This video post is in response to two questions that I received through LinkedIn from an engineer who is looking to take their career to the next level. They were looking for advice on:
1) Making a move to a larger organization in a similar role, where I can develop my leadership and technical skills.
2) Start taking graduate level courses over the next year or two.
In the video I explain the advantages that both big and small companies provide for developing your skills plus, [Read more...]
This following is a video that I recorded in response to a question from one of the fans on our Facebook fanage. The question was: “Any advice for communicating info to upper management? I have project info or sales interest hints that need to be shared, but find it hard to get a minute (or less) with management, let alone adequately expressing those complex concepts meaningfully.”
Here you go:
I hope this video was helpful, if any of you out there have other questions, feel free to post them on the fanpage Engineer Your Own Success. [Read more...]
The following is an excerpt from Chapter 7 of my book Engineer Your Own Success:
Another important aspect of being a good leader is understanding your role. As a leader, your role is to help those that you are leading to do their job to the best of their ability. Therefore in order for you to succeed, you should strive to help them succeed. This is a difficult concept for many engineering professionals to grasp. Many professionals are so worried about advancing their own careers that they shy away from helping others because they believe it will take away from their own success. This is another limiting belief that can be detrimental to your career.
I have said over and over again in this book that in order to advance your career, it’s important to always put yourself in a position to succeed. Helping others do so is the absolute quickest way to accomplish this. In our competitive world today so many engineering professionals feel that they have to constantly fight for themselves, and the idea of helping other engineers, whether they are co-workers or not, is perceived as a bad career move. Please don’t take this approach, because not only will it bring you negativity and impede your success, it may also cause you to be disliked by many people, thus making your career more miserable than enjoyable.
I have seen both types of professionals in my engineering career: those who focus solely on their own advancement, and those who are dedicated to helping others. Guess what? The helpers always seem to have more rewarding and enjoyable careers. The helpers are those people that everyone in the office absolutely loves to work with, and are the people that everyone wants to be around at social gatherings. The helpers are those professionals that have extraordinary careers and truly enjoy their lives. [Read more...]
James Yarmus, P.E.
Featured Guest Blogger: Dr. James J. Yarmus, PE, PP, F.NSPE, F.ASCE
Some call it guidance, or networking, and some the answer to achieving eternal life. Another simple description is a means of enabling a heart to heart or hand holding relationship with a virtual stranger. The art of mentoring feels natural to humanitarians because it makes the world a little better. Mentoring may be the ultimate expression of trust. It is the equivalent of an answer to competition, an expression of Love for humankind even when the mentored is not in any way related to the mentor.
When a mentor stretches out a hand in friendship, when the mentor provides unconditional leadership, and when the mentor becomes a role model the proverbial light shines in the tunnel of uncertainty that encompasses youth or inexperience. Mentoring restores faith in our fellow human when it becomes questionable, it provides fabric and strength in the search for answers when ethics are ill defined, and it structures order as the antithesis of the illusion of propriety generated when procedure replaces intent and perception overwhelms substance. [Read more...]
Jason Kent
Featured Guest Blogger: Jason Kent, P.E.
“I want to be a leader, but I’m so new here.”
Many young professionals find it frustrating to feel that they can’t lead or advance because of their youth or short tenure in their organization. The qualities of being relatively young or new to an organization may be obstacles to leadership, but they certainly do not prevent a young professional from being a leader.
There are four easy steps you can follow to cultivate and exercise your leadership skills without having positional power. Do a few of these, and you are well on your way to being a leader. [Read more...]
Anthony Fasano
For those of you who do not know of Brett Favre, here is a brief overview from Wikipedia. Brett Lorenzo Favre is an American quarterback in the National Football League. He is a 20-year veteran of the NFL, having played quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons (1991), Green Bay Packers (1992–2007), New York Jets (2008) and Minnesota Vikings (2009–present). Favre is the only quarterback in NFL history to throw for over 70,000 yards, the only quarterback to throw over 500 touchdowns, and the only quarterback to have over 10,000 pass attempts.
Brett Favre is most famously known for his streak of starting consecutive games as a quarterback. As of this morning Brett Favre has started 297 games in a row as a quarterback in the NFL, 92 more than the next quarterback. Favre is 41 years old now, and has strongly considered retirement at the end of each of the last few seasons. Many say that he has come back simply because he wants to extend his streak to 300 consecutive games.
I wasn’t one of them until recently, as I thought he came back because he really loved the game and thought he could still make an impact. Well so much for that theory! Towards the end of last year and almost every game this year, Favre has been banged up to the point of him saying he may or may not play next week. The truth is, some of the injuries that he has sustained this year, would have sidelined a 30-year-old quarterbacks, never mind a 41-year-old quarterback. Yet every Sunday, he trots out there and plays through the pain, his team often suffering because of this. Not only does his physical ability or lack –there-of compromise the team, but the drama of this streak creates a circus like atmosphere around the team, week in and week out. Many people say that he has the team and ownership hostage in that they have to play him because of this streak. In essence, the organization is playing Favre each week to preserve his streak, not because he is the best option for the team to win the game. [Read more...]
