[00:00:00] This is the engineering and leadership podcast with pat sweet episode 48.

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[00:00:14] Welcome it to the engineering and leadership podcast. The show dedicated to helping engineering, uh, leaders thrive. Today I chat with Anthony Fasano, president of the engineering management Institute about the importance of leadership management and career development for engineering staff.

[00:00:31] Hi everyone. And welcome to the show. I am pat sweet. Happy to be here once again with you. And a happy engineering month. We're celebrating engineering month here in Canada. All of March is dedicated to engineering.

[00:00:53] Which is very, very exciting to be part of this. Community. I recently attended. For the first time in a dog's age. A real live event, hosted by engineers, Nova Scotia, which was an awful lot of fun. It was great to see people. It was great to see some really incredible, really innovative stuff happening here in my home province.

[00:01:16] But more than anything, what really struck me about that was what a strong community we have. In the world of engineering, here in Nova Scotia book, but more broadly as well. And it's amazing for that to be pointed out. So clearly when you do get a chance to gather how easy it is to recognize people, how close those bonds are. So I'm really grateful to have had the opportunity to do that in the looking forward to even more events in the near future.

[00:01:47] For 20, 22 and beyond.

[00:01:49] I've got a really wonderful episode coming up with my friend tour, Anthony Fasano, someone who I've learned an awful lot from over the years, worked very closely with. Over the years. So that's going to be an awful lot of fun. Before it, get to that though. A few things I wanted to mention one, some really exciting news personally is I'm now the director of communications for the American society for engineering management and. If you're not familiar with AACM, it's a wonderful little organization dedicated frankly, to what you would expect, the advancement of engineering management. So whether you're a student or an academic or a practitioner, someone working in industry.

[00:02:31] ACM is this wonderful community. I just talked off the top about this sense of community with an engineering? Well, ASM really is a community. Dedicated to people leading and managing engineering work. So, I would highly encourage you to check that out. I'll have a link in the show notes so that you can go check them out. There's a little something for everyone at ASM and.

[00:02:55] Uh, again, very happy to be an official member of the board and to be helping. Push the mission, which I think lines up really nicely with what I'm trying to do here with the podcast and my business. Which is to help engineering leaders thrive. That's the whole name of the game.

[00:03:12] And another exciting news. Finally, finally, my productivity for engineering managers course is now live. So this something I've been talking about quite a bit over the last several weeks, These ideas around productivity. For engineering managers. Managers within engineering are incredibly busy. They're overwhelmed.

[00:03:32] If you're not already burnt out, you're probably on the verge of it. So what I've done is I've put together an online video based course designed to help busy engineering managers take control of their work. Get things done. Fine balance. And prioritize what matters. So of course, this is a very big moment in the, the growth maturity of my own business. So to help celebrate what I'm going to do is for the first 50 people who sign up. By Friday, March 11th, you'll be able to get the course for half price. All you have to do is use the code productivity 50. So productivity five, zero. When you decide to pick up the course and yeah, you get it for half price. So hopefully this is something that is of interest to you and you get a chance to, uh, to sign up and check it out.

[00:04:22] If you are interested, you can go to engineering and leadership.com/p E M, which of course stands for productivity for engineering managers. So that. You are elegant is engineering and leadership.com/p E M. Hope to see you there.

[00:04:38] All right. Let's move on to the main content for today.

[00:04:41] In this age of the great resignation engineering firms everywhere are asking themselves what they need to do in order to attract and retain the best talent. Maybe you're an engineering manager asking yourself that very question. Should you give people more money? Should you give them better flexibility, better benefits? What exactly do you need to do?

[00:05:14] As you'll hear my guest today believes that the single most important thing you can do is provide a clear path for career growth and to actively support that growth for your staff. And he's got the data to prove it. Anthony Fasano is the president and CEO of the engineering management Institute. New organization, dedicated to helping engineers develop managerial skills, such as communication, public speaking, networking, productivity, and leadership.

[00:05:41] Anthony himself is a professional engineer and a certified professional coach. And he holds a bachelor of science in civil engineering from Lafayette college and a master of science in civil engineering from Columbia university. Here's my chat with Anthony.

[00:05:56] Mr. Anthony Fasano. Welcome to the engineering and leadership podcast. It's absolute pleasure to have.

[00:06:02] Well, thanks for having me, pat. I'm excited for this.

[00:06:03] Yeah, this has been a long time coming at you and I have been operating in this engineering management leadership world for a number of years now. And, and if I can say your, your work was the original inspiration for, for me getting into this.

[00:06:16] So I'm super excited about this today. The plan is to talk a little bit about obviously leadership and the development of leadership skills within engineers. And you've been on a, on a long time. Covering this kind of material, teaching people, training people. So I'd like to start by reaching back into your own engineering career and, and hear a bit about your story, kind of making that transition from an individual contributor into leadership.

[00:06:44] What did that look like and why, why was that important for you?

[00:06:48] Yeah.

