Soft Skills Essentials for Engineers

Day 1

• Communication (2 hr)

  Communication Summary:

  Communication skills are essential for success.

  Once team members learn about their communication style and how to recognize and work with the styles of others, they increase their ability to deliver great results. Business leaders are often sidetracked mediating employee disagreements, and the enterprise is impacted by the lack of focus on results.

  Each participant takes an online communication assessment in advance and brings their results to our communication course.

  They will discover their communication style, how it shows up in the workplace and how they can discover and leverage the communication style of their team. By learning how to communicate with different personalities, they will build trust and it will create a better work environment for everyone.

  This course will address these problems and needs:

  • Low productivity
  • Poor communication and engagement
  • Interpersonal conflicts
  • Stress and confusion in your team

  Learning Objectives:

  Individuals who complete this course will learn:

  • How to understand your own communication styles
  • How to recognize other communication styles
  • Learn simple and useful communication approaches
  • How to communicate effectively by connecting

  Benefits/Outcomes:

  Individuals who complete this course will be able to:

  • Become a more effective communicator
  • Increase your influence
  • Have better clear awareness
  • Build and maintain strong relationships
  • Connect with a higher level of impact
  • Build trust
  • Improve employee retention
  • Create a better work environment
• Collaboration (2 hr)

  Collaboration Summary:

  Are you creating an environment for your team to win? The most effective way to improve your company’s results is to develop your team’s ability to work cohesively.

  Creating and sustaining high-performance collaboration requires an intentional approach and a clear understanding of the foundation of high-performance collaboration and how we can bring our best to the team.

  The collaboration course will provide the path for you and your team to discover your current level of collaboration, the barriers they may need to breakthrough, and the building blocks to improve their team’s collaboration and impact. Each participant will use their communication report results where they will dive into the ways they influence results, how to maximize their strengths and the strengths of their team members. They will also discover during the workshop the obstacles that prevent or slow down teamwork and the four elements that collaboration requires.  Participants will build a plan of action throughout the course, as they discover how each of us is wired with unique talents that our team needs to understand, in order to maximize collaboration and results!

  This course will address these problems and needs:

  • Lack of team collaboration
  • Work in silo
  • Lack of involvement from the entire team
  • Lack of productivity

  Learning Objectives:

  Individuals who complete this course will learn:

  • What prevents teamwork
  • What slows down collaboration
  • Identify their current collaboration experience
  • Collaboration building blocks

  Benefits/Outcomes:

  Individuals who complete this course will be able to:

  • Learn the power of their strengths and weaknesses
  • Gain new approach on perspectives
  • Create their own collaboration action plan
  • Maximize collaboration
  • Build trust
  • Improve employee retention
  • Create a better work environment
    

    Leading Effective Meetings + Speaking Summary:

    Most meetings are a waste of time. Why?

    Because many leaders don’t plan in advance and they don’t use an appropriate meeting structure. As a result, their meetings are often dull or they spin out of control, leaving participants frustrated and uninspired. The secret to a good meeting is the meeting before the meeting.

    This course outlines the secret for successful meetings, including proven strategies to help you ensure that your meetings are purposeful, engaging, and productive.

    Whether your focus is team meetings, sales meetings, group training, 1-on-1 discussions, strategy sessions, or retreats—how you prepare for and lead meetings matters. In fact, there is a direct correlation between effective meetings and team effectiveness. Leaders have a responsibility to make meetings effective.

    This course will explore four essential meeting elements and leadership strategies that, when implemented, will increase your ability to organize and deliver engaging, productive, results-oriented meetings.

    This course will address these problems and needs:

    • The meeting doesn’t start on time.
    • The meeting doesn’t end on time.
    • Participants wander off-topic.
    • Participants are multi-tasking, including doing other work.
    • Participants are using their cell phones, checking their social media.
    • After the meeting ends, there’s no follow-through.

    Learning Objectives:

    Individuals who complete this course will learn:

    • Strategies to increase their leadership effectiveness
    • Different types of meetings
    • How to structure and lead meetings
    • How to prepare for productive meetings

    Benefits/Outcomes:

    Individuals who complete this course will be able to:

    • Lead effective meetings
    • Organize engaging meetings
    • Deliver productive meetings
    • Lead results-oriented meetings

Day 2

• Leading Effective Meetings (2 hr)
• Public Speaking (2 hr)

  Public Speaking Summary:

  Everyone communicates but not everyone does so effectively.

