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Leadership/Management

Leadership Skills You Can Develop Now

December 7, 2020 By EMI

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

[Read more…] about Leadership Skills You Can Develop Now

Filed Under: Blog, Leadership/Management Tagged With: become a leader, Build self-confidence, building relationships, business leader, critical capabilities, Critical thinking skills, earn a leadership role, executive team, From PMs to Business Leaders, introduce yourself to strangers, leadership skills, networking, Pamela A. Scott, reach leadership status, Show Initiative, take on a leadership role

How Effective Leaders Should Give Feedback — Especially During Sensitive Times

November 13, 2020 By EMI

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.”

[Read more…] about How Effective Leaders Should Give Feedback — Especially During Sensitive Times

Filed Under: Blog, Leadership/Management Tagged With: Ask, Don’t Tell, Effective Leaders, facilitate growth, Feedback during COVID, Feedback during sensitive times, Feedback Is Necessary, Focus on Growth, Give Feedback, Leaders Give Feedback, Neutral Environment, One Topic at a Time

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

November 9, 2020 By EMI

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.

[Read more…] about Engaging the Engagers: Succeeding in the New Era with Better Leadership and Management

Filed Under: Blog, Leadership/Management Tagged With: ActionsProve, clear vision for a mission, Engage Top Talent, Engaging the Engagers, improving your ratio, Leadership, management, New Era, organizational growth, organize and coordinate, Peter C. Atherton, profits, reinforce production, Reversing Burnout, thriving culture

Leadership Is Not a Title — It Is a Perspective

October 19, 2020 By EMI

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.

[Read more…] about Leadership Is Not a Title — It Is a Perspective

Filed Under: Blog, Leadership/Management Tagged With: community integrator, deliver complex solutions, empowering leadership, historical perspective, Infrastructure projects, Leadership, Leadership Perspective, managing people, Mike Burns, Perspective, political savvy, Progressive Design-Build, Technical expertise

Being in Charge Is Complex and Comes With High Expectations

October 5, 2020 By EMI

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

[Read more…] about Being in Charge Is Complex and Comes With High Expectations

Filed Under: Blog, Leadership/Management Tagged With: accountable, Being a Leader, being a manager, Being in Charge, Career Advancement, coach, Counselor, Delivering Results, expectations of leaders, guidance, High Expectations, Manny De La Cruz, mentors, Motivational Speaker, what is expected of a leader

Not-So-Obvious Customers

September 14, 2020 By EMI

This is a guest blog by Manny De La Cruz

internal customersWay before I decided to go back to school, I worked. I worked a lot and mostly in jobs that required customer service. I did door-to-door sales, telemarketing, and finally food service. I enjoyed being a server. I was good at it and always had cash in my pocket. I had two goals at that time: pay rent and have fun with the rest.  

Through these jobs, I learned about customer service and in those days, how the customer was always right. I won’t claim to have been a poster child for great customer service, since on several occasions the human in me and all that was going on would catch up and a customer might get the short end of the stick. Customer service is something that has become synonymous with hospitality and entertainment. It is easy to spot bad customer service at a drive-through or a check-out line, when you are trying to ring up your own groceries only to be met with an error and no associate around to help you (we have kind of lowered the bar, folks). But what does this have to do with engineering? 

internal customers

Funny you should ask. If you are in an engineering role in outside sales, consulting, or contract engineering, perhaps your customers are pretty obvious. But what about in other engineering roles, like plant support, manufacturing, or research? Perhaps those customers are not as obvious. In reality, regardless of where you work, more than likely there are some internal customers who are relying on your service, and not being aware of who they are could cost you dearly.  

Here Are Five Things To Consider When Thinking About the Not-So-Obvious Internal Customers You Work For:

[Read more…] about Not-So-Obvious Customers

Filed Under: Blog, Leadership/Management Tagged With: a good leader, boss, Coworkers, departments, Internal Customers, manager, Manny De La Cruz, Not-So-Obvious, Other Departments, responsibilities, Senior Engineers, Servant’s Heart, team

Remember Who You Work For

September 7, 2020 By EMI

This is a guest blog by Mickey Addison, MSCE, PMP

Work ForWhen someone asks a leader who they work for, the best answer is “I work for my team.” That’s obviously not a complete answer, but it speaks to a mindset. Leadership is service, and leaders who approach their roles with that mindset are more likely to be successful. It’s not the complete answer, of course, so to that end, let’s spend some time thinking about respect. Leaders must demonstrate respect, require it in the team, and be able to move our organizations forward in a rapidly changing world.

