OSPE - The Voice - Spring 2020 - 27

CAREERS

And from another:
"It's not a leadership profession. It's not a profession from which
you get leaders. It's a service profession."
Central to this resistance to the notion of leadership is a
disconnect between engineers' professional identities as taskoriented, technical problem solvers who work primarily in teams
and traditional notions of leaders as charismatic visionaries sitting
at the top of a hierarchy, setting new directions and focusing more
on strategy than technical detail.
Yet, clearly, engineers do lead. In 2018, Harvard Business Review
reported that 34 of the top 100 CEOs were engineers; likely due
to the incredible growth in technology companies. There are
countless examples of engineers starting new companies, and
building industries, and of course, most engineering intensive
organizations have significant numbers of engineers in executive
positions. However, these examples reinforce traditional ideas of
positional leadership by exceptional men and women.
When our researchers asked engineers to identify the leaders
in their own organization, they identified three leadership styles:

* technical mastery for the subject matter expert who emerges
as the go-to person for the organization and influences others
through mentorship;
* collaborative optimization for the engineer who builds high
performing teams by facilitating group processes with an eye to
quality, efficiency and engagement; and
* organizational innovation for the engineer whose creative
ideas drive the company. These are the visionaries and
entrepreneurs who create new businesses and open new markets.
Engineers who lead in each of these ways exert a huge influence
on the organizations they serve. While organizational innovation
is most similar to the traditional notion of leadership, the other
two are more consistent with a profession that values technical
excellence, teamwork, and technological advancement. When
positioned in this context, we have found that engineers are
comfortable with these descriptions of leadership and see more
possibility to become such leaders.
These engineering leadership styles are also consistent with
modern descriptions that define leadership simply as a process
of influencing change. By broadening the definition, it opens up
the opportunity for leadership to everyone, allowing for a plethora
of styles and methods. Everyone can develop their skills and
talents, and deploy them from anywhere within or beyond their
organization. By understanding different leadership styles, we
accept that not every engineer will become a CEO, but that they
are still capable of leading. By embracing comprehensive, wideranging ideas of leadership, we can help engineers see themselves
as leaders playing a vital role in a changing society.
OSPE has been working toward this goal through advocacy and
professional development, while growing numbers of engineering
leadership programs in Canada have institutionalized development
opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students. Together
we are committed to helping engineers lead change to build a better
world.

Dr. Emily Moore, P.Eng is the Director of Troost ILead. For those
interested in reading the Troost ILead paper on engineering
leadership orientations, see:
Rottmann, C., Sacks, R., & Reeve, D. W. (2015). Engineering leadership:
Grounding leadership theory in engineers' professional identities.
Leadership, 11(3), 351-373.

Spring 2020 THE VOICE

OSPE - The Voice - Spring 2020

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