[00:06:48] sure. I was an engineer. Well, I ain't gonna say I'm an engineer, but I used to practice as an engineer and I went to school for civil engineering and I graduated and got a job with a consulting engineering firm and kind of right off the bat for me, I knew that I wanted to one day become an owner in that firm or, you know, definitely a leader in that firm in some way. And so right away, I started looking at the other leaders in the firm. I'd always been into like coaching. I hadn't Tony Robbins books, since I was a kid, I used to read it and I got fired up about it. And one of the things that he always said was if you want to be like someone, figure out what they do, you know, watch them, see what they're doing.

[00:07:23] And so I would look at these leaders in the company and I noticed this is pretty interesting pattern. They had the technical skills like everyone else, but they had these other skills, right. They had the ability to connect with people, communicate with people, speak in public, they could delegate tasks, they could lead projects.

[00:07:40] And so it just became very clear to me that the road to kind of success in engineering leadership is by developing these other skills and becoming a well-rounded engineering professional. And so. That's what I wanted to do. Unfortunately, there wasn't really a lot of resources out there for that specific to engineering.

[00:07:58] However, there were resources. So I, you know, I read Dale Carnegie's book and I would go watch videos and take online courses. And I did a pretty good job, I would say, and kind of develop these skills, the best I could on my own. And then one day my boss approached me and said, Hey, Anthony, you know, we love what you're doing here.

[00:08:13] Would you be open to going around to some of our other offices and training the other engineering professionals here on these skillsets? And so my answer. At first, it was absolutely not because I'm an engineer, I'm not a trainer or instructor of any kind. And so it took me some time, but I did ultimately come around, I put together a curriculum and just took out a sheet of paper one day, sketch something out.

[00:08:34] And I went around to the other offices and did some of these, you know, very informal lunch and learns. And basically a couple of things happened. One was that. I mean, I really liked helping these technical professionals who just never had this knowledge before, you know, they weren't privy to it. They, they didn't have the abilities to develop these skills.

[00:08:51] So that was, I liked that a lot. That was exciting to me. But then the other part of it was that w we saw results. Companies started seeing, you know, some better communication between team members and better client correspondence and better project performance. At that time, I kind of said, this is something I want to do more of.

[00:09:06] So I enrolled in an executive coaching school in the evenings, which was a pretty intensive program. I went through. I joined Toastmasters so I could learn how to speak effectively. And I convinced the company to let me build an internal management and leadership training company. I was lucky that our HR director had gone to the same coaching school as me.

[00:09:24] So she was in on it with me. We built it together. We ran the program. It went really well. But after a year, I kind of said to myself, if there's this many people in one company that are struggling with these salsa skillsets, there must be thousands of them out there. And so that's when I kind of made the decision that I was gonna kind of leave my engineering career behind and go out and just try to do coaching and training and teaching of these softer and leadership skills for engineers on a full-time basis.

[00:09:48] Yeah. I don't know if I've ever heard that full story. I really love that. You said know, knowing, knowing, knowing what I know about you and the career you, you you've had since leaving engineering and, and the business you've built. It's, it's, it's quite amazing for that to have been the starting point, that initial reluctance.

[00:10:05] Yeah, Well, you know what? I think that's an important point for all engineering professionals, because the reason I say that is because when I started doing this, I was just a terrible speak. I mean, I spoke really fast. Nobody could really understand me. I had to go to, you know, public speaking. I went to Toastmasters.

[00:10:21] And the reason I say that is because that's a big misnomer, I think for engineers is that we can't speak in public effectively. You know, we're not good speakers, we're not good communicators. And the reality of it is like everything else in life. It's something that you can. You know, I'm kind of living proof of that.

[00:10:35] So if anyone says to me, you know, I wasn't born with good speaking skills. I just tell them that that's completely false because either reside, but now I've spoken in over 40 states, thousands of engineers across the country, I've done 500 podcast episodes. So, so I like to use myself as an example for that, because I think limiting beliefs like that are very destructive in terms of leadership development.

[00:10:55] And, you know, you have to overcome those because you can really learn anything you want to learn. You just take some determination and you have to just keep.

[00:11:03] Well, I think that's already a theme that is starting to emerge here a little bit is you recognized in the, in the people you wanted to become like and look like and follow that career path, that partnership path and kind of. So you, weren't waiting for the company to develop you. You went out and read Dale Carnegie, you went out and bought the books and the online courses and all the rest.

[00:11:25] And I think, I think that that's important for people to recognize is that the opportunity to learn and grow is not, you know, it's not such a huge mountain to climb, is it? And, and today it's gotta be even easier than when you were doing it at the beginning of your.

[00:11:44] Yeah.

[00:11:44] for sure. And, you know, That's why I named my book engineer your own success. Exactly. Because you know, that's what you have to do in your career. You can't sit back and wait and you know what, to your last point there, in terms of, you know, what's available to you in today's world. When I started doing this, the reason I wanted to do this was because there wasn't a lot of these resources available for engineering professionals, because most companies.

[00:12:09] I didn't think about soft skills back then. I mean, projects weren't as complex. There wasn't as many forms of communication, you know, different ways of communicating. And so over time, communication has. A much more important aspect of leadership and engineering and these other skill sets in terms of people, interaction and project management are more important than they've ever been before.

[00:12:30] And that's why I think in the world we live in today, it is great now that there are a lot of resources, like both of our websites and training programs and things out there for engineers that weren't always available, but it is still up to you in some ways to go out there and take advantage of these resources and try to build these skills because no, one's going to do that for.

[00:12:49] Yeah, that's right. That the opportunity is there, but you've got to take that step. It has to be, you, you do have to take ownership of that. You've kind of anticipated my next question here, which was about, about leadership and the importance of leadership for engineers, but both today and moving forward and you already kind of alluded to it is that projects are more complex that there's, there's just plain more going on.

[00:13:10] There's more to manage. Where do you see things moving in the future? And how do you expect leadership to kind of play a role in the, in the workplace of the future? We're already being confronted with new ways of working hybrid work and remote work is, is here to stay. I don't think there's any debate there.

[00:13:27] What other changes do you see on the horizon for engineers in the way we approach our work?

[00:13:34] It's a really good question. And, you know, I was just doing one of these. And EMI here. We're kind of doing our kind of annual performance discussions with everyone here. And I was having a discussion with one of our content editors. He edits all of our podcasts and stuff, and he says, you know, I've been listening, I've listened to all the podcasts.

[00:13:49] And he's like, what I really learned from about engineering and careers is that it's really all about the people. Right. And I think. I think that's one common denominator that regardless of what happens in terms of remote work, working in person, large projects, small projects, engineering is about people.

[00:14:06] You need to work with people, teams of people. You need to present the people. You know, you need to get approvals from people. You need to build projects for people. So at the end of the day, Ability to interact with people to get along with people, you know, to lead people. It's just critical. So, you know, it's going to get challenging in terms of different forms of communication, you know, using, uh, teams and slack and all these different things now.

[00:14:32] But as long as you, I think fundamentally can, you know, work?

[00:14:37] on your ability to interact with people and relate with people, listen to people. That's really, I think will always be the key. I think that's always going to kind of Trump everything else, because if you can do that, the forms of communication don't matter so much because you'll figure that out along the way.

[00:14:52] So I think that that support, I do think it's something that we have to be really cautious about. And I think you and I may have talked about this before a little bit, but it's the distraction factor right.

[00:15:01] now? You know, I, I just, I read Cal Newport's book a world without email and. You know, we work in a, in an industry where, you know, deep work is critical.

[00:15:10] I mean, you have to sit there for hours sometimes and design a bridge, designing gear, design, something, put together a report for community, for water system, whatever the case may be. And if you're getting constantly distracted by messages and instant messages and text messages, it definitely has an impact on number one, the quality of work that can be put out there.

[00:15:30] And number two, like your overall focus and stress on. So I think that people relations is your number one skill, regardless of what the forms of communication are. But I also think that we need to adapt to be able to still do productive work as engineers in a world where, you know, you're up against distractions, unlimited distractions, essentially.

[00:15:53] And so we kind of work hard at the engineering management Institute and trying to set up systems for our teams so we can kind of work as un-distracted as possible. It's still communicate with each other. And I've been trying to relay that to our engineering clients and CEOs of the companies we work with and telling them, you know, you need to pay attention to this because you know, that distraction level is costing you dollars.

[00:16:16] Oh, for sure. For sure. And that Cal Newport book or without email is a brilliant read. Um, so I, uh, anyone listening to this go pick that up, um, uh, finished listening to the episode, but then go pick it up. It's

[00:16:27] it's,

[00:16:28] a life-changer

[00:16:28] it really is. It really is. And I think encapsulates a lot of the, a lot of the challenges that engineers see and feel at the office, but maybe can't quite articulate.

[00:16:39] What are the things you talked to. You know, trying to deal with distractions. Th this is one of the things that I think is part of the future of leadership and management is going beyond managing your own distractions, right. For that productive work, but then also running interference for your team so that they are not distracted so that they can focus.

[00:16:59] You know, w w one of the things that we talked about when we, when we train people in, in leadership management is the importance of goal setting, setting that, that vision for the future, so that people are. Right, but I think the next step is clearing the path and keeping that path clear so that people don't get pulled off into a thousand different directions.

[00:17:17] I think that's going to be a key skill for leaders of the future. I don't see. I don't see it getting easier to focus as we go.

[00:17:25] No, you're a hundred percent. Right. And that's one of the things we've worked also pretty hard at here. put a lot of systems in place to help that because. You know, I noticed recently, I mean, we do a lot of different content channels. We have like four podcasts or YouTube channels, three blogs. And so, you know, our content manager is constantly.

[00:17:44] You may be telling me like, this is ready for review. we have this, this one's next. And so we decided to do is we built kind of like a Google sheet while it's really an air table sheet, similar type of thing. And we have all of our content on there and whenever something's done, she'll just change a status comm now, like ready for Anthony's review.

[00:18:00] And I go.

[00:18:00] in there once a week at the same time, every week that she knows, and I review it.

[00:18:05] Right.

[00:18:05] And so that really eliminates a lot of back and forth in terms of questions and instant messages. You know, you put it there, I'm going to go there on this date and time and I'm going to get it. And I think that clears the slate for both of us from a lot of distractions.

[00:18:18] And so, you know, to your point, as a leader, you need to think about kind of the workflow processes and how people are getting interrupted or how they're not getting interrupted. And you need to try to minimize that so that, you know, the company can really move towards its objectives and not be slowed down.

[00:18:35] Yeah, it's interesting. The importance, the importance of, of managing the work and allowing good work to happen. You know, I, and I, I bring this up from time to time in the podcast. I don't remember the last. I solved a second order differential equation. There's probably, there's probably nothing. I stressed out about more in undergrad and haven't gone back to it since, but like you said, that the, the people interaction, the systems development work systems development has been crucial to my career based on what you're saying here for, for yours to let's say someone who's kind of convinced said, yeah, I know that this is important.

[00:19:08] I really do need to. Develop myself as a leader, I need to develop my people skills. What might you recommend as a first step? Maybe someone's happened upon this podcast or like, I want to grow in these skills. What, what might you recommend to people to say, like, I want to take that first step toward becoming a leader.

[00:19:26] Where do you go? What are you.

[00:19:28] Yeah. So I think that in terms of leadership, I mean, I think one of The most important aspects of leadership is that. There has to be a goal that like you want to achieve as a leader, and then you have to be able to get the team members to also want to achieve it. And I think that's critical because. You may think someone's not a leader, but they may not be excited about what they're working on.

[00:19:49] Right? So those are like two different things. So the first thing I would say is you need to be a part of a cause or something greater that interests you. So hopefully if you're working for a company and the kind of work you're doing, the clients you're serving, you're excited about that. And that hopefully would be an impetus for you to like, you know, want to take on a leadership role.

[00:20:07] I think another thing that you should try to do is assess yourself whether it's taking some kind of assessment or getting feedback from people around you. I know at EMI, we've used some different assessments, like the Colby, a assessment, the disc assessment, and you know, everyone here will take the assessment and we'll all share the results because it just helps you to communicate better with people.

[00:20:27] It helps you understand your strengths and weaknesses and try to work around them. And so. I think that those are really good things to do. If you want to become a strong leader is you need to identify the areas that you're going to need to strengthen. And like I said, for me, I definitely want it to be able to speak more effectively.

[00:20:42] I think the executive coaching school was very helpful for me. And I could see that being helpful for any leader because it teaches you how to kind of like listen more and try to like, you know, understand what the needs of the other other person is, which is a big part of leadership. So, you know, I guess just to kind of recap that, I think number one, you got to make sure that you.

[00:20:59] You know, working for something that interests you or else, you know, you real leadership skills. I don't think we'll come out. You should try to do some kind of assessment. And I do like, you know, there's a couple I can mention, like the Colby, a StrengthsFinder is a good one and the disc assessment, those are some good ones that a lot of people use that will just give you a little bit of a background on your personality.

[00:21:17] What your strengths might be weaknesses. And getting feedback from people that you work with, you know, what do you think some of my strengths are? Where do you think I can improve on? If you can get that kind of unbiased feedback from people. I think that gives you a great blueprint to become a better leader.

[00:21:31] I mean, I think that the basic advice that people are always going to give you is become a good communicator. I just think that there's some of them that's vague and like, number one, people don't know how to do that specifically. Right? Like there are some things you can do, but.

[00:21:44] a week.

[00:21:45] If you hear from people specific things that they think you can improve on that, I think you're going to become kind of a better version of yourself, which can help you as.

[00:21:54] Yeah, I think that's fantastic advice. It's funny, just a, just an hour ago, I was speaking with some colleagues about the, uh, the StrengthsFinder assessment and, and how pivotal that's been for. Understanding myself and understanding with strengths I have to, to lean into particularly I highly, highly recommended stuff.

[00:22:11] So let let's shift gears a little bit here because I think everything you've said makes sense for the individual who recognizes in themselves that they want to grow and develop. But I think from the perspective of an organization, having a single person. Really invest in those skills is great. Don't get me wrong.

[00:22:30] It's fantastic. But the power of having kind of a cohort of leaders and managers within an organization is phenomenal, right? Because it's, it's kind of there's, there's this virtuous cycle that happens when people are thinking in, in terms of, of strong leadership and establishing strong organizational systems.

[00:22:48] So if you're running an organization and. You realize I really do want my engineers to, to be strong leaders. Strong managers have strong people in communication skills. That's not, you know, you've, you've got to go beyond just giving people a couple hours a month to read a book or something. You got to set up some sort of process for this.

[00:23:09] What does a great leadership program look like within an organization? How would you go about structuring something like.

[00:23:16] Yeah.

[00:23:16] that's a great question. And a couple of things that I'll say up front is first of all, leaders in engineering companies need to understand that people leadership and project management are two different skill sets.

[00:23:31] Yeah,

[00:23:32] And a lot of times they get blended together. Managing a project is focusing on scope, schedule, budgeting, things of that nature. Managing people is communicating with people, you know, inspiring them to reach their goals, helping them through certain issues they're dealing with. Right. And so that's one mistake that a lot of companies make is like they might do a project management training and think that that's kind of the same as leadership.

[00:23:58] They might do some people skills, communication training, and then think that there are, those people are gonna be able to manage projects effectively. And those two things. So that's one big thing that I think companies need to understand that you could certainly have a combined program, but most people don't, they usually maybe pick one or the other and usually tends to be project management.

[00:24:15] The other thing that I would say to leaders of companies is you have to get away from the word training. Training is a bad word in the world of engineering, because for many years, What training has meant to us as engineers, as you go to this bootcamp, you go to a hotel all day, you get, you know, you get tons of information that you take on.

[00:24:37] It's like information overload, you get a big binder, you get a PDF, you go back to your office. You never look at it again. Cause you never have time. Or you go to a webinar or one day a lunch and learn you do the webinar and you get a great PDH. You go back to work and you forget about the webinar. And so we like to say to EMI is we like to use the words, learning and development instead of training.

[00:24:56] And the idea is. Training is a component of learning and development, but it's usually one component of it. So like for example, in some of our learning and development programs, you'll do a series of live webinars with an instructor, but you're going to have assignments in between. You're going to have to practice on the job.

[00:25:12] You're going to have a follow-up coaching call, where you can talk about, I tried this and it didn't work, or I tried this and it did work so you can get some help with implementation. And I think that that's something that companies need to realize is that they need to build more of a culture of development.

[00:25:26] Which means that people are developing these skills, like 24 7 on the job during the training events. And it's not just going to a training and checking a training box, cause that's not going to work and that's not really going to help you with development. Long-term so I think that that's, that's a second thing that's important.

[00:25:41] And I think the third thing that they need to think about is that development. Yes. Is has to be more of a cultural thing in everything you do, the language, the documents, you can't just send 10 people from a hundred person company to a leadership training program and think that it's going to help your company.

[00:25:59] Right? Like everyone needs to speak the same language, the people that they speak, the people that they're going to lead, the people that are leading them. And if you have like people going to different programs, it's not really going to add up, they're going to be speaking like different languages. And that's why we always recommend for companies that.

[00:26:14] You build a program and whether it means you hire an external provider that comes in and builds it for you and helps you deliver it or over time you build your own program internally, that's a good way to do it because then you're giving consistent training to people, right through these different development programs and everyone in the company at some way, shape or form can get access to this that sometimes they're speaking the same language.

[00:26:35] And so. You know, we do that, but what happens a lot of times is companies try to do it on their own. They say like we do internal training, but then when I talked to the, the staff there, they say that it doesn't happen because people get too busy and then they don't have time to give the training. And so that's another mistake.

[00:26:50] You have to have a program that's going consistently. And you're cycling people in and out of it over time, so that everyone's getting access to the same kind of verbiage vernacular. And that's really some things that people need to think about if they really want to develop the leadership skills. So they have to separate project management, people management, at least as two different things.

[00:27:10] You can certainly combine them in a program. You have to get away from the idea of training, big, more about development, the culture of developing 24 7 and men having some kind of consistent training program. It's more beneficial. If it could be customized to what you do and not like something off the shelf per se, but those things, if you could do those things, you can start to really build a consistent culture of, you know, the leadership skills that you want to build, as opposed to like, one-off, let's hope that this works.

[00:27:37] Yeah, that that makes it makes perfect sense to me, because know, let, let let's say you're learning project management. You're learn. Earned value management. You know, there are certain things that any textbook on project management would cover when you're learning earned value. But how does that get applied in a particular organization?

[00:27:55] Which person is responsible for? What, what form do you fill out? Who do you send it to? You know, there there's this integration that has to happen with. The organization for it to stick and make sense. Otherwise, it's, it's difficult to make that jump from theory to what you're actually going to do at work.

[00:28:13] And I think the only way to figure that out is, like you said, to actually try doing it in the context of your work. So I, uh, I, I think, I think that's really, really interesting. Yeah. I can, uh, I can only imagine that your, your background as a coach informs that approach, that you're not just parachuting in and delivering an afternoon long seminar, and then bailing like.

[00:28:38] Yeah, we won't even do that anymore. Someone asks quite frankly, because I just tell them it's a waste of your money and the time of your people. Like, I mean, you know, I mean, if I'm doing a one-hour session, I may be able to give them a strategy that they could use. That'll give them some value out of it, but you know, for the company's purpose, they really need something that's going to stick.

[00:28:56] They need something that's, you know, More than just that one-time training event. And you know, the one thing that's crazy about this is that this is the reason that people are having so much trouble today in terms of keeping engineers from leaving their company and not being able to hire engineers right now.

[00:29:14] Because most engineers want career growth and development opportunities. In fact, I did a, survey on my LinkedIn, uh, met a month or so ago asking engineers. I had over 700 engineers respond. And basically the question was what's most important to you from your company? Is it your salary, your bonus? Is it your benefits?

[00:29:32] Is it the flexibility of remote work or is it career growth and development opportunities and career growth and development opportunities was the winner with over 50% of the people saying. what I try to tell our clients or companies that we're talking to about these development programs is that if you build a great development program, you're in the minority of engineering companies, unfortunately you are right.

