How can an engineer ensure they are learning the right things? How can the learning be matched to upcoming challenges? And how can the learning be physically completed in our busy lives?
In a previous post we covered the general structure of the AAES Engineering Competency Model. This Model covers all the competencies that are essential for an engineer to thrive. The base of that model is Tier 1. This includes the foundational competencies that will aid an engineer not only at work, but in all life!
Don’t worry, I fully understand the irony of an engineer talking to educators about lifelong learning! Instead of focusing on the theory, I’ll focus more on how I’ve worked through this competency in my life, and how it applies to the industry.
Demonstrating an Interest
As you will all know, learning can’t be forced upon students. Learning needs to be self driven, or must feed a passion within the student. As a result, the first part of the Lifelong Learning competency is about demonstrating an interest in learning.
This can manifest in actions, seeking feedback or self evaluating. It also includes modifying your own behaviour, and being able to accept learning and help from supervisors and peers.
Sometime during high school, I decided that learning and mastering skills was one of my key values. I felt that knowledge for knowledge sake was not important to me. For me, there had to be some benefit: being able contribute to society, or my own enjoyment.
As a result, I was always on the hunt for new skills and learning. I love it when I find a new resource to learn from, especially if the content is concise and detailed. A great example is when I found a set of four ‘Amateur Mechanics’ books whilst on holiday a few years ago. They were written in the 1920’s and covers everything from stone cutting, to motorcycles, to how to craft a walking stick. I love them, because they are such a concentrated treasure trove of learning!
Self-Evaluation
It took me a lot longer, however, to start self evaluating and modifying my own behaviour. Probably only in the last couple of years I started to have meaningful discussions after my evaluations and actually take steps to improve. I still have a long way to go, but I’m making progress.
My search for the AAES Model itself is a great example of self evaluating. I was keen to find something to measure myself against, but didn’t know what standards to use. The Model was perfect, as it’s detailed and covers a wide range of life and technical skills.
I’ve also taken a few personality and leadership assessments at work. These are usually quite telling, and give you a deep look into who you are.
Myers-Briggs tells me I’m and INTJ (and proud!). This stands for Introversion-Intuition-Thinking-Judgement. This translates to ‘imaginative yet decisive, ambitious yet private, amazingly curious, but not squandering energy‘ (source). To give you an idea, INTJ has been used to describe famous fictional heroes such as Katniss Everdeen, Gandalf the Grey, and our favourite superhero Elon Musk.
The tool that I’ve learnt most from in recent years is the Life Styles Inventory (LSI). This uses both self assessment and peer feedback to determine ones styles. In this way you get a good picture of how you see yourself, as well as how others perceive you.
The first time I ran through the tool I found that my head space was good. This meant that I was focused on things such as Encouraging Others whilst reducing styles like Dependence and Avoidance.
Unfortunately, when the results of the peer feedback came in, it painted a different story. It showed that the way I presented myself manifested in a more passive and defensive manner, rather than a constructive style. Something had to change.
Using this feedback, coupled with guidance and support from my manager, I started to focus on learning a new way. I made a concerted effort in certain areas to improve. I made sure I threw myself into situations where I could learn and practice these low scoring areas. It wasn’t fun, and went against my introverted nature at times, but it needed to be done.
Over the years I started to see the changes for the positive. The hard work culminated earlier this year when I sat the LSI retest. My self test came out very similar to before, but my peer feedback had changed markedly. The results showed a great positive shift in my scores, which I was very happy with. There is still a way to go, but I’m on the right track.
Participation in Learning
It’s not only being interested in learning that will help an engineer. You’ve got to get stuck in! Participating in learning first involves finding out when new skills are needed. Then you just have to pull your sleeves up and get involved. Training is a key method for learning, but don’t stop there. Learning comes in all forms, and the student must pursue the ones that are most appropriate.
Let’s take a look at learning priorities. The above self evaluation tools are great for finding out ‘what’ you need to learn. However, they don’t say much about ‘when’. No doubt at any one time there are many topics that we can spend our time learning. But we have to make a decision about what is important now or in the future.
