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Your Ears Are Your Strongest Resolution and Negotiation Weapons

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This is a guest post by Gabe Lett, FSMPS, CPSM, LPC
Ears

Most content that centers around communication and conflict resolution has to do with assessing your feelings, your body language, your decision-making process, your attitudes, and your behaviors. Not that these are bad recommendations, but they fall short of what makes the biggest impact when resolving conflict and negotiating. Where most advice falls short is that the advice focuses on YOU, YOUR feelings, YOUR body language, YOUR decision-making, YOUR attitude, and YOUR behaviors.

Many of you have heard the saying, “God gave you one mouth and two ears. He intended for you to listen twice as much as you speak.” Ears are the gateways to receiving critical information about your environment. Ears collect sound waves. During conflict or negotiation, ears are data gathering reservoirs collecting what is coming out of the other person’s mouth. Ears are your strongest weapons in resolving conflict and negotiating a solution.

Ears

To be fair, your ears are only the front-end of a process that leads to great conflict resolution and negotiation. But if you cannot get the front-end of that process right, nothing else in that process will work. Therefore, ears are where you begin.

When you focus on opening your ears, closing your mouth, and focusing on the other person, several key dynamics are put in motion:

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TECC 217: How to Support the Professional Development of Your Engineering Team

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In this episode of The Engineering Career Coach Podcast, our second episode in a series about the four key drivers of great engineering managers, we dive into the key driver of providing your engineering team members with career growth opportunities. In this episode, we talk to Sam Tilakasiri CEng, an integrated project team leader for a large aerospace engineering company. Sam provides us with four action items that he takes to support his engineering team that have not only made him better, but also in the process made him a better manager. 

The four key drivers of successful engineering managers, based on research we have conducted at the Engineering Management Institute through the design of a diagnostic tool we are building called the CMAP (Current Management Ability Potential) Diagnostic Tool, include:

C: Career Growth Opportunities

M: Management Style That’s Inclusive

A: Ability to Manage Projects

P: People or Interpersonal Skills

Engineering Quotes:

Engineering Team

Here Are 4 Action Items You Can Take to Support the Professional Development of Your Engineering Team:

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The Essential Competencies of an Effective Engineering Leader

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This is a guest blog by Kyle K. Cheerangie, P.E.

As a young engineer, I knew early on that I wanted to be a leader. However, I didn’t know the basics of leading others, nor, therefore, how those might fit in with my personality. Certain aspects of leadership came naturally to me: I was a natural at simplifying complex tasks and listening to others. However, two skills eluded me: I often let my ego get involved in the task and I found it difficult to communicate in groups. Since then, I have learned, on-the job, the four competencies an effective engineering leader needs to have:

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TCEP 092: Business Development Skill Building for Civil Engineers

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Business Development Skill Building In episode 92 of The Civil Engineering Podcast, I am taking you with me to visit T&M Associates headquarters in Middletown NJ, where we are going to sit down with Ihsan Al-Fayyomi to talk about business development skill building for civil engineers.

Here are some of the questions I ask Ihsan:

  • Can you talk about how you became involved in expanding your company geographically?
  • What was your mindset like when you started growing the company?
  • Is smart decision making something you personally focus on?
  • What is your overall philosophy on building relationships?
  • How do you build trust?
  • Tell us about having difficult conversations.
  • What is your management style?

Engineering Quotes:

Business Development Skill Building

Business Development Skill Building

Here are some key points discussed on business development skill building:

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TECC 180: Negotiating for Success: Essential Strategies and Skills with George Siedel

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Negotiating for Success: Essential Strategies and Skills with George Siedel

In this episode, I talk with Professor George Siedel, who is an expert on the topic of negotiation. Professor Siedel gives some great advice around negotiating for success based on his writing, books, research and experience.  He takes a complex topic and provides some very practical strategies around it.

Engineering Quotes:

Here are some of the key points discussed in this episode on negotiating for success

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Why Communication for Engineers Is so Important

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Why Communication for Engineers Is so Important is a
guest blog by Thomas A. Anderson, P.E:

Communication for Engineers

Do you remember the telephone game?

In school, you and your classmates tried to pick a phrase and “pass it on” by whispering it to the person next to you. Then the phrase was passed from person to person until the last person announced the phrase. How much did the phrase change during the game? As people relay message from one person to the other, the message will often be distorted.

While the game is a lot of fun. It also teaches us important lessons.

  • If you do not receive information from a reliable source, you may not get the correct information. It turns into gossip.
  • If you do not produce information properly, it will not be received as planned

Communication skills are vital to success in your personal life and your engineering career. Poorly delivered messages can turn into misunderstanding, frustration, or even a disaster.

By practicing communication, you will understand more of what people say. Your family, friends, and co-workers will have the confidence to come to you when they find themselves in need.

What are the keys to clear communication?

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Don’t Let Lack of Experience Keep You From Speaking With Authority as an Engineer

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This is Part I of a six-part series on debunking misconceptions about leadership and speaking with authority for engineers preparing for their first professional leadership role.

Speaking With Authority

Starting out in any endeavor you lack experience.  In business, in relationships, in your technical pursuits – doesn’t matter.  You enter into everything you do for the first time without experience and the only way to get the experience is to go out into the world and just do it.  As it is in every undertaking in life, so it is with leadership.

I didn’t begin feeling entirely confident in leading others until well into my military career.  It wasn’t that I lacked the theory of leadership or mentors or the opportunities to lead while in college ROTC.  My lack of confidence in my leading ability came from one gap:  experience.  The training I had while at college prepared me by providing me with a body of knowledge about leadership.  The hands-on experiences leading other people and projects came many years later.

If you’ve not lead other people or a project before, you’ve still been exposed to this “experience gap”.  You’ve got the knowledge; you just lack the boots-on-ground aspect.  The good stuff that comes from experiencing it first-hand.

Before getting into the four components that helped me bridge the experience gap, a quote that’s stuck with me from early in my career: [Read more…] about Don’t Let Lack of Experience Keep You From Speaking With Authority as an Engineer