Beyond Texts and AI: Moving Up in Your Engineering Career

Relying on text or outsourcing your voice to AI won’t get you where you want to go in your engineering career.

“People who speak up move up.”

Dianna Booher’s line hits harder today, with so much workplace communication reduced to texts and AI-generated blurbs. Convenience now acts as a crutch. For many under 40, digital communication feels safer and easier.

For the next decade, leadership will be shaped by people who built their careers on human connection. Senior management and boards still decide in rooms, not threads.

Current leaders moved up by influencing through personal presence, not pings. They advanced because they can read a room and build trust in real time. The next generation of leaders needs to do the same.

That’s why relying on text or outsourcing your voice to AI won’t get you where you want to go. Text strips away tone and nuance. AI smooths your sentences, but can’t build your credibility. Neither can replace the clarity and connection that come from speaking directly with another person.

If you want to move up, you must move beyond the keyboard. Pick up the phone. Walk down the hall. Join the meeting with your camera on. Your ability to communicate in person is still the most decisive differentiator in a world drowning in digital noise.

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The elements of the FINESSE Fishbone Diagram® are Frame, Illustrate, Noise reduction, Empathy, Structure, Synergy, and Ethics. Communicating with FINESSE is a not-for-profit community of technical professionals dedicated to being highly effective communicators and facilitators. Learn more about our publications, webinars, and workshops.