Engineering and Leadership Podcast

In this episode, I discuss digital transformation projects with speaker, author, and former football player Tanvir Bhangoo, and why these projects are much less reliant on technology than you might expect.

In this episode, I chat with Anthony Fasano, president of the Engineering Management Institute, about the importance of leadership, management and career development for engineering staff.

Managing international teams is incredibly difficult. Today, Pamela Kellert shares her insights into how to better manage international teams.

Dolores Hirschmann believes that clarity of message is critical to effective leadership. A leader’s team can’t buy in to a vision without first understanding it. In today’s episode, Dolores helps engineering leaders understand the importance of clarity of message, how to tell if your messaging is clear, and provides practical steps on how to improve your communications.

Ralf Specht is on a mission to rid the world of soulless companies. On today’s episode, he explains why it’s good for business for a company to have soul, and gives great advice on how to reinvigorate your organization with the “Soul System”.

Duncan Oyevaar believes in the power of business engineering. He has seen that organizations can dramatically improve themselves by equipping their engineers with excellent business skills, and he’s got the data to prove it. Today, we talk about why engineers need to understand a business’ financials, value stream mapping, continuous improvement, and the importance of listening to your staff.

In this special edition, I tease the next episodes of the show and make a major announcement about the future of the Engineering & Leadership project.

Joseph Seiler has spent his career helping engineers do incredible work by empowering them and stepping back to let them do incredible work - first as the president and CEO of his own company, and today as a Master Certified Coach. Joseph's experience provides incredible lessons learned for engineering managers of all stripes, most especially the value of coaching as an engineering manager.

Peter Drucker, the father of modern management thinking once said that "Culture eats strategy for breakfast." That wasn't a knock on how important strategy is, rather, he's emphasizing the importance that culture plays within an organization. Today's guest would share that sentiment. Today, I speak with Dan Langevin, the CTO of Vericred about the role culture plays in a technical organization, and specifically about the importance of both accountability and curiosity for Vericred's engineering team.

Meetings are a fact of organizational life. The fact that so few of us have ever been trained to run excellent meetings is a bit of a shock. We all know they're needed, and we all know they're mostly painful and wasteful. If you follow even a few of the ideas in this episode, you and your team will be more engaged, efficient, and effective in your work.

One of the struggles many engineering leaders have is knowing how and when to let go and allow their teams to move forward with their daily work. It can be incredibly difficult to know how to transition from working in the team to working on the team. This leads to micromanagement, impaired performance, and a dearth of leadership and direction. Luckily, Peter Docker addresses this exact problem in his new book, Leading from the Jumpseat: How to create extraordinary opportunities by handing over control. In today's episode, I speak with Peter about his new book, the importance of letting go, and what it takes to be a fantastic engineering leader.

Mentorship in the world of engineering is an incredible tool. It helps those being mentored improve job performance, satisfaction, and achievement of long-term goals. For the mentor, it helps connect with earlier stage professionals, organize their thoughts and frameworks around their work, and gives them a chance to give back. Finding or becoming and engineering mentor is a brilliant move at any point in your engineering career.

Sales and business development are key skills for engineers who want to grow in their careers. For many senior engineers and engineering managers, helping to grow their company through new business is an absolute necessity. In this episode, you'll learn what sales is really all about, why it's important for your growth, and why you already have a lot of the skills needed to be great at helping to grow your engineering firm.

Culture is the glue that holds an organization together. It's the unwritten, ethereal rules of engagement - the collection of "how things work around here". Today, I speak with Mark Kinsella, VP of Engineering at Opendoor about organizational culture: what it is, why it's important to engineering organizations, and how to drive excellence through excellent engineering culture.

In today's interview, I speak with Stephanie Slocum, author of She Engineers and founder of Engineers rising about supporting women in engineering through addressing unconscious bias, redefining success and creating a better, more inclusive future.

In this episode of the Engineering & Leadership podcast, I interview psychologist Dr. Robin Rosenberg about the risks posed by hybrid workplaces, how to overcome them, and the future of hybrid work.

Neil Thompson of Teach The Geek shares his advice for engineers everywhere on why public speaking is so important for engineers and how to improve as a public speaker.

Today, I speak with Wastefront's CTO, Henrik Selstam, about his company and their mission to address one of the world's most pressing environmental challenges: dealing with end-of-life tires.

Today, I speak with David Marquet on the importance of the language we use as leaders, what's wrong with the old way of engaging with our teams, and how to drive performance through what we say.

In this episode of the Engineering & Leadership podcast, I speak with Dr. Ben Ritter about the importance of leading yourself and how to start if you've never tried.