Diana Galer
Featured Guest Blogger: Diana M. Gáler, Ph.D., DABT, CPC
Diana is the founder of Gáler Coaching for Excellence, a full service executive coaching company. As a scientist and executive in the pharmaceutical industry, Dr. Diana Gáler learned early on that teams with a clear purpose and results focus, created to maximize the positive contributions of their members, achieved the best results. As a coach, Diana is sharing her passion to energize the careers of leaders, primarily in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, and help them create successful, engaged teams.
When was the last time you thought you had little influence? Most of us feel that way from time to time when we struggle to persuade others to take a course of action, agree with a decision or follow our path.
We often equate persuasion (the ability to prevail on a person to do something, as by advising or urging) with influence (the capacity or power of persons or things to be a compelling force on or produce effects on the actions, behavior, opinions, etc. of others.) A person with influence is able to persuade others with greater ease.
Each of us exerts influence on our environment, our co-workers, staff, family, community, etc. We may not be aware of just how much of and how powerful an impact we can have. To illustrate, I love to tell a story of someone who knew how much influence she had and used it subtly but effectively to positively impact the role of women: [Read more...]
Anthony Fasano
I had the opportunity to participate in Tony Robbins’ Unleash the Power Within seminar this past weekend. It was an awesome experience, especially the Firewalk. That’s right; I walked barefoot over 15 ft of 2000 degree hot coals, crazy I know! Tony Robbins was adamant in saying that the Firewalk is not about the Firewalk, it is about the ability to change your “state” at anytime. Often, at “good” times in our life or career, we are in a certain state, while we tend to be in another state during “bad” times.
The ability to put ourselves into the “good” state at any moment in time is priceless. I can’t explain 4 days of Tony Robbins training in one blog post, nor do I want to, for those of you who plan on attending one day. However, what I will tell you is that Tony says the 2 most important aspects of controlling your state are your focus and your physiology. With all of the distractions in the workplace today it’s very easy to lose focus, especially when it comes to your career goals and career advancement. If you have lost focus, take some quiet time to think about where your career is headed. Re-focus and put together a plan to help you get from where you are to where you want to be. Once you gain that focus, do everything in your power to keep it and use it to effectively achieve your goals. [Read more...]
Anthony Fasano
From my experience in the engineering industry, and really the corporate environment in general, I realized that there are two types of managers, I refer to them as managers and LEADERS. There are leaders who care about their co-workers and staff and there are managers who really don’t. Let me explain further.
The leaders, who care about their staff, take the time to express gratitude for the things that their staff does for the company as often as possible. They encourage continuous learning and career development. They go out of their way to be a mentor not just a “manager.” These people are generally very well respected by their staff and others, and their leadership fosters a real TEAM mentality. Their team always seems to be totally engaged and WANTS to work for them. Conflict within their department is usually rare or non-existent.
On the other hand, there are managers who often care only about themselves and the bottom line of the company. Managers say the words ‘Thank You,’ once a week if their employees are lucky. They fail to recognize when their employees go the extra mile, causing a feeling of under-appreciation to permeate through their department. They are constantly putting themselves before the team. They fail to delegate or give their staff opportunities to broaden their horizons, usually due to lack of trust. When one of their staff deserves a raise or promotion, whether the manager thinks they do or not, they fail to “go to bat” for their employee within the company, again thinking how it might affect them. [Read more...]
Based on what I have seen in the engineering industry, it seems that well rounded engineers, advance much more rapidly than others. This statement is not as obvious as it may sound when first reading it. Wouldn’t you think that an engineer who is a design superstar that can crank out top notch design after top notch design would quickly climb the ranks? Wouldn’t an engineer with profound managerial skills, ride those skills to the top?
It seems like what ends up happening is that the design superstar is so good at designing that they don’t end up doing anything else. They design so efficiently and they enjoy it so much that they don’t really bother learning other skills and the company is enjoying their productivity so they go along with it. The super manager can certainly manage people but when it comes time to get his or her hands dirty and jump into a technical situation to solve a problem, their weakness shows and it detracts from their overall managerial value. [Read more...]
Check out our Institute for Engineering Career Development. The fastest way to advance your engineering career – guaranteed! This community provides affordable, on-demand soft skills training and career development coaching for engineers.
Anthony Fasano, P.E., aka Your Professional Partner, founded Powerful Purpose Associates after he realized that it was the development of his soft skills that helped him to become an associate partner at a reputable engineering firm at the young age of 27. With history as a civil engineer, Anthony is now a nationally recognized executive coach and inspirational speaker, specializing in the areas of engineering career development, as well as leadership. He uses his highly effective coaching and speaking techniques through affordable programs to help engineers develop their soft skills, work through blocks, prioritize effectively, set clear goals and achieve their maximum potential.
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