More and more in recent years I’ve spent time leading and communicating. Historically, these are not my strong points, so these had to became my focus for learning. I could have spent more time on industrial programming for example, but this just wouldn’t be a good use of my time right now. I did do a little formal training on programming recently, but only enough to get me going. I had to prioritise what was important for me for the near future.
Learning can come in many forms – formal training, job shadowing, conferences, reading, for example. The student must chase the format that is most appropriate for the topics and their situation.
Podcasts have become my new favourite learning method. I am able to use my daily commute time to learn, time that would usually be wasted listening to the radio.
Some of my favourite podcasts are about engineering, for example The Engineering Commons and The Engineered Network, especially Causality. These have been great to learn about the industry and the challenges faced by other engineers. I have also used the time to listen to non-engineering podcasts: Freakonomics for economics , the $100 MBA for business learning, and Serial for something different.
Learning doesn’t have to be formal or planned, however. Sometimes it is thrust upon us by way of our situation.
Using Change as a Learning Opportunity
Gone are the days of being 40 years in one engineering job. Whilst these Gurus and specialists are still amongst us, they are the exception. Engineers these days have to be ready to pivot on the spot. Technology change, market forces and business disruption are all major forces that can create change in the workplace. Some projects can pivot drastically as the result of a single meeting!
As a result, an engineer has to see change not something to avoid, but as an opportunity for change. It’s even better if they can anticipate the change before it happens, so they can proactively use it as an opportunity to learn. This may take the form of training, or getting involved in projects to learn on the job or from peers.
The company I work for recently signed up for a new suite of Microsoft products. This included cool new applications such as dashboarding, custom app creation and video sharing. When my manager showed me the new tools available to us, I was floored. I could see the massive positive effect this was going to have on the business. It effectively put the power of software creation into the hands of all users. This will allow us to craft new tools to make our business better, faster.
I dropped everything else I was doing that afternoon and started watching the training videos right then. Since then, I’ve been able to learn a lot about the tools and create some great apps. I’ve even started to share what I have learnt with my colleagues, so they can benefit, too.
Identifying Career Interests
Everyone in the world is different, and as such have different interests. Learning then, can’t be one size fits all. It’s up to the Engineer to identify their own interests, strengths, options, and opportunities.
When planning their career and learning path it is important to take into account feedback from others. Topics should be chosen to increase one’s depth of both technical and non-technical knowledge. Lastly, they have to identify the method of continuing to learn over their career.
We’ve already taken a look at LSI, but this serves as a great example of an assessment to find one’s strengths and weaknesses. I used the feedback from this assessment to determine what my weaknesses were so I could work on these. It also identified my strengths so I had to learn not to overemphasise these. It was up to me to take charge!
I’ve also mentioned that I’ve been listening to non-technical podcasts. I found I needed to branch out a little bit with my learning. Learning about small business, psychology and economics have helped me develop a more holistic view of work and life. Understanding things like cognitive bias and game theory have helped me make better decisions.
I also had to decide how best to spend my time. Whilst I was listening to a great podcasts about machine learning and AI, I’ve had to put it on hold for now. These are topics that I’m very interested in, but they didn’t really have any real application in my day to day work. As a result, learning about other topics took priority.
Integrating and Applying Learning
The last section of the Lifelong Learning competency involves applying the learning. This new knowledge needs to be integrated into existing knowledge and used to complete tasks. Also, a lifelong learning plan needs to be set in motion, monitored and updated. This includes being aware of how one learns.
I’ve been lucky to be able to apply my learning into many areas of my work. Some of the business podcasts discuss website layouts and user ‘flow’. I’ve been able to use these design ideas in the apps that I have created for work. It makes it even easier for the user to get their work done quickly.
I’m still learning a lot! As such, I’m still only partway into my lifelong learning plan. My goals at the moment will be to stay focused on business and economics, and keep an eye on engineering. However, I know that I’ll have to adapt this in future as new challenges appear. Right now, podcasts are the plan of attack, but I’ll still be filling this out with other sources, such as video and reading.
There’s a lot to this competency. The key is to know yourself and customise your learning to fill the gaps. In this way, an engineer will set themselves up for success. Lessons learnt here are compounding – learn to learn!
The next step is to tackle the rest of the competencies in the Model! Stay tuned next time for the next competency in Tier 1 – Initiative!
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