Accendo Reliability

Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site

  • Home
  • About
    • Contributors
    • About Us
    • Colophon
    • Survey
  • Reliability.fm
  • Articles
    • CRE Preparation Notes
    • NoMTBF
    • on Leadership & Career
      • Advanced Engineering Culture
      • ASQR&R
      • Engineering Leadership
      • Managing in the 2000s
      • Product Development and Process Improvement
    • on Maintenance Reliability
      • Aasan Asset Management
      • AI & Predictive Maintenance
      • Asset Management in the Mining Industry
      • CMMS and Maintenance Management
      • CMMS and Reliability
      • Conscious Asset
      • EAM & CMMS
      • Everyday RCM
      • History of Maintenance Management
      • Life Cycle Asset Management
      • Maintenance and Reliability
      • Maintenance Management
      • Plant Maintenance
      • Process Plant Reliability Engineering
      • RCM Blitz®
      • ReliabilityXperience
      • Rob’s Reliability Project
      • The Intelligent Transformer Blog
      • The People Side of Maintenance
      • The Reliability Mindset
    • on Product Reliability
      • Accelerated Reliability
      • Achieving the Benefits of Reliability
      • Apex Ridge
      • Field Reliability Data Analysis
      • Metals Engineering and Product Reliability
      • Musings on Reliability and Maintenance Topics
      • Product Validation
      • Reliability by Design
      • Reliability Competence
      • Reliability Engineering Insights
      • Reliability in Emerging Technology
      • Reliability Knowledge
    • on Risk & Safety
      • CERM® Risk Insights
      • Equipment Risk and Reliability in Downhole Applications
      • Operational Risk Process Safety
    • on Systems Thinking
      • Communicating with FINESSE
      • The RCA
    • on Tools & Techniques
      • Big Data & Analytics
      • Experimental Design for NPD
      • Innovative Thinking in Reliability and Durability
      • Inside and Beyond HALT
      • Inside FMEA
      • Institute of Quality & Reliability
      • Integral Concepts
      • Learning from Failures
      • Progress in Field Reliability?
      • R for Engineering
      • Reliability Engineering Using Python
      • Reliability Reflections
      • Statistical Methods for Failure-Time Data
      • Testing 1 2 3
      • The Manufacturing Academy
  • eBooks
  • Resources
    • Accendo Authors
    • FMEA Resources
    • Glossary
    • Feed Forward Publications
    • Openings
    • Books
    • Webinar Sources
    • Podcasts
  • Courses
    • Your Courses
    • Live Courses
      • Introduction to Reliability Engineering & Accelerated Testings Course Landing Page
      • Advanced Accelerated Testing Course Landing Page
    • Integral Concepts Courses
      • Reliability Analysis Methods Course Landing Page
      • Applied Reliability Analysis Course Landing Page
      • Statistics, Hypothesis Testing, & Regression Modeling Course Landing Page
      • Measurement System Assessment Course Landing Page
      • SPC & Process Capability Course Landing Page
      • Design of Experiments Course Landing Page
    • The Manufacturing Academy Courses
      • An Introduction to Reliability Engineering
      • Reliability Engineering Statistics
      • An Introduction to Quality Engineering
      • Quality Engineering Statistics
      • FMEA in Practice
      • Process Capability Analysis course
      • Root Cause Analysis and the 8D Corrective Action Process course
      • Return on Investment online course
    • Industrial Metallurgist Courses
    • FMEA courses Powered by The Luminous Group
    • Foundations of RCM online course
    • Reliability Engineering for Heavy Industry
    • How to be an Online Student
    • Quondam Courses
  • Calendar
    • Call for Papers Listing
    • Upcoming Webinars
    • Webinar Calendar
  • Login
    • Member Home
  • Barringer Process Reliability Introduction Course Landing Page
  • Upcoming Live Events
You are here: Home / Articles / Key Teaching Principle #2: Connection

by Carl S. Carlson Leave a Comment

Key Teaching Principle #2: Connection

  As covered in the first article in this series, Principles of Effective Teaching, reliability engineers, FMEA team leaders, and other quality and reliability professionals are often called upon to teach the principles of reliability or FMEA. Whether you are a student who wants to enhance your learning experience, an instructor who wants to improve teaching results, or an engineer who wishes to convey knowledge to another person, this series will offer practical knowledge and advice.

The Role of Personal Connection When Teaching

Invisible threads are the strongest ties   Friedrich Nietzsche

Key Teaching Principle # 2 is the instructor maintains a genuine connection with each of the students.

Our scientific knowledge has accelerated so rapidly that we sometimes forget the importance of human connection to our well being.

Connect is defined as “to have or establish a rapport.” Rapport means “a friendly, harmonious relationship characterized by agreement, mutual understanding, or empathy that makes communication possible or easy.”

