Engineering Management Institute

UPCOMING TRAINING

Leadership

TCEP 185: How to Grow a Civil Engineering Company Successfully

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Grow a Civil Engineering CompanyIn this episode, the ninth episode in our Civil Engineering Entrepreneurs Series, I talk to Brian Barker, P.E., M.S., Principal at Deuel & Associates about how to start and grow a civil engineering company successfully, specifically some of the challenge you will face when you start, and how to overcome them.  Brian also talks about how you can reduce your company’s risk through client diversification.

Engineering Quotes:

Grow a Civil Engineering Company

Here Are Some of the Questions I Ask Brian:

  • How do you find, develop, and retain the right people in your firm?
  • What markets can a civil engineer think of getting into to grow their company?
  • Are there benefits to having an in-house surveying component in a civil engineering company?
  • What needs to be focused on daily to continue the growth of your company?
  • What advice do you have for civil engineers getting into the leadership part of a civil engineering company?

Here Are Some Key Points Discussed in This Episode About How to Grow a Civil Engineering Company:

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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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TECC 243: Career Planning and Leadership Progression for Engineering Professionals

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Career PlanningIn 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.

Engineering Quotes:

career planning

career planning

Here Are Some of the Key Points Discussed About Career Planning and Leadership Progression for Engineering Professionals:

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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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TCEP 155: Learning and Development: Understanding People Starts With Understanding Yourself

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Learning and DevelopmentIn 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.

Engineering Quotes:

Learning and Development

Learning and Development

Here Are Some of the Questions I Ask Gil:

  • How big is your firm and what markets do you serve?
  • What advice can you give engineers who want to be in a leadership role but are struggling to work with people?
  • How do you see the civil engineering industry going for the next three to five years and beyond?
  • With all that has happened with the pandemic, does this change the way you think about the future for the company?
  • You are a big proponent of learning and development. Why is it important to you?

Here Are Some Key Points Discussed in This Episode:

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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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Remember Who You Work For

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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

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TSEC 33: Leading With Outcomes: Keys to Advancing Your Engineering Career

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Advancing Your Engineering CareerIn 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.

Engineering Quotes:

Advancing Your Engineering Career

Advancing Your Engineering Career

Here Are Some of the Questions We Ask Rens in This Episode:

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Would You Want to Work With You?

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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.

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What Does Transformational Leadership Mean for Engineers?

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 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.

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