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In this episode, I talk to Mark A. Herschberg, M.Eng, a seasoned executive and cybersecurity expert and author of the book called: “The Career Toolkit: Essential Skills for Success That No One Taught You” about the importance of career planning, networking, communication, leadership, and management as an engineer.
“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.
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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In this episode, I talk to Gil Hantzsch, P.E., FACEC, the CEO at MSA Professional Services, Inc., about his career journey of becoming a CEO. He provides some great learning and development advice throughout the episode, which makes it one of my favorites.
Previously, 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
When 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.
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In this episode of The Structural Engineering Channel Podcast, we talk to Rens Hayes, Principal at H+O Structural Engineering, about strategic planning, organizational structure, leadership, management, and advancing your engineering career. Regardless of your current position and aspirations in your engineering career, if advancement is something you’d like to continue to pursue, this episode is full of big-picture insights that will help you see where opportunity for growth lies.
[Read more…] about TSEC 33: Leading With Outcomes: Keys to Advancing Your Engineering Career
Picture 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.
Transformational 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?
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In this episode, I talk to Ann Tomalavage, PE, PMP, LEED AP, a licensed professional engineer who has spent the last 20+ years training engineering professionals on how to become great project managers. Ann talks about some of the key points to becoming a successful project manager, and she also discusses the role of project management in consulting engineering.
[Read more…] about TCEP 137: The Role of Project Management in Consulting Engineering
As engineers, we learn massive amounts of equations, corollaries, theorems, and laws. These typically apply to mathematics or scientific laws that must be understood in order to make appropriate engineering designs and calculations. However, have you ever wondered if these scientific laws that the natural world follows have applications to our personal growth, development, and leadership? In my opinion, the answer is a clear “Yes!”
In this post, I’ll take examples from some of the most commonly known scientific laws of physics — Newton’s Laws of Motion. I’ll show you how these fundamental laws apply to the movement and progress of people and teams, not just physical objects. Then, I’ll provide suggestions actions, or “motions,” you can take in your own leadership.
