Career Development Hub

Hi everyone,

I'd love to start a conversation around something we all experience in our professional lives. 

What is one lesson you learned the hard way that you now teach, mentor, or coach others about?

It can be something related to auditing, managing teams, leading projects, navigating standards, or even developing confidence in your role. Your experiences could be incredibly helpful to others who are just getting started or stepping into new responsibilities.

Looking forward to hearing your insights.

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Jamie Gravatte
Community Manager
Exemplar Global
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I work in the Medical Device Industry (now in Quality Assurance and formerly as R&D Scientist and Product Scientist). One big lesson that comes to mind for me is that a quality procedure can be written to meet the standards and follow the regulations, but if it isn't relevant for the person following or referencing the document, then it is not serving its purpose.  Including personnel from different departments in the organization to draft documents is pivotal in creating a quality management system that is relevant, functional and meets ISO standards. Updating these documents on a regular basis to follow current practices is vital for promoting continued quality by implementation of documented quality procedures.  

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Nanda Filkin
QA Scientist
Arete Biosciences
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One thing that I've learned in the industry while being on the Quality Leadership team and having management roles is how important having interpersonal communication skills are, especially when your department is large and diverse. Having a strong knowledge of industry standards, while your staff really don't understand the purpose of the ISO structure can be challenging but it makes you stronger as a leader when you can overcome language barriers, different perspectives, getting to know your team individually, having the skill to identify their strengths/weaknesses, and having the ability to convey department objectives in a relative way without sounding robotic and straight from a book.

Who can relate?

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Jason Loring
Sn. Quality Electronics Engineer
Foxconn
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Good point. Knowing quality is valuable, but leading it is indispensable. The best-written SOPs are worthless if the leadership isn't there to ensure their successful integration into the Quality Management System. Execution is everything.

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Frank Higley-Sanchez
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Original Message:
Sent: 11-29-2025 06:09 PM
From: Jason Loring
Subject: What is one professional lesson you learned the hard way that you now coach others on?

One thing that I've learned in the industry while being on the Quality Leadership team and having management roles is how important having interpersonal communication skills are, especially when your department is large and diverse. Having a strong knowledge of industry standards, while your staff really don't understand the purpose of the ISO structure can be challenging but it makes you stronger as a leader when you can overcome language barriers, different perspectives, getting to know your team individually, having the skill to identify their strengths/weaknesses, and having the ability to convey department objectives in a relative way without sounding robotic and straight from a book.

Who can relate?

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Jason Loring
Sn. Quality Electronics Engineer
Foxconn
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"Caught between QA and production team"

Sharing my experience: there was a quality judgement discrepancy between production team and QA, referring to the their own version of quality plan checklist which cascaded down by senior members years ago.

None of the production team and QA members can answer why it was written that way and what is the underlying rationale.

After spending some time investigating the matter we finally come to realize that the discrepancy is due to the edition change of the relevant IEC standard, which one referring to the older requirement while the other one did not cite edition source of the requirement.

After this matter a company-wide review of relevant IEC standards is conducted at least annually to align all checklists are up-to-date.

It is therefore citing the relevant standard and its edition helps a lot to minimize misunderstanding across different function. 

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Richard Tan Yong Jin NCE
Regulatory Compliance Manager
FBAP
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In my previous life, I managed a training team. It was the first time to experience training department audits. I realised that, not knowing much about the actual implementation of the QMS that you have internally and relying on a team can put you into trouble. I had gone through the QMS, thinking I understood it fully, but lo and behold we got a lot of findings. The team had a way of presenting these to the auditors of which I wasn't aware of, and I made them scoop a lot of findings. In the next audit, we trimmed them down significantly because now, I understood what was required from the training perspective and ensured that we implement accordingly. Going forward, I always ensure that whoever joins the team, starts familiarising themselves with the QMS and I make time to explain it to them and then continue coaching them as we go until they are comfortable. 

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Funeka Moyo
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