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School assignment

I would appreciate it if a person in the supply chain field could answer these questions for me.
I am studying for supply chain management and I need someone who is in the field to help me answer these questions for an assignment. I greatly appreciate whoever takes the time to help me as I do not personally know anyone who is in the field.

1.   What kinds of communication skills (ex. listening, concision, persuasion, empathy, non-verbal, etc...) do you use on a daily basis in meetings, in digital communication, or in preparing presentations and reports?
2.   What skills do people in your field need in order to carry out their duties or advance professionally?
3.   What are the most common communication mistakes that you see in your field?

I'm sure everyone's different, but here's my answers. I do a lot of requirements gathering sessions and design workshops, so my answers are a bit focused on those areas:

1. Active listening is important. Note taking is important. These things, when done together, allow me to not only understand what the other people are saying, bu they also allow me to dig deeper and try to figure out the reasoning behind their statements. A lot of times, the real answer to the question I'm asking lies a few follow-ups in.

2. I think note-taking is undervalued. I've run into people that are trying to make other people "scribes" or note-takers in meetings, but the best recall I have is when I take my own notes. It keeps me engaged in the conversation and lets me easily review something after the fact. I'll even walk around with a little notebook so that I can take notes when something pops up.

3. I see a lot of people asking "what's wrong" instead of asking "why are you doing this". If I'm trying to understand system requirements or configurations or something, people seem to default to 1. what they're doing today and 2. what's wrong with what they're doing today. As I mentioned above, asking follow-up questions like "but why are you doing this?" encourages people to reframe the problem in their mind and not worry so much about what their immediate pain points are. When they do this, there's a better shot of really understanding the underlying requirements and making the new processes better.

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