Workshop Aim
The aim of this series of five half-day CPD interactive workshops is to enable engineers with managerial responsibilities to develop the essential characteristics necessary to operate in an effective, impactful and creative manner in their role.
Workshop Overview
Management is likely to play an increasingly important role in the life of an engineer as he/she progresses in their organisation and career. A range of recent studies on essential skills for 21st century workplaces indicate that technical expertise alone is no longer sufficient to meet individual, team or organisation objectives. Taking on new managerial responsibilities brings new challenges and demands. Knowing your own strengths and weaknesses, knowing your business and industry, knowing how to communicate, and knowing how to drive change and innovate are the essential characteristics of today’s high performance engineering manager.
Structure
A series of 5 half-day CPD interactive workshops, running from 9.00am -12.30pm. Each session will include pre-session reading and preparation. Sessions begin with a lecture from an industry leader/management expert followed by a full group workshop activity to ensure planned application of learning. A structured post-seminar exercise can be returned to Engineers Ireland so that the full process for each event can be certified as 1 day’s CPD.
Learning Outcomes
Participants will be able to harness their management competencies to best meet their individual, team and organisation’s objectives and succeed as managers.
Programme
Who should attend
The series will benefit any engineer in a management position and particularly those who have taken on new managerial responsibilities or are in line to do so.
Facilitator
The programme will be facilitated by Professor Bill Grimson providing a consistency of approach and ensuring any common themes emerging from the sessions are identified.
CPD Credits
Each session has been designed to meet 1 full day’s CPD with the series representing 5 day’s CPD – the recommended minimum average per annum for all engineering professionals.
Learning Outcome
Participants will acquire an understanding of the challenges of managing teams and discover how to get the best out of their team.
Guest Lecturer: Pat Gilroy, MD, Dalkia
Patrick Gilroy is Managing Director of Dalkia (Veolia Environnement's Energy Division) in Ireland.
With over 17 years experience in industry and an engineering background, prior to joining Dalkia in 2002 he worked in organisations such as ESB, Amdahl and FP2, where he held various positions from Engineer to General Manager and Managing Director. Holding a BA BAI (mech) from University of Dublin Trinity College, he is Secretary of the Energy Institute and a member of the Expert Group in Future Skills Needs within the Irish Green Economy.
In addition to his significant experience in the energy sector, he is the manager of the Dublin Gaelic football team and is a former President of the Ireland-France Chamber of Commerce.
Pat Gilroy on managing your team
As a social creature we have evolved to be part of a group in order to survive and progress.
Our individual intelligence, the basis of this survival and progression, is surpassed only by our intelligence when we are part of a group, engaging with other people and sharing intelligence and skills. Collective intelligence surpasses anything we can achieve individually, so when the group works well we can perform at a level we could never achieve alone. So we depend on our groups and need them to work well. We call this cultivating intelligent performance.
The process has been with us since we first collaborated to hunt large prey, and is expressed today in all notable team performances, from village sports teams to the groups that work on space travel. As with the other areas of human skill and knowledge, all human beings do this naturally to some degree. However, the skills involved can be improved enormously once they are made conscious, named and made part of the group’s everyday practice.
Learning Outcome
Participants will discover the step change in approach required of new managers and learn the latest business techniques in order to deliver success for their organisation.
Guest Lecturer: Lionel Alexander, Vice President/MD. Printhead Operations ISB/PPS, Hewlett Packard (Manufacturing) Ltd
Lionel Alexander is a Chartered Engineer and Fellow of Engineers Ireland and holds a degree in Mechanical/Production Engineering. Lionel joined HP in 1982 as a Production Engineer. He has Operations/Business experience across several segments of HP’s core business portfolio which include manufacturing, procurement, engineering development and R&D and Marketing. He has managed various global functions in HP’s geographic locations. In this current role, he is responsible for worldwide printhead manufacturing, development of product extensions for revenue and profit growth and worldwide customer assurance & technology marketing. Lionel currently manages a workforce of 2000 employees.
Lionel Alexander on managing your business
Delivering business success requires business units to add value and demonstrate relevancy that is aligned with the overall organizational strategy. This is brought about through a strong focus on key metrics, understanding where to prioritize and align resources efficiently while effectively transforming through the changing business landscape
Learning Outcome
Participants will be introduced to techniques to apply to their workplace to manage stress and pressure to ensure they and their team can meet their objectives.
