Engineering Management Institute

Leadership/Management

How to Become a Better Engineering Leader

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This is a guest post by Steve Armstrong

Engineering LeaderBeing an engineering leader is about understanding what is going on around you.

In the military, it is called “Situational Awareness.” Often, the people with the most pertinent and relevant information about the situation are those working for you.

Questions are powerful tools, and knowing how to ask them is key to becoming a better engineering leader.

How to Ask Questions

How do you ask the right questions in the right way?

  1. Ask your questions like you care and want to know the answers. You’re not reading from a script — ask with sincerity.
  2. You asked, so be prepared to hear answers that you may not like, and be sure to take the time to truly listen.
  3. The answer you need may not come forth the first time you ask. But if you ask sincerely and humbly, you will build trust and confidence. So, ask regularly, and the quality of the information you gather will improve.

Engineering Leader

Read about the six things you need to communicate.

What Questions to Ask

These are the five questions to ask your team members every month, as well as why you should ask them:

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The Benefits of Conflict Resolution for Engineers

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This is a guest post by Tiffani Teachey

Conflict Resolution

“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.” ~ Marie Curie

Conflict resolution is an essential skill for any engineer. When disputes arise, it is crucial to have the ability to calmly and effectively communicate with all parties involved. By using conflict resolution techniques, engineers can resolve disagreements quickly and efficiently while maintaining positive relationships with coworkers. In this blog post, we will discuss the benefits of conflict resolution for engineers. We will also provide tips on how to effectively resolve conflicts. Let’s get started!

Engineers can effectively resolve conflicts through the following tips:

  1. Stay calm
  2. Listen attentively
  3. Be respectful

Conflict Resolution

Stay Calm

When engineers are faced with a conflict, they should stay calm and try to understand the other party’s point of view. They can do this by using empathy or stepping back from their emotions so that cooler heads prevail! Show that you’re not angry or upset by keeping your voice calm and repeating back to them what their point is. This will help diffuse the situation quickly, without anyone getting too worked up about it! The best way to handle a conflict is by staying calm and following these three steps:

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There Is No Such Thing as a Free Lunch

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This is a guest post by Dr. Rae Taylor

lunchI believe there is a general consensus that buying pizza for the office leads to an unquantifiable increase in office morale. I would extend this further and say that in general, food is a great motivator and healthy food, being an energy sustainer, is by extension a visible morale booster. I once bought some snack bars and jerky for a crew to take with them to a tricky access site. When the crew was loading up the van, I could hear excited mutterings like, “Are these really for us?” and “Hey, have you seen that we have snacks?” As if it wasn’t pretty much the easiest thing that I could have done for them.

Some larger (mostly tech) companies take the morale boost one step further and provide free (or at least heavily subsidized) food courts for their employees. They tend to offer a variety of meal options, often including many healthy options too. This is, of course, a trap to make the staff stay longer in the office in the hope that they will work more hours. But because people do work long hours, it’s incredibly useful. It is also costly and unrealistic for most companies to do.

I was thinking about this while watching the new season of “Queer Eye” (do not judge unless you are also up every few hours feeding a newborn and need something to keep you awake that you don’t have to focus on). With the increase in the number of hours we work and commute came a huge increase in people saying they don’t have the time to cook or grocery shop. As such, they rely on fast food and take-out, which tends to be less healthy. In the show, a member of the makeover team shows the recipient how to cook something that’s easy to make, healthy, and tasty. This made me think about how much I would have loved this kind of guidance when I was working crazy hours, and thinking about it more, how much I would love it even now that my schedule is more relaxed, albeit fuller.

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Shut Down Analysis Paralysis and Start to “Satisfice”

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This is a guest blog by Pamela A. Scott

analysis paralysisDo you struggle to make decisions? Most of us do—at least when dealing with something significant.

Do you find yourself trapped by analysis paralysis? Many of us do. We think and we think and we think, and then we think some more. And maybe we eventually act.

I believe decision-making and analysis paralysis are intertwined. You can throw decision fatigue into that mix as well. Decision fatigue occurs because we simply have too many decisions to make on any given day. Check out this site for lots more on decision fatigue.

In his book “The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less,” Barry Schwartz delves into why we struggle to make decisions.

285 Types of Cookies, Oh My!

In his neighborhood supermarket, he found 285 varieties of cookies. Can you pick just one? The average supermarket carries nearly 40,000 items for you to pick from. It gives me a headache to even think about those choices.

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Learning to Lead and Succeed with ‘SFA’: Success From Anywhere

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This is a guest post by Peter C. Atherton, P.E.

SuccessCOVID forced “work from home.” Then evolved the idea of “work from anywhere” – whether that be home, a local café, or other workspace.