The role of positive connection

What role does a positive connection between instructor and student play in successfully conveying knowledge?

Without a meaningful connection between instructor and student, transferring knowledge is more difficult and may not occur at all.

How can an instructor make a positive connection with students?

There are a number of suggestions to help enable connection with students. Here are a few.

Look directly at the person (or people) you are talking with. In person, this means looking people in the eye. On video, this means watch the video feed of your students, and look into the camera when you are talking with students.

Tip: This is one reason not to merely read your slides when teaching. You need to understand the material you are teaching well enough so you can look at students when you are conveying principles.

Call people by their first name, and be sure to pronounce their name correctly.

Tip: At the beginning of a class or meeting, create a one-page chart of the people in the room and their first names.

Go around the room and get to know your students, by asking where they are located, and what position they have.

Tip: Listen carefully to each student as they introduce themselves. Try to learn something special about each person.

Be interested in the progress of your students. From time to time, go around the room and ask them how they are doing. Ask they what they are learning.

Tip: Take the time after class or during break to inquire about any confusions you have seen, if they are not resolved during class time. Make it safe for each student to be completely candid about their progress, good or bad.

Smile, and be positive in your attitude.

Tip: Your attitude needs to be genuine. It is worth the effort to have a authentically positive attitude.

Take the time before class to learn what is important to students.

Tip: This can be done by surveys or by talking with your contacts. Make sure your teaching content fits into the application needs of the students, and that they feel it applies to them personally.

Share your passion for the subject, and students will be more likely to connect with you and the fundamentals you are teaching.

Tip: Before your class or meeting, take a minute to ask yourself what about the subject are your truly passionate about. Nothing communicates better than true passion and genuine interest.

Practice empathy in your teaching.

Empathy is described as the ability to take on another’s perspective, to understand, feel and possibly share and respond to their experience. As an instructor, if you can look at the learning process from the students point of view, it is easier to make a connection and help the student reach understanding.

Tip: For example, use empathy when encountering student confusion. You can say, “I understand this can be confusing; let me help to clarify the principle.”

Why is connection important?

Making a positive connection with students builds trust and increases the likelihood that they will listen to what you are teaching and share their misgivings and confusions, which is part of the learning process.

Next Article

The next article in this series covers the subject of managing attention. I will share my experience and strategies on avoiding student distractions, and keeping the focus on learning.

[display_form id=415]

Filed Under: Articles, Inside FMEA

About Carl S. Carlson

Carl S. Carlson is a consultant and instructor in the areas of FMEA, reliability program planning and other reliability engineering disciplines, supporting over one hundred clients from a wide cross-section of industries. He has 35 years of experience in reliability testing, engineering, and management positions, including senior consultant with ReliaSoft Corporation, and senior manager for the Advanced Reliability Group at General Motors.

« Charles Latino Legacy Video
Why Being a Successful Reliability Engineer Requires a Communication Approach »

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Articles by Carl Carlson
in the Inside FMEA series

[popup type="" link_text="Logo Info" ]

Information about FMEA Icon

Inside FMEA can be visually represented by a large tree, with roots, a solid trunk, branches, and leaves.

- The roots of the tree represent the philosophy and guiding principles for effective FMEAs.
- The solid trunk of the tree represents the fundamentals for all FMEAs.
- The branches represent the various FMEA applications.
- The leaves represent the valuable outcomes of FMEAs.
- This is intended to convey that each of the various FMEA applications have the same fundamentals and philosophical roots.

 

For example, the roots of the tree can represent following philosophy and guiding principles for effective FMEAs, such as:

1. Correct procedure         2. Lessons learned
3. Trained team                 4. Focus on prevention
5. Integrated with DFR    6. Skilled facilitation
7. Management support

The tree trunk represents the fundamentals of FMEA. All types of FMEA share common fundamentals, and these are essential to successful FMEA applications.

The tree branches can include the different types of FMEAs, including:

1. System FMEA         2. Design FMEA
3. Process FMEA        4. DRBFM
5. Hazard Analysis     6. RCM or Maintenance FMEA
7. Software FMEA      8. Other types of FMEA

The leaves of the tree branches represent individual FMEA projects, with a wide variety of FMEA scopes and results. [/popup]

Join Accendo

Receive information and updates about articles and many other resources offered by Accendo Reliability by becoming a member.

It’s free and only takes a minute.

Join Today

Recent Posts

  • Leadership Values in Maintenance and Operations
  • Today’s Gremlin – It’ll never work here
  • How a Mission Statement Drives Behavioral Change in Organizations
  • Gremlins today
  • The Power of Vision in Leadership and Organizational Success

© 2025 FMS Reliability · Privacy Policy · Terms of Service · Cookies Policy