Associations
ASHRAE TALK:
CONNECTING BEYOND WORDS
By Ntsako Khosa
ASHRAE Distinguished Lecturer from America, Karine Leblanc, held a
Technical Talk on bettering EQ personally and professionally at the University
of Pretoria in March
A
communicate and connect. “So, how do you improve the
ability to connect if success is related to it,” she asked.
She went through five connecting principles:
1.
How connecting increases your influence in every
situation
As humans we talk frequently, with research suggesting
we speak roughly 6 000 words a day. “The Harvard
Business Review says that the number one criterion for
advancement and promotion for professionals is the
ability to communicate effectively. Communicating and
connecting are different to just talking. It is important
to know and understand how to make your words
count,” she says. Connecting or networking increases
your influence to share valuable information about a
project or system. “Some people know that connecting is
important, but they don’t know how to do it, one way to
do it is by the second principle – focusing on others,”
she says.
lso a sales engineer at US Air Conditioning Distributors,
she shared her presentation from the ASHRAE Winter
Conference held during the AHR Expo in Florida during the month
of February.
Declan van Greunen, the 2019-2020 ASHRAE South Africa
Chapter Technology Transfer Committee (CTTC) chair, welcomed
everyone. The ASHRAE South Africa Chapter held the talk at the
University to create a relationship with incoming students and
share benefits of being an ASHRAE student member. “The idea is
to grow the student interaction further, helping students create
relationships with professionals in the field,” he said.
Leblanc kicked things off by giving a bit of background and
explaining how she ended up at ASHRAE and the reasons she
gives the talks, “I do this to give back to the industry. I wouldn’t
be where I am if it wasn’t for the Association. I have been part if
AHSRAE for more than 20 years,” she says. She is one of the 72
ASHRAE Distinguished Lecturers around the world.
Titled ‘Everyone Communicates, Few Connect’ she shared
that in order to be successful one needs to be able to better
The Technical Talk was attended by student and professional engineers.
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RACA Journal I May 2020
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