As we work through the sometimes half-hearted attempts to bring our employees back to the office, the organizational development and talent attraction and retention idea that I believe will stick is “SFA” – success from anywhere.

Success From Anywhere

What is SFA, and how can we make this work, especially among “back to the past” forces within us that have very likely already cost us in terms of missed opportunity and preparedness for our inevitable future state?

Let’s leave the resistance to SFA aside for a moment (or at least until the link at the bottom of this article) because even the skeptics and the naysayers recognize the competitive disadvantages of not offering some type of work flexibility in this employee-driven market — hence the half-hearted and tempered calls for a full return to the office.

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The Power of a Personal Brand for Engineering Managers

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This is a guest post by Patrick Sweet, P.Eng., MBA, PMP, CSEP

BrandWhether you realize it or not, you have a brand. This may come as a surprise to you. After all, you’re an engineering manager, and not some sort of company or a product. But it’s true. In fact, everyone has a brand. Everyone is known for something among their friends and colleagues. The real question is not so much whether you have a brand but rather what it is, whether you’re managing it, and whether you’re taking advantage of it in your career.

Back to Basics: What Is a Brand?

The best way to think of a brand is that it’s a summary of who you are, what you do, and what you believe in. In other words, your brand is the shorthand way the world thinks about you.

personal brand

In the business world, brands are manicured and managed with precision. Volvo, for instance, prides itself on making some of the safest cars in the world, and they promote that fact about themselves. They want to be known as the “safe car” company in the minds of their customers and potential customers. Walmart, on the other hand, has a strong brand tied to saving people money. Both are very different, but very strong brands.

To help brands stick in the minds of their customers, companies use things like logos, slogans, jingles, color pallets, fonts, and many other devices to communicate their brand.

Branding is incredibly important when it comes to positioning a company. It makes it easier for a customer to link an organization or product to a need they have. The easier it is to make that link, the more likely the customer will chose a particular solution.

The Power of Branding for Individuals

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The Power of Building Accountable Teams for Excellent Performance

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This is a guest post by Jeff Perry, MBA

When executives are asked what leadership skills they wish their leaders were better at, one of the most common responses is the ability to hold their people accountable. This indicates a red flag, as it is an indicator that the organization as a whole is not very accountable. Rather than a focus on holding others accountable, we should instead be making the shift toward developing people who are accountable.

accountable teams

Wait, What Do You Mean?

Let me explain myself by asking a few simple questions for you to ponder:

  • How would you describe someone who is accountable?
  • How do we hold someone else accountable?
  • How do we hold ourselves accountable?

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The 8 Best Leadership Books You Need to Read

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This is a guest blog by Emily HenryLeadership Books

In any industry, leadership is a real skill. That goes double for anyone in the engineering field. If you have recently moved to a management position, or have your eye on one in the future, you should check out these leadership books right now.
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Leaders, Help Staff Understand You

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This is a guest blog by Pamela A. Scott

StaffHere’s a data point that will NOT make your day if you are a leader in your firm.

“Seventy-four percent of employees feel they are missing out on company information and news.” It happens all the time.

Nadine, owner of a midsize professional services firm, describes her situation: “Every January, I give a state of the company address to the troops. The usual stuff: how we did last year, where we’re going this year, how excited/optimistic/cautious I am about the future, and so on. And for the next 12 months, every year, managers and staff ask me where we’re going, how we’re doing, etc.

“What am I doing wrong? I keep telling them what they want to know, but nobody seems to get it.”

No One Truly Gets It

Nadine’s story shows why communicating effectively is so tough. Consider the following.

  • Nobody — and I mean nobody — has the same perspective as the CEO. The CEO sees how myriad pieces come together.
  • Managers have been told what’s going on, but often they don’t effectively pass the information along to staffers. They are focused on taking care of their own operations.
  • The general staff know what they do — make calls, take care of projects, do good work. But they lose sight of the company’s strategic goals and plans.

Help Staff Understand You

What to Do So They Get It

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How to Succeed with Your Strategic Plans and Initiatives

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This is a guest post by Peter C. Atherton, P.E.

There’s no question that strategic planning is essential for individual, team, and organizational success. Yet despite this, the vast majority of strategic plans and major strategic initiatives fail or fail to be fully or successfully implemented. 

Why is this the case and, more importantly, what can we do to ensure that we, our teams, and our organizations are on the winning side? 

strategic planning
From my perspective as both a strategic planning participant at manager, principal, and firm owner levels and now as a strategic planning facilitator and execution consultant, here are the top 10 reasons most strategic plans and major strategic initiatives either languish or fail:  

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