Engineering Management Institute

UPCOMING TRAINING

Leadership/Management

What the Redefinition of Winning Means for Your Success

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

Redefinition of WinningTo be successful as leaders and leadership teams, we need to see both the “big picture” and what’s happening “on the ground” within our firms and the marketplace.  

Being a leader at any level is about constantly looking for problems to solve and opportunities to realize — but which ones are the right ones, which ones have the greatest return on investment, and in what order should we pursue them?  

The Big Picture 

As part of my work these days as a management consultant, I purposely look for meaningful patterns of issues and opportunities that express themselves in leadership teams throughout the industry, across the country, and in both smaller and larger firms.  

And to this end, I see eight great challenges changing our industry in real time:  

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Accepting Responsibility Is the Precursor to Closing the Deal

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This is a guest post by Nader Mowlaee

ResponsibilityWhether you close business deals daily or consider a completed deal to be a new job offer that will catapult your career forward, you must first accept full responsibility for what will happen after signing the agreement. Taking responsibility is required for progressing in your work, business, life, or relationships. It is just the right thing to do, and it is a precursor to overcoming or altogether avoiding negative consequences.

Engineering Leaders Take Responsibility for Their Actions

Great engineers take responsibility for their actions and their thoughts because, ultimately, those thoughts turn into action and insights that enable business stakeholders to make decisions. I have seen time and again how engineering leaders take responsibility for their actions. Sometimes they win and get recognized for their efforts, and more often, they fail and get scolded; some even face criminal and obstruction charges. What makes someone a well-rounded engineer heavily relies on how many lessons they have learned from their failures and their career wins.

Responsibility

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How to Get a Group of Engineers to Actually Make Decisions

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

Engineering, much like other kinds of knowledge work, is fundamentally about making decisions. While factories produce physical devices, engineering teams produce decisions — decisions on how products and services will be designed, implemented, maintained, and retired. Decision-making is at the very core of what we do.

It’s surprising, then, that we have so much trouble actually making decisions within engineering teams. We’ve all been part of meetings where problems were discussed, positions were defended, and at the end, no real decision was made. For many (myself included), it can be one of the most frustrating parts of working in engineering.

In this post, I’ll offer some concrete strategies on how to bring a group of engineers together and actually make decisions.

Make Sure Everyone Knows That a Decision Needs To Be Made Beforehand

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Six Effective Ideas for Employee Engagement

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This is a guest blog by Jessica Robinson

Employee EngagementYour organization’s success is undoubtedly the number one aspiration you hold close to your heart. One of the most fundamental requirements for this aspiration to come true is support from your workforce. Your employees are the building blocks of your company. Without them taking the initiative for your organization’s success, your company cannot prosper.

But what does it take to get such support from your employees? Well, it’s merely their emotional connection to your company. If your employees are emotionally connected to your organization, they are naturally inclined toward ensuring the best for it. Further, employee engagement is a business strategy to help your employees get emotionally involved in your company.

Here Are Six Useful Ideas for Employee Engagement:

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How to Become an Effective Engineering Leader

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This is a guest post by George J. Newton

Engineering LeaderIt can be challenging to transition from being a great engineer into a position of leadership. While your technical knowledge and skills are essential to the execution of your role, being in a position of leadership also necessitates a range of non-technical skills. Here are four key principles to help you become an effective engineering leader, one who can not only achieve results, but also lead and inspire teams.

1. Understand Your Team’s Needs

Management positions require that you understand your team’s day-to-day job and develop empathy. The more you can understand your team’s individual journeys and experiences, the better placed you can be to support them to meet their goals and needs. Importantly, this will help you to ensure that they are not only engaged with the work, but that they are also being productive.

leader

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Leadership Skills You Can Develop Now

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This is a guest blog by Pamela A. Scott

Leadership Skills

Are you doing what it takes to earn a leadership role at your firm?

A few years ago, I was working with a team of senior project managers (PM). The training program was “From PMs to Business Leaders.” In our first session, I asked them to list the job requirements for a PM and for a business leader. The list for the PMs was quite long. The list for a business leader had just a couple bullets on it.

One PM looked at the lists and said, “If our executive team members were killed in an accident, we wouldn’t even know how to turn off the lights.” Bingo!

