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44 SMT Magazine • October 2016 Mastery The second key to employee engagement is a sense of mastery. We all want the sense that we are developing skills and becoming an ex- pert at something. For David, this is an easy fit, since training is a core business for STI Electron- ics and employees are encouraged to enroll in training and continually hone their own skills. In fact, one of David's best employee pipelines is in taking interns and putting them through training and development to meet workforce needs 3–5 years out, not just immediate needs. "If I need a five-year veteran, I might hire that experienced person, but also hire a less experi- enced person at the same time to put through training to build experience and fill a need in the future. It doesn't always work out, but it is an investment in that person and in the future of our business." Continually growing the skills of your workforce is critical to keeping them en- gaged and excited about their work. Purpose Finally, employees want to feel that their work is important and that it makes a differ- ence in the business, and in the world. This is particularly important for the millennial gen- eration, although we all like to feel that our work matters. David makes a point of sharing with all employees how the products they help make change lives, from safety devices to imag- ing; when customers can attest to how the end product made a difference, David makes sure every employee gets to hear those stories. Mak- ing a real difference to the end user helps keep STI Electronics employees engaged and moti- vated to build a quality product. Continual Learning Is Essential One thing is for certain, change in our in- dustry will continue as technological, social and economic factors continue to drive the dynamics of how our businesses compete and grow. For leaders to be successful, the key to re- maining competitive is to identify core oper- ating principles or values, to do the work that truly only you can do (and let others thrive in their own roles), and to continue to learn and evolve as a leader. David Raby is just one exam- ple of how the most successful leaders continue to add new skills and ideas to their leadership practices and continue to get better throughout their careers. Key questions to ask yourself to keep devel- oping and learning as a leader: How am I help- ing my people develop to take over more busi- ness roles? Where am I holding onto an old habit that might be holding the business back? What new ideas about leadership could I test in my or- ganization to address some of our challenges? Exceptional leadership is more about asking the deep questions that provoke new thinking than about having all the right answers. SMT Laura Huckabee-Jennings is the CEO of Transcend. LEADERSHIP EVOLUTION IN A CHANGING MARKETPLACE Atomically thin LEDs emitting one photon at a time have been developed by researchers from the Graphene Flagship. Constructed of layers of atom- ically thin materials, including transition metal di- chalcogenides, graphene, and boron nitride, the ultra-thin LEDs showing all-electrical single pho- ton generation could be excellent on-chip quan- tum light sources for a wide range of photonics applications for quantum communications and networks. The research, reported in Nature Communi- cations, was led by the University of Cambridge, UK. Authors of the research include Professor Mete Atatüre (Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, UK); Professor Frank Koppens (ICFO, Spain), leader of Work Package 8 – Optoelectron- ics and Photonics; and Professor Andrea Ferrari (University of Cambridge, UK), Chair of the Gra- phene Flagship Management Panel, and the Flag- ship's Science and Technology Officer. Single Photon LEDs for On-Chip Integration