Leadership skills for new grads

So what is a skill that new engineering graduates need as they enter the workforce?

Two skills, actually.

First: Listening Skills

Second: Teamwork Skills

In both cases, we should think about a new grad’s transition from academia to the workforce. They are going from one independent culture into another, completely different culture.

Listening skills includes not just true listening, but also observation, interactions, reading, and watching. They should be observing team dynamics, work environment, hierarchy, communication styles, etc. They should be reading industry and company manuals, directions, workflows, processes, and systems. They should be asking a ton of questions to get to know the company and work, the clients and industries, and the design choices and decision backgrounds.

Academia instills in the student the need to have all the answers. Teachers ask questions, there are quizzes and exams asking for answers, and projects that need a result at the end. The culture of academia is one where the burden is totally on the student to produce a response.

Flip this as they should now be the ones asking questions and receiving the responses.

Work is more about delivering a good or service. There is a lot of background to what the product is and why people did what they did or do what they are doing. A new grad cannot help without all of the history.

The new grad is programmed to offer solutions, fix things, and have answers. I am absolutely not suggesting that a new grad never offer thoughts and ideas, as this would lead to them feeling a lack of involvement. My suggestion is that they spend the first 6 months or so with a heavy imbalance of listing and asking questions over offering up fixes and giving answers.

This also helps the veterans feel heard and listened to as well. This will help these relationships in the long run.

Segway into…

Teamwork skills are super easy if a person has good listening skills from above, but I will touch on this a bit too. Academia has a culture of individualism and competition, while work is about team, so the new grad is still thinking they need to compete and stand out when they should be thinking they need to help and support.

There are definitely work environments where this is the only way up the corporate ladder, but the joke here is that teamwork skills actually gives these candidates the edge in this poor environment as well as a good work environment centered on team.

Keep in mind that the new grad has been pummeled with the thought of competition their whole lives. Get good grades, maybe school sports, teachers, parents, college applications, resumes, interviews… compete, compete, compete. Now, they have to break, what they have only known their whole lives, to start working on a team with others.

As mentioned, listening and, in particular, observing people and interactions will go a long way in team building. This is not something that academia focuses on. There may be team projects sprinkled in, but these lessons can easily be overlooked for the final grade that the individual student receives. (I have to get an A, so I will do it myself, for example.)

In summary, the skill that, I think, all new grads need when entering the work force is the skill to deprogram everything they have been surrounded by their entire lives up to this point. They should begin to dissolve the individual achievement, always have the answer behaviors and work towards the strong communication, team building behaviors.

Begin by listening as this will build the interpersonal skills which will lead into teamwork.