[00:29:56] Unfortunately for engineers. So what that means. When someone, when you need to hire engineers, you're going to say, Hey pat, we built a great people, leadership and project management training program that you're going to have access to. And they're going to be like, really? that's awesome. I want, you know, sign me up for that.

[00:30:11] Right. Well, it means the people that work for you are going to get access to this program that people don't often get, which they're gonna love, and they're not gonna leave your company. So it's kind of one of those things that helps you. Higher. It helps you develop and helps you retain. And so I tell our clients all the time is that you're getting like three benefits to this program.

[00:30:30] It's not just about giving them this quote unquote training and like checking that box. It's about putting it on your careers page. And people come to want to work for you for these kinds of development programs. It's like, you know, developing your people so that you can maximize their efforts and their abilities to interact with people.

[00:30:45] And then it's like people aren't going to ever want to leave if you're doing that stuff. So, you know, unfortunately. Most engineering companies don't want their engineering professionals to be going to too much training because of course it's not billable time. But what I always say to them is if you're too, if you're too busy to fill up the car with gas, eventually you're going to run out.

[00:31:05] that's a, that's a good analogy. I like that a lot. I like that a lot. And I guess one of the things that's super interesting about that, that survey that you did, that that's not the results. What I would have expected, I would have expected people to, to value career advancement and development and that kind of thing, but, but not a number one.

[00:31:26] Why w why do you think that is, but why, why do you think it's not something more kind of black and white? Like, you know, salary is most important. Cause I got to put food on the table and pay the mortgage that I think maybe the cynical side of me might've guessed that that would have been number of.

[00:31:41] Well, I think there's a couple of reasons. First of all, I think that in today's landscape people know, engineers know they can go anywhere. If you go to any, any one of our clients, I was looking at their career pages. There's like 70 openings at these companies. So someone could probably go anywhere and get a better salary if they really want it to.

[00:31:57] Right. Most of.

[00:31:58] these companies are pretty competitive when it comes to salaries and benefits and 401ks and stuff like that. Right. So that's not like something that you can't get anywhere, right? Again, health benefits, same flexibility. Most companies are real flexible right.

[00:32:10] now in terms of remote work and stuff like that.

[00:32:12] But just not a lot of companies have those career growth and development opportunities. And I think that that's the reason because it's so rare and that's what people want. I, in fact, one of the things we've been doing lately, and I've been working with a lot of companies on this is we crew we're being creating these career roadmaps.

[00:32:28] We call them so that the career roadmap shows your employees every possible pathway that they could take in their careers at your company could be technical, managerial, executive business development. And what happens is a lot. I do a lot of interviews with employees at companies where we're designing the roadmap.

[00:32:45] One of the questions is like, what are the, what are the next steps in your career? Your company, you wouldn't imagine how many engineers could say I have no idea. I don't know what the next steps are. I don't know what opportunities are there. Nobody's told me. And this career clarity is probably the most important thing that you can provide to your employees, because if they don't have it, I always tell people it's kind of like they're in a boat, they're in a canoe, out in the ocean and it's. They don't know where they're going. They can't see anything ahead of them. So what are they going to be excited to row the boat? No, I wouldn't be out excited to row the boat into a fog that I can't see where I'm going. So, so by creating these career roadmaps, we're helping the company to create clarity for their professionals that they know what's ahead.

[00:33:24] They can see the options, they can be excited about those options. And then often we'll come in and then we'll build some learning and development programs and we'll kind of map them to the roadmap. So if you're going to get to the project management stage, Right before that, we're going to give you project management training.

[00:33:36] Right? So now I know like, Hey, this is great. I know where I'm going. I know the company is going to support me on my way. Why would ever leave this company? You know what I mean? And so I think that that clarity. Going back to your question, that clarity is why the growth, the career growth and support is so important because they want to just know where they're going and they want to have the support to get there.

[00:33:58] I think they know that if that happens, they're going to have money because you know, all these companies are relatively competitive in terms of their salary. And right now with the way the marketplace is, they're all busy and they're all doing well financially. So that's not an issue. So it really just comes down to people honestly.

[00:34:12] And. I just wish more companies would get a hold on that and really take the time, you know? Cause there is a time investment involved in some of this stuff in a monetary investment, but you know, you have to think about your sustainable long-term growth of your company. And it's going to, something's going to break eventually.

[00:34:28] If you don't take care of this now.

[00:34:30] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It helps attract and retain people and fuels business performance too. It's it's, it's, win-win win. And I really like this, that this idea of that career roadmap and, and in, in my, my current role, my day job, so to speak, this was one of the main deliverables that I had to put together. It was a department that had run for years and years and years.

[00:34:54] That clarity and document. It doesn't have to be anything overly complex, but documenting here's. If you're here, you could go here, here, and here. Here are the different departments that you could swap with. Here are the different roles you could have provided immense value for the people within the department.

