Ahead of speaking at
Essential Management Skills 2018, we caught up with Eddie Winton who will be leading two of the following workshops at this event:
• Making cultural connections
• “Problems, problems….. the solution is out there"
Eddie shares his thoughts on the challenges engineers face in becoming a manager, how can this be overcome and what he is looking forward to at the event.
Q: What are you most looking forward to by leading your workshop at Essential Management Skills 2018?
Eddie Winton (EW): Interacting with and inspiring the participants to go and find out more about the topic and thereby continue their personal development.
Q: What transferable skills will delegates gain by attending your workshop at Essential Management Skills 2018?
EW: Culture Sessions: Will help those engineers who attend to apply empathy and insights gained to work more effectively with colleagues from differing countries and cultures.
Problem Solving Sessions: Will allow engineers to use their natural leaning towards process and order and combine it with some structured techniques which, paradoxically, generate possible solutions from different perspectives back in their everyday roles.
Q: What benefits will the CMI Level 3 Award in First Line Management bring for delegates of Essential Management Skills 2018?
EW: I don’t think I can better the answer that Andy Webber has already provided on this question.
Q: How can we mitigate the engineering skills gap?
EW: Gender issues aside, I feel by making engineering a separate subject from an early age in all schools and also providing government grants (or other assisted means) to encourage more people to study engineering at University or College.
Q: How important are management skills for the career development of engineers?
EW: 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.
Q: What do you think is the biggest challenge for engineers keen to go into management and how can this be overcome?
EW: Remembering that once they have management responsibilities their role is much less about technical/engineering issues and more about people issues. They need to learn to step back from ‘getting their hands dirty’ tasks some – although not all – of the time. Working on their ability to delegate and being clear about what makes a manager effective are the keys.