Guest Lecturer: Ray McKiernan, Director of Irish Stress Management Institute
Ray McKiernan is lead trainer, researcher and director of the Stress Management Institute of Ireland. He is a certified Stress & Wellness consultant with the internationally renowned ‘Hans Selye Foundation’ in Canada and has completed his clinical training in the Harvard Medical School in Boston. He provides Stress Management training to the health care, pharmaceutical, financial, engineering and software industries and has also worked with many of the largest organisations in the state. As lead trainer to the Defence Forces, he delivered specialist instructor training programmes to their Personnel Support Services. He also provides training to the Law Society of Ireland, the Migraine Society and is a specialist skills trainer to counseling and psychotherapy students in DBS.
Ray McKiernan on managing yourself
The challenge for the exceptional management is not to adapt to change that has already happened but to be able to adapt to change while undergoing constant reorganisation. Resilient management is in a state of constant development where each individual learns the skills to flourish in a faster changing environment than ever before. The skills required to manage constant change are different to task orientated skills. They involve building an evolving capacity within each individual to deal with the increasingly dynamic environment of a high performance workplace. This evolving capacity to adapt to a changing environment while sustaining performance is called resilience. Research shows that Resiliency is a capacity to adapt, improvise and respond to challenge effectively, on a continuous basis. This capacity is a function of the internal resources available to each individual that can be called upon when required. Training in the Key Competencies for Managing Pressure and Building Resilience are essential in any management development training.
Learning Outcome
Participants will learn of the importance of effective stakeholder communications and be able to apply best-practice communication techniques in their workplace.
Guest Lecturer: PJ Rudden, Regional Director, RPS Group Ltd
PJ Rudden is a Chartered Engineer and Fellow of Engineers Ireland. He qualified in Civil Engineering from UCD spent his early career with Dublin City Council and then with MC O'Sullivan Consulting Engineers. At RPS Group Ltd he is Group Business Director in charge of Environment, Energy and Waste at RPS advising Central Government Departments/Agencies and Local Authorities on environment, transport and solid waste strategy and developments of facilities including Dublin, Galway, Connaught, North East, Limerick/Clare/ Kerry and Midlands Regions. P.J. is one of Ireland’s leading consultants and commentators on environmental matters. He was the principal consultant on the formulation and adoption of most of the country’s regional waste management plans including institutional aspects. He is also leading the implementation of these plans through a combination of procurement options including PPP and DBOF options. He has lectured extensively on waste management in Ireland, UK, Europe and Australia and has contributed on national TV, radio and print media. He is a member of the EU Commission Evaluation Board for the European Green Capital City Award.
PJ Rudden on managing communications
We are all human. We therefore need to treat others as humans and in a manner in which we would like robe treated. In short it's nice to be nice!
Therefore in communicating any message to other engineers or the general public we need to show the human touch. This is true whether the message is technical or otherwise.
We need to keep it simple. We need to create linkages that will embody understanding. We need to appeal to the emotional intelligence of our audience.
In my experience there should always be at least one sentence where you will experience deafening silence or you can hear a pin drop on the floor! Dead silence in the room!
Then and only then do you know that the audience is listening
Learning Outcome
Participants will discover how to recognise and drive change for the benefit of their organisation.
Guest Lecturer: Noel McShera, Director of Engineering, Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics Manufacturing Ltd.
Noel McShera is a Chartered Engineer and member of Engineers Ireland. He is a member of the Siemens Swords Management team and has Head of Engineering is responsible for technology transfer, manufacturing, support services and lifecycle support. He is a member of Member of the R&D Engineering Management team for Chemistry, ImmunoAssay & Automation business unit (USA). Noel holds a BSc (Physics) , UCD, MSc (Applied Electronics), TCD and BA (Management ), IMI
Noel McShera on managing change
Change impacts the future course of events and is an enabler of both personal and organizational growth. Not to change is to let the world pass us by. However, change is not without associated risk and uncertainty. For technical staff change can sometimes feel uncomfortable when compared with the more quantitative certainty of a well executed engineering design. Finding a way to become more comfortable with change and developing techniques to handle change are key stages of evolution in the development of an engineer as they progress from purely technical work to wider organizational and people management responsibility. Listening, communication and influencing skills become at least as important as core technical skills. The 'facts of the situation' are rarely as clear-cut in others eyes as we would like to believe.