Everyone Deserves Respect

[Read more…] about Remember Who You Work For

Filed Under: Blog, Leadership/Management Tagged With: business environment, dignity and respect, Everyone Deserves Respect, Leaders Model Respect, Leadership, Mickey Addison, Organizations, Rapidly Changing World, relationship, respect, successful, teammates, Work For, work long hours

Would You Want to Work With You?

May 12, 2020 By EMI

This is a guest blog by Steve Soldati, P.E.

Work WithPicture this: It’s 11:30 a.m. on Tuesday morning, you’re thinking about where to go for lunch, but you are still waiting for a response from your project team member. You had requested this information via email three weeks ago and every few days you get a, “You should have it soon.” You sent an email earlier that morning asking for an update on the project designs and calculations to incorporate into your plan set, which is due in just one week, but still no word. You go off to lunch, steaming and upset about the lack of urgency and communication of your colleagues.

When you arrive back at the office, you open your inbox to see an email from your team member with the requested design and calculations. “Yes, finally!” you shout out loud. But when you open the email, the design is incomplete, and your team member has additional questions that should have been asked much earlier. You storm over to their desk to chew them out and tell them how poorly they performed. You tell them they need to communicate better, learn to design properly, and take responsibility for their work. Then you head back to your desk to rework the design, spending many additional hours to get it ready for the upcoming deadline. And you grow even more frustrated and stressed because there is still so much on your plate that needs to be done, but you are now worried that won’t happen. This causes you to become even more uneasy, cranky, and unpleasant to be around.

[Read more…] about Would You Want to Work With You?

Filed Under: Blog, Leadership/Management Tagged With: boss, communicate better, communicating, deadline, design and calculations, design properly, lack of leadership, Leadership, manager, manager-subordinate relationship, person-to-person relationship, positive project, project team member, Solution, successful, take responsibility, team member, update on the project designs, want to work with, work with

Continuous Learning: Providing Coaching and Accountability

April 20, 2020 By EMI

 This is a guest blog by Mike Burns

Continuous LearningLast month’s blog discussed Embracing a Risk-Intelligent Approach. The guidance stated that we shouldn’t be paralyzed by unknown unknowns, allowing a risk-intelligent culture to support sustainable growth. In these uncertain times, as we respond to broad human suffering from the COVID-19 pandemic, I’d like to expand on mitigating unknown unknowns as an introduction to our continuous learning discussion.

A risk-intelligent approach creates a culture where teachers, students – leaders, managers, and staff thrive in a continuous learning environment. As this culture matures; mitigating inherent risks and exploring opportunities becomes a natural output of our sustained discussions. Concurrently, these discussions will surface strategic risks, informed by our trajectory and influenced by systemic threats, e.g.financial crisis, geopolitical events, and pandemics.

[Read more…] about Continuous Learning: Providing Coaching and Accountability

Filed Under: Blog, Leadership/Management Tagged With: Accountability, Coaching, Continuous Learning, Engineering, exploring opportunities, Mike Burns, mitigating inherent risks, Mitigating strategic risks, pandemics, risk-intelligent approach, strategic risks

What Does Transformational Leadership Mean for Engineers?

March 2, 2020 By EMI

 This is a guest blog by Holly Welles

Transformational LeadershipTransformational leadership is a model of leadership that involves a leader who inspires his or her followers to work together toward a common goal and focus on the greater good. The best transformational leaders can enter a stagnant organization, identify its issues, and begin making improvements almost immediately.

While this type of leadership may come naturally to some people, most must learn how to develop these skills before they can apply them. As future engineers, this means developing yourself, practicing these newly learned skills, and working towards a common goal with an organization in which you’re already involved.

[Read more…] about What Does Transformational Leadership Mean for Engineers?

Filed Under: Blog, Leadership/Management Tagged With: common goal, develop skills, developing yourself, focus on the greater good, future engineers, Holly Welles, Leadership, making improvements, Transformational Leadership, work together

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