Today's guest is Pramoda Vyasarao!
Pramoda is a leadership and communication coach, he has 20+ years of experience in big tech, wrote the book “Beyond Your Limits”, and runs a course called Communication Engineering
With Pramoda, we talked about what good communication looks like, especially for engineers and managers, how it impacted his career and the career of the leaders he helps.
You can learn more about Pramoda's work here:
🎙️ Episode
You can watch the full episode on Youtube:
Or listen to it on Spotify, Apple, Overcast, or your podcast app of choice.
🥇 Interview Summary
If you are a 🔒 paid subscriber 🔒 you will find my own summary of the interview below.
It’s the 10-minute, handcrafted takeaways of what we talked about, with timestamps to the relevant video moments, for those who don’t have time to sit through the 1-hour chat.
Here is the agenda for today:
🎙️ Pramoda's journey (02:11)
🗣️ The importance of communication skills (09:56)
🏗️ The TALL framework (13:19)
👥 Handling emotions in conversations (45:29)
👨💼 Leadership development and coaching (50:29)
Let’s dive in!
1) 🎙️ Pramoda's journey (02:11)
Pramoda started his career as a junior engineer at Oracle in 2002. His biggest challenge was communication, with English being his third language. He explains:
"My biggest challenge back then was communication. One of the challenges was the language itself, English being my third language, I struggled to communicate and share my ideas with people."
Within six years, Pramoda's improved communication skills opened new opportunities:
Transitioned from software engineer to product manager
Became an enterprise data architect
Moved into engineering management roles
He emphasizes the impact of communication on his career:
"None of that would happen actually without the communication skills I developed during my career. My career trajectory completely changed. It gave me new opportunities because I was ready. I was ready beyond my engineering skills to communicate, articulate ideas, both in writing and verbal communication."
Pramoda also stresses the importance of the local Toastmasters Club for his improvement. Toastmasters focuses on communication, public speaking, and leadership skills. Pramoda described a typical meeting:
"Essentially, each club meeting is about 60 to 90 minutes. And there are three things that happen in each club meetings. One is called prepared speeches, where people come prepared on a topic. They speak for five to seven minutes... The second section is called a table topic section, where you will be given a topic, any random topic... The last section is where there is evaluation."
2) 🗣️ The importance of communication skills (09:56)
Pramoda discusses why engineers often struggle with communication and the importance of good communication skills:
