Essential Management Skills 2018

Overview

What does it take to be a truly effective manager? Gain the skills and knowledge needed at Essential Management Skills 2018!

Engineering managers need to offer more than just technical excellence. This three-day conference will equip today’s engineers with the essential management skills required for success within line and project management roles. Attend this event to improve your ability to manage yourself, projects and teams. You can also take the opportunity to gain a Level 3 Award in First Line Management, awarded by the Chartered Management Institute (CMI).

Essential Management Skills 2018 will enable you to: 

• Hear from pioneers in engineering about their career journeys through our programme of plenary session speakers
• Develop the skills needed to be a successful engineering manager through our expert-led workshops
• Attend one of our industry site visits to see first-hand how a leading engineering firm operates
• Test your teamwork and leadership abilities within a business environment through our interactive Engineering Challenge
• Gain technical and management insights first-hand from experts in the field of engineering through our Question Time Panel
• Network with engineering leaders and your peers through our programme of evening social events

Chartered Management Institute's Level 3 Award in First Line Management

The Level 3 Award in First Line Management provides an introduction to the skills, roles and responsibilities of this management area and provides individuals with an award as hard evidence of their knowledge. It will develop your basic knowledge by focusing on the development of specific management skills. This will also provide you with a year’s study membership with the Chartered Management Institute and access to thousands of online management and leadership resources.

*CMI Level 3 Award requires attendance of the following two workshops: Manager? Leader? – What’s the difference? and Inspiring leaders - it's not what you do, it's the way that you do it. A 2,500 word assignment and online learning will also need to be completed in CMI's digital portal within 1 year of attending the conference.

How important are management skills for the career development of engineers?

"All engineers can benefit from developing their management skills whether planning for a role in management or focusing on a ‘technical’ career path. Developing our ability to work better with others – providing leadership, communicating, motivating, influencing – enhances our contribution whatever role we are in."
Andy Webber, Workshop Leader for:
• Disagreeing Without a Fight: Minimising Destructive Conflict
• Developing your Approach to Communication: Understanding the Importance of Perspective

"Very! Whether you want to be in a managerial position or not, we all need the skills associated with “management and leadership” eg interpersonal skills, organisation skills, team skills, big picture thinking skills etc."
Liz Bennett, Workshop Leader for:
• Stand out from the crowd; how to make yourself unique
• Getting to where you want to be: Self Help for 21st Century Engineers

"No matter whether an engineer is a manager or not the soft skills covered under the term ‘management skills’ are key for anyone who has to work with other people. In various ways such skills as influencing, negotiating, communicating, inspiring, trust building etc… all lead to more cohesive and productive teams of engineers."
Eddie Winton, Workshop Leader for:
• Making cultural connections
• “Problems, problems….. the solution is out there"

Click here to read the full interviews ahead of Essential Management Skills 2018.

Industry Site Visits - 18th April 2018

Day 1 will give you the opportunity to visit one of the following companies in order to observe successful management initiatives and gain insider knowledge on engineering practice:

Mercedes AMG High Performance Powertrains, Brixworth, Northamptonshire
Mercedes AMG High Performance Powertrains is a Daimler AG company whose principal activities are the design and manufacture of Mercedes-Benz Formula 1 racing engines and hybrid power systems for the MERCEDES AMG PETRONAS team. They supply power units to the Sahara Force India F1, Williams F1 and Lotus F1 teams. On this visit, discover the best management processes to improve performance, observe how F1 engines are designed, manufactured and tested, and hear from the Engineering and Programme Directors on future challenges in F1.

AWE, Aldermaston
AWE is responsible for the design, manufacture, and maintenance of the UK's nuclear deterrent.  The visit to AWE’S Aldermaston site will commence with an introduction to the organisation’s role and history incorporated into a tour of AWE's Historical Collection.  After a buffet lunch, where there will be an opportunity for discussion with some of AWE's engineers and technical professionals, there will be a visit to one of AWE’s important facilities before departure mid-afternoon. Due to the nature of AWE's work, this visit is limited to British Nationals only.

Bladon Jets, Coventry
Take this opportunity to visit the Bladon Jets’ Research & Development and Pre Production Assembly Operations at The Proving Factory in Coventry. Here the company is developing the Bladon 12kW microturbine genset (MTG) as a cost effective, clean alternative for telecom tower power applications. Hear about their unique design expertise and manufacturing processes and how they are leading the way in bringing this breakthrough solution to volume production for key growth markets worldwide.

Booking multiple tickets (group discounts available) or on behalf of someone else? Email us

Accommodation and catering at Essential Management Skills 2018:

Registration fees include 3 lectures, 4 workshops, 1 technical visit, 1 team-building exercise, and the conference dinner, as well as breakfast, lunch, refreshments and dinner each day, accommodation on Day 1 and 2 and a copy of the conference proceedings. Delegates will be contacted to supply their site visit and workshop preferences.

Day 1

09:00 - Programme

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Day 2

08:00 - Programme

Jump to Day 1  |  Jump to Day 2  |  Jump to Day 3  |  CMI Mandatory Workshops  |  Workshops

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Day 3

08:00 - Programme

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CMI Mandatory Workshops:

Manager? Leader? What's the difference?
This workshop will provide you with a practical understanding of the roles and responsibilities of both managers and leaders and will enable you to understand when you need to lead and when you need to manage. Every role we take on, whether in our professional lives or even in our personal lives requires some management skills and some leadership skills. However, you cannot lead without followers. People will choose who they wish to follow and invariably they follow people who they trust, who inspire them and who act with integrity.

