Engineers Australia College of Leadership and Management Chair Anne Hellstedt spoke to Engineering News about the importance of leadership skills for all engineers, regardless of career level.
The College of Leadership and Management (CLM) exists to represent engineering professionals across all disciplines, especially those seeking to become leaders or work on their leadership and management skills. Any Engineers Australia member can join the college to learn more about leadership skills.
College Chair Anne Hellstedt FIEAust CPEng EngExec NER believes all engineers, regardless of their discipline, can benefit from learning about leadership.
“You don’t have to be a managing director or part of an executive team to be part of the College,” Anne explains. “We are all on a leadership journey and working on supporting management and leadership skills for all engineers.”
The CLM inspires engineering professionals to lead for a better future. The group also promotes the reputation of engineering professionals as leaders in the community.
Anne believes professional skills are important for early career engineering professionals in order to be effective in the workplace. She says one of the main skills is communication.
“Communication is key, both in terms of doing your job from a technical perspective, and being able to communicate your work,” Anne says. “Then engineers also need to have those skills to communicate so they can inspire, influence, collaborate, and be effective.”
“Many engineers come into the profession because they want to make a difference, and by taking a leadership role, even while in a junior role, you can have an impact. Our aim is to attract people to the profession and then support them as they go through their career,” Anne says.
The CLM is working on many initiatives in collaboration with Engineers Australia to raise the profile of the engineering profession as leaders in areas such as climate change, sustainable development, humanitarian engineering and Indigenous engineering.
Anne says CLM are looking for graduates and young engineers to be involved in these initiatives and assist in shaping the College.
“It's a great time to be involved with the College because of the exciting projects coming up and it is an opportunity for graduates to begin their leadership journey,” Anne says.
Find out more about the College of Leadership and Management on the Engineers Australia website or the new-look EA Xchange page.