Essential Management Skills 2023

Overview

	"The Essential Management Skills conference provided me with a great insight into leadership and management early in my career that accelerated my understanding of these topics, gave me a chance to network with other early career engineers from different sectors, and showed me a range of industrial facilities across the UK." Giles Hartill, Deputy President, Institution of Mechanical Engineers

"I attended EMS back in 2018, and I loved it! My role at the time didn't call for personnel management, but I knew these skills would feature at some point in my career - and I can now see just how invaluable that conference was. It is also a brilliant opportunity to meet and work with like-minded engineers from different backgrounds and industries – and I guess such events are especially valuable nowadays given the changes to working habits in the last few years. Definitely attend if you get the chance!" Maira Bana, Co-Chair, IMechE Construction and Building Services Division

What are you doing to hone the leadership and managerial skills you need to take your career to the next level?

Leading and managing people, projects, or teams, requires more than a high degree of technical knowledge. Just like any skill, becoming an effective manager and leader takes effort and attention.

The IMechE Essential Management Skills conference offers three days of workshops, networking, and site visits to equip early-career professionals with the knowledge they need to make the step up in their careers. Attendees will have the opportunity to learn from experienced professionals and engage in hands-on engineering challenges to practice the skills being taught.

With businesses emerging from COVID-19 to a new and rapidly changing professional landscape, it is more critical than ever to take a proactive approach in developing and supporting engineering leaders of the future.

Remote and hybrid working practices are now routine for many businesses and employees, organisations can no longer rely on developing engineers picking up communication and teamwork skills ‘by osmosis’ in the office environment. This conference is perfectly placed to address these challenges head on in an intensive, face-to-face environment. In addition, attendees will have the chance to network with their peers and leaders in the engineering field, building valuable connections that can enhance their professional development.

The event:

• Presents management competencies as learnable skills, in a structured and interactive manner, putting these on the same footing as technical skills
• Encourages early-career engineers to engage in activities to foster teamwork and think in different and innovative ways
• Features high-profile plenary keynotes sharing their wealth of experience leading in industry
• Puts attendees on the path to excellence in their careers.

Join this event to:

• Develop managerial skills which will prepare you to take the next step in your career, and look great on your CV
• Network with experts from a breadth of industries, forging relationships that could last throughout your career
• Take up the chance to attain the industry-recognised CMI Level 3 Award in Principles of Management and Leadership
• Have fun! Take part in social activities with other early-career engineers 

As well as a 15% discount on registration fees, organisations booking 3 or more delegates will have the option to be listed as a sponsor. This includes your company’s logo on the event website and other promotional materials, and is a chance to demonstrate your commitment to developing the next generation of leaders in engineering. Email us

Support your career development

Attending this event supports your Professional Development; if you're an IMechE Member, this can be tracked in the Career Developer section of your online account.

Covid-19 guidance for attendees:

The Institution takes every endeavour to operate all our events as “COVID-safe” as possible. This includes additional preventative measures, such as cleaning rotas and air ventilation. For further information on our activities in this area, view our infection control solutions webpages.

Day 1

09:00 - Programme

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Day 2

08:00 - Programme

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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.

Leadership communication – building relationships and getting your message across
Leadership is largely about influence and in order to effectively influence you need strong communication skills. Developing a powerful and flexible communication style is a great addition to an engineer’s toolkit and is a fundamental skill for effective managers. This workshop will help you develop your communication skills in the short term as well as focusing on the importance of communication in leadership and management roles. Attending this workshop will help you to communicate more clearly, improving the way you interact with your colleagues.

Workshops:

Solving problems innovatively
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.

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.

Commercial skills
Contribute to business profitability by understanding and applying basic commercial principles. This module will provide a understanding of the commercial world and how to deal with real issues including handling suppliers, demanding customers, as well as exploring opportunities to increase value and gain competitive advantage. Based on practical case-studies this is an opportunity to gain a foundation in understanding how engineering and commercial skills complement each other.

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Sponsorship and Exhibition Opportunities: Sponsorship Team

T: +44 (0)20 7973 1309   E: sponsorship@imeche.org

Event Enquiries: Event Enquiries

T: +44 (0)20 7973 1251   E: eventenquiries@imeche.org