Inspiring leaders - it's not what you do, it's the way that you do it
Being an inspiration to others is something we all aspire to, whether as a leader or in other ways. Is it something we can learn or something we are born with? In this session we explore what makes an inspirational and motivational leader.
•  Examine some key characteristics of leaders who inspire others
•  Look at how successful leaders motivate others and some practical steps we can take to implement their ideas
•  Decide if inspirational leadership is a choice we can make, or if it is just in the realms of management journals and publications

Workshops:

Developing your approach to communication: understanding the importance of perspective
Developing a powerful and flexible communication style is a great addition to the engineer’s toolkit. Through clear, concise and targeted communication engineers will be able to improve the influence they have over colleagues and improve their career development prospects. After attending this workshop, you will be able to communicate more clearly and effectively, improving the way you interact with your colleagues.  

Getting to where you want to be: Self Help for 21st Century Engineers
Whatever you're working towards in your career, this workshop will help you understand how to plan your development to get there. The session will encourage you to step onto the ‘development ladder’ and look beyond formal training in order to develop. At the end of the session, individuals will have created an individual learning and development plan for them to take away and discuss with their managers at work.

“Problems, problems…..the solution is out there”
Want some structured ways to create unstructured thinking (and therefore novel approaches & ideas)? Then this is for you. An intense, highly interactive workshop providing engineers (and those who work in an engineering environment), with a variety of creative tools & innovative processes guaranteed to raise their own effectiveness when problem solving and seeking new ideas.

The session demonstrates that everyone has creative potential by getting participants to try tools for generating & filtering options, developing the most appropriate and seeing examples of when best to use each tool. Participants will be able to use these skills in the workplace to make more effective, efficient and creative use of people’s time when working in teams to solve problems.

Barter with the best and other negotiation approaches
One of the keys to successful negotiation is to ensure that all parties are in agreement when the negotiation concludes. This session is an opportunity to learn some negotiating tools and techniques for a variety of workplace scenarios.
•  Become an everyday negotiator
•  Create your own climate of ‘negotiation’ awareness
•  Plan and prepare for negotiation success

Managing projects is easy… isn't it?
This session provides an introduction to project management tools and techniques. It will be useful for those who are yet to fulfil the role of project manager, but who nevertheless provide vital support within projects. 

The workshop is ideal for those who wish to take more control of their own workload, and contribute more effectively to the success of their projects and their organisation. The emphasis is on practical, hands-on techniques to use immediately, and there will be opportunity to practise them during the workshop.

Stand out from the crowd; how to make yourself unique
Hoping that your intelligence, expertise or hard work will get you noticed does not make sense. There is just too much noise, too much information. People are too busy doing their own thing to notice what a great job you’re doing - if they even know of your existence. So, how do you develop an appropriate personal brand to make you stand out and be remembered?

Making cultural connections
Culture drives our behaviour and is behind different attitudes towards things such as authority, gender, emotions and ambitions. When working across different cultures, it can be hard to take into account these cultural differences. Not understanding how our attitudes may seem to others can damage relationships and slow down, what should be, efficient work. This workshop will look into cultural differences and how, in ever growing remote teams, we can work together more effectively.

How do I lead when I'm not their manager?
Do you find yourself in a leadership position but without formal management authority? Perhaps you are responsible for delivering projects using contractors where traditional line management is less applicable? Perhaps you are the technical expert and prefer a technically focused career path – you still have to get things done through others but can’t tell people what to do? In any case, these scenarios represent complex business relationships and you need to be able to lead and influence those you work with.

Giving feedback: handling difficult conversations 
No feedback no progress. That is true for individuals and companies. Doing a good job these days is not enough. You and everyone else in your organisation need to be seen as competent by others and to be open to suggestions & ideas they may provide on how you can improve the way you work. So why is it sometimes so difficult to convince others to embrace feedback? This vital activity can make the difference between a vibrant, productive and motivated workforce and one that is demoralised and often focusing on peripheral rather than core issues.
This workshop will provide you with the confidence in delivering feedback and build your knowledge and skills to both deliver and receive it with the help of some tools/frameworks.

Disagreeing without a fight: minimising destructive conflict
In a world where engineers are dependent on each other to get things done, disagreement is both inevitable and desirable. Different people have different opinions and perspectives and it's important to utilise these differences. Disagreements and conflict doesn't have to be negative, if handled correctly, it can be productive. This workshop will explore your conflict handling style and look at the tools and techniques you can use in order to get the best out of what can sometimes be seen as a bad situation.

I'm an engineer, I don't need to know the law or do I?
All engineers have to work within legal and commercial frameworks. Getting the legal side of the process wrong could cost your company large sums of money. This will be an interactive workshop covering:
• General principles of the law of contract, particularly relating to formation and privity of contract and third-party rights
• Essential elements of a valid contract 
• Contractual liability and limitation on liability
• Design liability and how it may be owed to third parties

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