How equipped are you to take on a leadership role at your firm? Below are three critical capabilities necessary to become a leader.

1) Network With Intention

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How Effective Leaders Should Give Feedback — Especially During Sensitive Times

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This is a guest blog by Pamela A. Scott

Give FeedbackIs it time to change the way leaders give feedback to employees? Feedback is tough to give (or receive) in the best of times. Doubly so during troubling times, such as during the COVID-19 pandemic. In a high-stress environment, emotions are high. Sensitivities are raised. Feedback is tricky.

However, giving feedback is part of a leader’s job. Feedback helps employees grow and adapt their behavior. It adds to their knowledge — if the feedback is given properly.

Give Feedback

When fall arrives, managers and employees realize it’s time to prepare for performance feedback sessions. While some companies do reviews at other times, the tips in this article can help you improve how you give feedback any time of year.

So how should effective leaders give feedback, especially during sensitive times? Below are four strategies to make feedback more effective in any climate. The content in this article has been adapted from the “MentorLoft Leadership Feedback Assessment.”

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Engaging the Engagers: Succeeding in the New Era with Better Leadership and Management

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

Better Leadership

“Literally nothing a CEO or CHRO does will authentically, structurally, and sustainably change the value of your organization more.”

This is a statement from the recently released book written by Jim Clifton, Chairman and CEO of Gallup, and Jim Harter, PhD, Chief Workplace Scientist for Gallup, based on their research and more than 30 years of data, to help workplaces thrive and produce something the whole world wants.

What they are referencing is “improving your ratio of great to lousy managers”.  The key to this, however, rests solely with leaders.

It’s Both

To succeed today in any position of authority we need to both lead and manage.

Leadership is a role to establish a clear vision for a mission that inspires others to follow and then enable achievement through times of both conflict and harmony.

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Leadership Is Not a Title — It Is a Perspective

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This is a guest blog by Mike Burns, PE, PgMP, DBIA

LeadershipPreviously, we discussed the importance of your voice as an industry and community integrator: Who Knows What You Know? — Your Voice Matters! Taking this guidance an important step further, I encourage you to move from managing people to empowering leadership from every vantage point, as our ability to deliver complex solutions in a timely manner necessitates an artful migration of diverse perspectives into inclusive solutions.

Infrastructure projects are inherently local and therefore unique, necessitating a patient combination of political savvy and technical expertise to move from policy expectations to project implementation. At each step, we must acknowledge, explore, and address ever-changing stakeholder wants and needs. Our ability to artfully migrate these evolving demands into sustainable, resilient, and equitable community solutions requires dispersed leadership. This is a concept that is at the heart of Progressive Design-Build , which seeks to empower robust communications as leadership ebbs and flows across an evolving set of teams.

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Being in Charge Is Complex and Comes With High Expectations

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This is a guest blog by Manny De La Cruz

being in charge

To succeed, you must…

  • Go to school…
  • Get good grades…
  • Love math and science…
  • Get into STEM…
  • Take AP classes…
  • Love STEM…
  • Pick a college…
  • Go to college…
  • Love STEM more…
  • Get a STEM degree, preferably engineering (my opinion)…
  • Get an internship…
  • Get a job…
  • Be a leader/manager…
Does this list sound familiar? For many STEM professionals, and, more specifically, engineers, this list may sound all too familiar. For some, it happens early in life when parents, teachers, or some influential adult begins to tell you what the formula to success is and how engineering fits into that equation. And for other, non-traditional students, like myself, all it takes is one visit to a college campus and there is no shortage of STEM advocates singing the praises of obtaining an engineering degree.

So, you pick engineering, and for the most part, love the journey; let’s face it — statistics for engineers or the third round of calculus can get old at times. As you begin to align yourself with where you want to work, you start to hear the term leadership. To be a strong candidate for an internship spot requires you to have the trifecta: high GPA, skills experience, and leadership potential. For some, “being a leader” has been engrained as the solution to many problems, especially if you are a minority candidate.

Manny, where are you going with this? Great question. So, you want to be a leader/manager? Are you sure you know what you are asking for? It is my opinion that most of us do not really appreciate what we are asking for when we say we want to be a leader/manager. Being in charge is complex and comes with high expectations and many burdens.

What Does Being in Charge Mean?

1. Delivering Results

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