[00:35:11] What are the other, I think crucial benefits that comes from something like this is showing engineers. That management is not the only next step. And, and you mentioned it without even skipping a beat that, that you could pursue people management, project management or technical expertise become a subject matter expert.

[00:35:30] And this is something I'm quite passionate about because I think a lot of engineers feel like becoming a leader, becoming a manager is the only way to progress. It's the only next rung in the ladder. And I think that draws a lot of people who would be much happier, much better at. High-level individual contributors into management when, when they thought not to be

[00:35:53] Yeah. You know, it's, uh, it's something I think about often too. And I do think it's one of the downsides of the world of engineering is that a lot of engineers do feel like there's only one road for them, which is technical for awhile and then pushed into management and. You know, sometimes you hear about that proverbial fork in the road where it's like, are you going to go technical state technical or manager managerial?

[00:36:13] And I think that's great if that fork existed, but in some companies, I don't think it exists. I think you have to kind of go one way. And I think, and from my experience, you know, especially for smaller companies, it's like that because. When you don't have as many people you can't afford to have people only doing one thing, you need to have people that can do everything can do management can do technical, can do presentations, can do reports.

[00:36:35] And so my message to someone who is really interested in being a subject matter expert, which I think would be a great career. As you probably want to look at larger companies where they have the ability to say, Hey, you can do stormwater for your entire career. Get really, really good at it. Get a PhD in it, become an expert in it.

[00:36:50] And we need you for like testimony reports. We'd love to have you do that. And so I do think that that is one of the downsides in the world of engineering is a lot of companies. You don't have an all technical path per se, but I do think that there are many companies with it. So you just have to find that.

[00:37:08] And again, having those career roadmaps available helps people to envision that, you know, maybe even if you showed it to, I, I recommend to the companies we work with that they show it in the interview process because I think it's a real good benefit to the, I mean, I'm sure that if you show someone at an interview, they're going to say, wow, I've never seen one of these before.

[00:37:25] This is great.

[00:37:25] Right, right. That there really is a structure. There is a plan in place already the day I show up or, or, or maybe not a plan so much as a choose your own adventure, but the pads are established. You don't have finagle yourself into something that makes sense for you. The path is there.

[00:37:41] Yeah. I mean, listen, if you, if you had a contractor come through your house to put an addition on your house and you showed up with design, I really don't have any plans. There's anything I'm going to fall. I'm just going to kind of wing it and build this thing. You're going to be like, no, you're Not you know,

[00:37:52] Not a chance.

[00:37:53] Maybe when your career, you want someone to say, Hey, listen, pat, we're excited to have you here.

[00:37:57] You know, we've got a couple of great career path for you. We'd love for you to see kind of which one feels best for you. As you get into things here and we'll support you along the way, as opposed to saying here's your manager, you know, best of luck then.

[00:38:07] yeah, absolutely. No, I think. You made a pretty compelling case here for, uh, for that particular approach and the importance of, of career development and, and really having a path for people to take for, for those organizations who are interested in doing something like this, or possibly working with, with you, with your company, that the engineering management Institute, where could they go to learn more and take next.

[00:38:33] Yeah, sure. It's simple. Just go to our website engineering management institute.org, click on the contact page and you can submit a contact form comes right to Austrian. Get back to you. We have a phone number. You can call (800) 920-4007. That's 809 2 0 4 0 0 7. And we could just jump on a call, you know, complimentary talk about what you're doing and talk about if we think we can help you.

[00:38:53] I mean, you know, we wanna, we wanna work with you if we can help you, you know, hopefully we can, but you know, it's still just kind of boggles my mind a little bit that, and I know I'm biased, but that companies don't see the value in these things because. revolves around your people and you need to build them up so that they're able to deliver your projects effectively because also they affect retention because they're interacting with the people that they're leading.

[00:39:17] Right. So, you know, I think it's all kind of connected and I just hope that I am happy that since I've started doing this, there's been a major shift. And now that companies are much more aware of the importance of these skillsets, I will say, and that's a big positive, and there are some more programs out there and more companies are doing more development programs.

[00:39:35] But it's still something that I think is, you know, you're a minority in the industry. If you're a company that has these types of development programs in these philosophies. And I hope that, you know, over the coming years, that, that changes because I know. We had a big bill in the U S your trillion dollar infrastructure bill.

[00:39:52] That's going through right now. And that's not going to make the lives of any of these companies or engineering professionals easier. Everything's going to get more hectic. So it's going to become even more important to take care of your staff, invest in them, and, you know, ensure that they can lead effectively and be productive like we talked about, or else people are just gonna get.

[00:40:11] Absolutely. Well, Anthony, this has been a blast. Uh, I'm sure we could talk about this stuff for hours and, uh, to that end, I'll absolutely be having you back here on the podcast, but for now, thank you so very much for joining me today. This is great.

[00:40:24] Okay, thanks so much for having me anytime.

[00:40:25] Alright, talk again soon.

[00:40:27]

[00:40:37] Thank you very much, Mr. Anthony Fasano, a wonderful chat. It really Anthony's phenomenally well-spoken. He has been in this world for a very, very long time. He knows what he's talking about and has some. Incredible insights. As I often do when I listen back to the interviews as part of the editing process, there's a lot that, that stands out to me and I wanted to touch on a few things right now.

