

#3: Ask for Others' Path

If the first two Marks have focused on your own words and thoughts, this one is all about how to actively listen and invite others to share their perspective.

Chapter 8 of Crucial Conversations emphasizes these two skills:

Skill #1: Explore with AMPP (Ask, Mirro, Paraphrase, Prime)

Ask: "what do you think about ______"

Mirror: "you say you're ok, but the look on your feeling..."

Paraphrase: "so what I hear you saying is ______?"

Prime: "is your concern that if we _____"

My personal favorite is phrasing a statement with "is it correct to say...." when talking about a technical or abstract subject. This invites the other person to provide their input without worrying about if I want to hear it.

Skill #2: Respond with ABC (Agree, Build, Compare)

Agree: "that's a good point, I agree"

Build: "I think that makes sense and I would also add ...."

Compare: "Hmm...that is different than how I have thought about it. I thought that ...."

#4: Layer Mutual Understanding

From a Crucial Conversations perspective, mutual understanding can be as simple as the conversation content between two people.

For Process Engineers, I like to think of this in a more specific way: what are artifacts that represent mutual understanding?

• Design review meeting notes

• Validation protocols

• Project charters

• Manufacturing Operating Procedure

• Standard Operating Procedure

So, the key for Mark #4 is learning how to view artifacts that engineers generate through this lens: does this document help create mutual understanding?

If there are known areas of contention (for example: the acceptance criteria for a specific OQ test), then how can you the first 3 Marks to navigate the disagreement?

Too often in my career, when there was disagreement with a specific validation protocol or design review, I viewed that as direct criticism of my engineering skill. Reframing that disagreement as a normal part of the journey in capturing mutual understanding has greatly improved the quality of my artifacts.

In the class we will work through specific practical examples of how we can elicit and maintain mutual understanding.

#5: Observe Before Prescribing

Here is where our Marks can start to interact with each other as a process engineer. If we are telling ourselves a story about how 3rd shift production runs a specific machine, this can greatly impact our ability to accurately prescribe changes to help them improve their shift specific metrics.

The solution? We must be able to observe and diagnose before jumping to prescribing. Diagnosing is not excusing, listening is not agreeing.

Chapter 2 of Crucial Influence lays out a powerful 2x3 grid that can be used to guide your diagnostic approach:

Examples of what each of the 6 areas can sound like are:

My light bulb turned on when I saw the simple matrix. It provided a framework that I could navigate without getting stuck on one specific area or item.

In the case of a 3rd shift production issue, if I'm solely focused on "know how to" all I can offer is pointing to their procedure and saying "see, all the steps are in there". I could be missing numerous other sources of the issue, and the effectiveness of my engineering is minimal.

In the class we will work through specific diagnostic questions that can be directly applied to non conformance investigations, CAPAs, or any other conversation where you are trying understand what caused a specific behavior, issue, or outcome.

#6: Guide by Making it Easy

On the journey of influence, you need to first start in the ability column:

The group discussion in my class is quite interesting for Marks #6 and #7. We will brainstorm different options for each specific Ability area, with live examples of how this is playing out in your production facility.

#7: Unlock Motivation

Moving on to the column of Motivation can introduce subjects that may appear to be "for management" or a "supervisor". To be an effective process engineer, I believe understanding these sources is critical to influence.

Even if you don't have direct reports, being able to identify and articulate improvement across this spectrum is powerful.

I worked in a specific factory that initially only had 1 level of automation operators. As we brought in more advanced custom automation, we identified a need to make a scale of multiple skill levels for automation operators. This touched on area 3 and 5, and we saw OEE improve as the Operators clearly understood this new structure.

Across Marks #6 and #7, it is tempting to pick one of the areas and say "see, we've addressed that one item, we are good!". In the class we will talk through how success can be improved by multiple factors if we address at least 4 of the 6 areas.

#8: Execute Action

While there is an entire discipline around Project Management, this simple sentence is what I fall back on more often then not: Who does what by when, and how we will follow up?

Who = task owner

What = the task itself. Ambiguity can be a wrecking ball to progress, and often times the action in my head is not specifically that same action that is the other person's mind

When = due date

How we will Follow Up = this is the one I miss most often. I'm so glad to have made it through a hard or complex conversation, I'm racing to the finish line and want to call it a win. But following up is critical to closing the loop on this specific item.

In my class I will go deeper into art and science of task identification, but this is a good starting point. Engineers who consistently use this phrase will find themselves moving through hard problems at a consistent pace.

I'm Interested - Now What?

Let's talk! I'm excited to offer an Outcome Accelerator for this content. Let's start improving your engineering dialogue together: david@bergmanconsultancy.com

Where did these "8 marks" come from?

I am using three books as the foundation for this content:

Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High

Patterson, Kerry, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, & Al Switzler. McGraw-Hill. 2002 (third edition). ISBN: 978-1260474183

Crucial Influence: Leadership Skills to Create Lasting Behavior Change

Grenny, J., Patterson, K., Maxfield, D., McMillan, R., & Switzler, A. McGraw-Hill Education. 2023 (third edition). ISBN: 978-1265049652

Crucial Accountability: Tools for Resolving Violating Expectations, Broken Commitments, and Bad Behavior

Patterson, K., Grenny, J., McMillan, R., Switzler, A., & Maxfield, D. McGraw-Hill Professional. 2013 (third edition). ISBN-13: 978-0071829311

Each of the books come from the same organization (Crucial Learning). What I am calling the 8 Marks are key items taken from each book. Every concept will have direct reference to the specific chapter and book.

A couple of key disclaimers:

• I am not licensed through Crucial Learning to provide official training to your organizations

• I am not offering Crucial Learning certificates for completing my training class

• My training class includes copies of each book, and is a condensed summary of specific chapters from each book

• I provide manufacturing engineering examples and custom handouts that serve as desktop aids once the class is complete