  Learning to speak in front of an audience is a process and important communication skill.  Learning to do it effectively is necessary to do it well.

  This speaking course will provide a powerful interactive speaker presentation training that will help you to develop your communication skills in any setting.

  You will learn to speak in a more interesting, exciting, and engaging manner in order to become a more effective communicator. Participants will learn steps for getting their point across in a powerful and interesting way to any audience. Upon completion, participants will have the knowledge and skills to effectively become a better speaker.

  This course will address these problems and needs:

  • Lack of skills to create and deliver a clear presentation
  • Struggling to give engaging and easy to understand talks
  • Speech anxiety
  • Lack of confidence when delivering a presentation

  Learning Objectives:

  Individuals who complete this course will learn to:

  • Understand themself as the messenger
  • Develop their own style of communication
  • Speak in a more engaging way

  Benefits/Outcomes:

  Individuals who complete this course will be able to:

  • Master the art of delivery
  • Deliver relevant and meaningful content
  • Become an effective communicator
    

    Leadership (Building Credibility) Summary:

    Everything rises and falls on Leadership - John Maxwell

    Every day, leadership challenges are going to come for you. From all sides, around every corner, even from within. Leadership—true leadership based on honesty, authenticity and meaningful relationships—takes guts. The kind of leadership that inspires others, serves others, and points them toward a greater purpose and vision, it is hard work!

    There are many bumps on the path of leadership. Sometimes they’re roadblocks. Sometimes the bridge is out entirely. But every challenge is an opportunity. It’s a chance to learn about yourself, improve your skills and strengthen the emotional intelligence that’s so critical to effective leadership.

    This course will guide you through the principles of leadership to improve your influence and impact others.

    This course will address these problems and needs:

    • Lack of leadership skills
    • Newly promoted to leadership level
    • Poor management performance
    • Decreased team productivity
    • Feel disrespected
    • Struggle to deliver real actionable results
    • Poor level of influence and impact with the upper management
    • Problem empowering and retaining talent

    Learning Objectives:

    Individuals who complete this course will learn to:

    • Understand leadership disciplines
    • Assess your leadership strengths and weaknesses
    • Develop and practice leadership behaviors
    • Apply leadership skills to live and lead with purpose

    Benefits/Outcomes:

    Individuals who complete this course will be able to:

    • Experience greater self-leadership skills
    • Increase their level of influence
    • Empower their team
    • Be respected and trusted
    • Keep their team inspired and motivated
    • Develop other leaders
    • Gain confidence and trust
    • Feel energized and have clarity
    • Decrease employee turnover
    • Position themselves as respected leaders

Day 3

• Time Management (2 hr)
• Leadership (2 hr)

Karine Leblanc, P.E., Member ASHRAE

karine@karineleblanc.com

 Karine Leblanc is a sales engineer and human skills expert. She works with busy consulting engineers with their HVAC design projects by supporting them with various system ideas and energy-efficient equipment solutions.

Not your typical engineer™, Karine Leblanc is passionate about working with technical professionals like engineers improve their human skills so they can be more productive, happier, and highly motivated.

Like you, Karine has been exposed to the good and the bad of leadership over the last two decades.

She uses her experience to teach and impact her peers by speaking as a distinguished lecturer for ASHRAE all over the world. Karine values real-life stories and conversational connections with her audience making everyone feel like they matter.

Karine has served on the ASHRAE Society Board of Directors, (a 57,000-member trade association) from 2014-2017 and became the first female Region X Director Regional Chair since 1959. She is now serving as the President of the National Speaker Association Los Angeles Chapter. She has received the ASHRAE Distinguished Service Award and was awarded an honorary medal as part of the 50th anniversary of the University of Quebec for her exceptional contribution to the university.

She is a certified John Maxwell coach, trainer, and speaker, a certified behavioral analysis consultant, and an eSpeakers certified virtual presenter.

Pam Duffy, P.E., Member ASHRAE

Pam Duffy has 10+ years of experience of real, in the trenches, engineering work. She has worked in many different environments: a small private company, a Fortune 100 private company, and Fortune 500 public company. Pam is the successful owner of a small business and works with clients with many different organizational structures.

In 2019, Pam launched Spark One Solutions in 2019, a business solution consulting company serving HVAC businesses. ​Pam is a registered P.E., an ASHRAE Distinguished Lecturer, and a member of the AHR Expo Industry Expert Council. She is a Life Member of the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) and has been named to both the Consulting-Specifying Engineer’s list of 40 under 40 as well as the NEWS’ 40 under 40.