Female engineers tasked on team building, improved service delivery

To make success career in engineering field, members of the Association of Professional Women Engineers of Nigeria (APWEN), Lagos Chapter, were last week urged to imbibe a good team spirit, which would assist them to be on top of their multi-task duty.

  It was at the 2nd quarter professional development/training workshop organised by Lagos APWEN for the women engineers.

 Indeed, the workshop was interactive as participants expressed their minds on how to be better team players.  Questions started coming shortly after the second facilitator, Mrs. Olubunmi Labiran, an architect, spoke on “Team Building For High Performance.”

  One of the participants had asked, “How can one still ensure optimum performance particularly from subordinates, who do not know the job and not willing to be taught?”  Apart from other contributors, Labiran, Deputy Manager, GTBank Projects, said those leading the team should most times come to the level of her workers, sometimes motivates and care for them.

  While agreeing that it was challenging and complex to manage a team, she said women engineers could increase the odds of reaching their goals by establishing urgency, set high standards and start off on the right foot.

   On establishing urgency, Labiran said team members needed to believe they are working on something that matters. And it needs to matter today, not at a nebulous point in the future, urging the participants to ensure that the team sees the potential fruits of its labour.

  According to her, the higher the expectations, the more likely the team would live up to its performance potential, calling women engineers to always set ambitious, but realistic goals and hold the team to them.

  “As a woman in a male dominated biased environment, you need to work twice as hard to prove you are good but the good news is you have a greater strength in multitasking. To make your communication skills effective you need to: mind your tone, your Body language, ethnocentrism {person older than you}, 

recognition of gender issues, do not take male dominated culture personally or react aggressively, be truthful, speak slowly and clearly and avoid slangs, display professionalism in your appearance and respect local customs, be sensitive, be well prepared, make your interpretations tentative until confirmed leave your jokes at home and don’t jump to conclusion or provide your presumed solution to the problem”, she enthused.

  Earlier, APWEN’s chairperson, Mrs. Nimot Muili said the workshop was necessary as the group realised the need to meet up and take advantage of the fast global technology and advancement around the world.

According to her, APWEN, Lagos, recently lunched the ‘APWEN Lagos Science Education Foundation/ Scholarship Scheme’ adding it was in line with the objective of the organisation, as conceived by their founder, Mrs. Joanna Muduka over 30 years ago, and sustained by past and present leaders of the association.

  Mainly, she said the initiative is meant to encourage the female gender in the field of science, mentor and sustain them to excel in engineering by partnering with professionals, individual or corporate organisation in Nigeria and abroad.

  “The foundation is all encompassing for the female interested in engineering career from junior secondary school throughout the career stages. We hope to start introducing the girls right from elementary school too. There is need to continuously sharpening our sword, basically not to compete with the men in the field of engineering but to collaborate with them to achieve better results to move professionalism forward.”

  And to make needed difference in their field of practice, she said: “we need to go beyond technical skill, team building and presentation skills are some the challenges we realised engineers face and were well addressed at the session.”

  In his comment, Mr. Adegboyega Bello, a partner with APWEN said since the course was to encourage developing the field of engineering, he would give his support.

  Bello of Builders Craft Limited, said: “We will continue to support the female young engineering graduates through the APWEN Lagos mentoring programme to expose them to the real practise before joining the struggle in the labour market, this we hope will give soft landing as they progress in their career.”

by Emmanuel Badejo of Guardian