5 Skill’s You Need to Hone to Ensure Successful Project Management
Effectively managing projects requires several skills and characteristics. If you’re already a project manager you know that communications, scheduling, leadership and command authority, and the ability to set, observe, and revise priorities frequently are just some of the abilities the successful project mangers employ for success. While these are important, there are 5 skills that […]
Credentials Can Act as Keys to Opening Doors of Opportunities in Your Engineering Career
While I never try to belittle the importance of being yourself and bringing your intangibles to the table every day in your engineering career-development efforts,there are certain accomplishments or accolades that are a must in order for you to succeed in achieving your goals in your engineering career—and credentials are among them. By credentials, I […]
Note to Engineers: Consider the Project Management Professional Certification
The Project Management Professional Certification There are several tangible and intangible benefits I’ve realized since earning the Project Management Professional Certification (PMP). As I contemplated what I needed to do to position myself to leave a twenty-year Air Force career back in 2010, I looked at my professional credentials and experience. I was already a registered […]
Vision, Vista, and Volume: A Better Approach to Thinking About Success
Discussions about achieving success are typically approached in one dimension. We talk about vision, breadth of experience and work/life balance in stovepipe segments as if one doesn’t influence the other. Much of the blogging and books on success I’ve read follow this track. They touch on the three dimensions, but only on that dimension. The […]
What to Do in Your Engineering Career When You Don’t Know What to Do
This post was inspired by a recent conversation that I had with one of our Institute for Engineering Career Development (IECD) members. She is a young engineer and not sure what direction to go in her engineering career. She is considering various questions, such as: What specific discipline in her engineering field should she go […]
The Answer to Work-Life Balance: Don’t Try
The issue of work-life balance is something relatively new to humanity. Brought to light by British anthropologists in the late 1970’s, we now have libraries full of self-help books and courses in how best to solve this affliction of modern life. I struggled with finding the best way to thread the needle myself as the […]
Your Ability to Facilitate New Business Development will Greatly Impact Your Engineering Career Development
When I talk to CEOs of engineering companies, I always ask them what they are looking for when they hire engineers, especially in this economy where they hire fewer than they used to. They all answer this question the same way: they reply that they are looking for engineers who do more than just engineering. […]
The Emotionally Brilliant Engineer
This is a guest post by Patrick Sweet, P.Eng., MBA, PMP, CSEP Over at my Engineering and Leadership blog, I tend to talk quite a bit about how business skills can be applied to the daily work of an engineer so thatengineers can be more productive, more purpose-driven, and more satisfied in their roles. Today, […]
Public Speaking Skills for Engineers 101: The More You Speak, the Better You Get
I can’t emphasize enough how important your public speaking skills are as an engineer. Depending on your discipline and specific job description, you very well could have to deliver multiple presentations per week throughout your engineering career. The quality of your presentations will undoubtedly have a huge impact on your engineering career development, specifically on […]
Setting Big Picture Engineering Career Goals is the Most Important Thing You Can Do in Your Career and Life
Engineers like data because it provides facts that they can use to do analyses. Well, I have some data in this post that I believe can be extremely useful to you in your engineering career and life overall. I have provided career coaching and speaking services to hundreds of engineers in recent years, and my […]