Introduction

The career paths of many engineers and technicians often involve a promotion to management and leadership positions. Though highly skilled, engineers are often insufficiently prepared for the transition from Engineering to Management and consequently to Leadership roles. Compared to Engineering, leading others is an unprecise science riddled with variables that is not easily quantifiable or subject to straight forward, easy to understand engineering principles. This can result in their failure to lead a technical team or communicate effectively with those outside their team. If engineers become aware of the differences in responsibilities and day-to-day activities between technical and management/leadership positions, they can learn how to lead simply by changing their attitudes, behaviours, acquiring new skills and knowledge. Leaders and Managers must firstly realize that they probably will no longer do nuts-and-bolts design work but instead lead and motivate a team of people responsible for that task effectively and achieve business goals in addition to technical goals. From doing things yourself to  how to get things done through others, engineers need to learn a set of new skills, viz.,  the skills to organise, communicate, motivate, teach, influence and lead in order to gain willing cooperation from others. Though technical knowledge and skills are important, organisational career success of engineers has more to do with the ability to manage knowledge, activities and people effectively. SAY, BEHAVE and DO the right things that would make you an outstanding Leader- Manager not only in the eyes of your employers and co workers, but also with people in your personal life. This 2 day course will expose participants to the necessary knowledge, skills and mentality on how to recognise and acquire the necessary skills that would help Engineers make the transition to an effective Manager.


Biodata of Speaker

Wesley Khaw is a Mechanical Engineering (Hons) degree graduate from the University of Surrey (UK) in 1978. He started his career in 1979 at Singapore Airlines but soon after, he joined Hitachi Consumer Products (M) Sdn. Bhd. as a Production Engineer and served there for about 30 years. For all his immense contribution to his company, he was appointed to the position of Executive Director in 2001 and a member of its Associated Company’s Group Board of Directors, a first for a Malaysian employee.

At Hitachi, he headed a Sales and Marketing team to successfully build up its electronic key component sales into a RM 400m /year business, exporting its products to more than 50 countries to become a top 5 supplier in the world.

Due to his senior position in the company, Wesley Khaw wears many hats, viewing issues from a widened company perspective, from Procurement to Sales, from Production to Financial systems, and particularly from an HR perspective where he played a leading role in Industrial Relations in a unionized environment. He has also deep experiences in the implementation of drastic management restructuring exercises. For this reason, from his early days in the company, he had already been operating from a top management platform. In the course of his duties, Wesley Khaw was very much engaged with influential business leaders from around the world, and this has given him a rare insight to the workings of the minds, mentality and approach to business of these multi-national leaders. Because of his keen observation, and sometimes humorous approach, he is able to effectively share his vast knowledge of human behavior and how people are motivated to perform better.

Wesley Khaw has already successfully conducted and facilitated training in more than 35 public, private and multi-national organisations in Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore, helping thousands of people to better them.