[00:41:02] One is. This idea, that engineering is about people which flies in the face of what many people think of when they think of our profession. But really success is predicated on your ability to work with and get approval from or sell to. People it's a very people focused line of work. So one of the things that he emphasized and I absolutely agree with is the importance of developing , your people skills. If you wish to.

[00:41:34] Progress in your career, particularly in management and leadership roles. This people element is super, super important.

[00:41:41] What are the other tidbits that I noticed was this idea that leadership relies on goals and working toward those goals and getting your team excited about those goals and working toward them themselves. It's hard to imagine. A team really thriving without goals, underlying everything they do, because there's so much distraction. There's so much churn. There's so much. Busy-ness.

[00:42:06] That without goals to anchor. Yourself as a leader and also your team and it's work. It's very, very difficult to imagine. Getting things done and getting the right things done most importantly is being effective, which is one of these things that I talk about a lot in this productivity course that I mentioned.

[00:42:24] Off the top of the episode is productivity and getting things done, realize most fundamentally on doing the right work in the first place. And the right work is the work that supports your goals. So I was really happy that Anthony mentioned that.

[00:42:38] And finally the take home message here, which is one of the more surprising things that I think Anthony shared. Is that career growth and development is more important than salary or flexibility in the eyes of engineers working in industry. This has been a shock. To me. And I suspect it is to a lot of people listening as well.

[00:42:58] Is this idea that, yeah, salary's important, but it's not really a differentiator. What's really going to differentiate you as a firm, as an organization is your ability to provide the path for growth and support that growth for your people. So if you don't have a career roadmap, if you don't have a clear way to progress your people so that they understand.

[00:43:24] What's ahead of them. So, and Anthony used. This analogy of, uh, paddling a canoe in the fog. Only going to be so excited to paddle. If you don't know where you're going, clear the fog and help your people paddle, and you'll find that. Recruitment and retention and performance, all improved dramatically.

[00:43:43] Thank you once again, Anthony, I really appreciate your time today and I'm sure the people listening to this appreciated as well.

[00:43:51] If you want to take a look at any of the links or resources that we mentioned during that conversation, you can go to the show notes@engineeringandleadership.com slash episode 48. Next up, we've got the engineering and leadership mailbag.

[00:44:06]

[00:44:06] Well, my friends, you know how this works. This is the part of the show where I read your messages and answer your questions. I promise to read everything you send me. And I promise to read my favorites right here in the podcast.

[00:44:27] I've got a wonderful email from David L who said hi, pat, uh, many thanks for your encouraging words and many thanks for what you do. Well, thank you very much, David. I appreciate that. Appreciate you reaching out and glad you're enjoying the content here.

[00:44:40] I'll get an email from Alfred F who said hi. Okay. I do have a proposal. And this is in response to a message I sent. To, uh, my newsletter subscribers last week, celebrating. National engineering month and previous to that. National engineering week in the states. So offered, says, hi, I do have a proposal.

[00:44:59] I think engineers to take leadership in implementing energy traceability for embodied energy. And I thought that was a really interesting idea here that Alfred is presenting. Because one of the things that I talked about in my newsletter, Was the fact that engineers really do need to play a role in some of the greatest challenges of our time.

[00:45:22] Uh, climate change is a great example of that. It's hard to imagine a solution to climate change without engineers being involved. And Alfred has this really practical example of how engineers could help people understand where energy comes from in the products and services that they consume to help them make more informed choices.

[00:45:45] And I thought that was a really interesting idea. So I really do appreciate that Alfred.

[00:45:49] Thanks again, to all of those who reached out. If you'd like to chat with me or leave a comment, please do find me on LinkedIn or on Twitter. Or you can leave a comment in the episode, show notes.

[00:45:58]

[00:45:58] That is all the time we have for the show today, but I'll be back again soon with our next episode, which will feature author and former champion football player, 10 veer bamboo on why digital transformation projects have a lot less to do with technology than you might think.

[00:46:18] Don't forget the productivity for engineering managers course is now out. You can find out more@engineeringandleadership.com slash P E M. And again, you can get the course for half price if you use the code productivity 50, but remember only the first 50 people are going to be able to use that code.

[00:46:36] And. That offer expires this coming Friday, March 11th. So don't delay.

[00:46:41] If you enjoyed the show, please hit the subscribe button and please leave an honest review. Let me know what you thought was most interesting from today's episode, what you thought was good, bad, or even ugly, whatever feedback you provide that helps me make the show better and helps other people find the show as well.

[00:46:57] Finally for more information and links to the resources mentioned today, just go to the show notes@engineeringandleadership.com slash episode 48. Until next time, this is pat sweet reminding you that if you're going to be anything. Be excellent.

[00:47:11] You've been listening to the engineering and leadership podcast with pat sweet, to learn more about the engineering leadership project, including other podcasts articles, free resources, courses, consulting, and much, much more. Just go to engineering and leadership.com. That's engineering and leadership.com.