Technical Leadership

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Improving Technical Productivity

PRODUCT ENGINEERING - R&D - I T - SCIENTIFIC

Technical Leadership

Gary C. Hinkle

When you think of leadership in an organization, it's easy to think of the management team and anyone who has "Lead" or "Leader" in their title or job description. Examples of people in leadership roles include senior executives, managers, project managers, and technical professionals serving as project leaders representing their business function (e.g. product engineering, IT, R&D, etc.).

By nature, technical professionals often resist significant management or leadership responsibility and prefer to be focused on technical work. This often causes engineers to be pressured into management or leadership roles due to lack of interest but a need to develop managers and leaders. It is important for technical workers to understand leadership, and the necessity for strong leadership at multiple levels in a community of technical professionals.

There are many aspects of leadership, and exceptional leaders possess many leadership qualities such as vision, drive, integrity, experience, intuition, people skills, and ability to influence others. There are also other important characteristics that make a great leader, but two aspects of leadership stand out as most essential for all leaders: integrity and influence. When leadership is viewed as influence with integrity, it is easy to understand and easy to focus on developing these characteristics and the related skills. Viewing leadership this way makes it less intimidating for those who may be apprehensive about becoming a leader.

Integrity

News headlines prove the importance of this quality in a leader. High-profile corporate leaders and politicians have let us down time and time again by lacking integrity. Lack of integrity has often led to business failure and affected the lives of thousands who counted on top executive leadership for their financial and emotional well-being. Integrity alone would not have made these leaders entirely successful, but lacking this one trait caused severe failure.

Integrity is the main characteristic of an individual that others view to assess one's credibility. The vast majority of us have greater integrity than some of these so-called leaders who have been in the headlines, so anyone who has that going for them is in a good position to possibly lead others.

For some, demonstrating integrity may never happen, but for most people, integrity should not be an issue and the most difficult aspect of leadership development is becoming influential.

The Importance of Being Influential

John Maxwell summarizes leadership in his book The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership with a very strong statement:

"No matter what anybody else tells you, remember that leadership is influence -- nothing more, nothing less."

Though Dr. Maxwell goes on to address 20 other important aspects of leadership in this book, his statements about influence emphasize this trait above all others. The many other aspects of leadership simply help one become more influential and help to make better choices about who, what and when to influence.

Consider emphasizing "influence" rather than "leadership" in a situation where employees are intimidated and/or not interested in developing leadership skills. Viewing leadership this way is easier to comprehend and focusing on developing ability to influence is easier than tackling many aspects of leadership simultaneously. This can be especially effective for a technical worker such as an engineer who may be very opposed to developing as a "leader."

Leadership in Engineering

Engineering is a profession where leadership is essential even at the very beginning of an engineering career. At entry level, the engineer should understand what leadership is and start thinking about developing leadership skills. At mid level, engineers are typically expected to lead projects. At the senior level, engineers must often lead large, complex projects, are expected to drive innovation, and must provide guidance for their less experienced peers.

Many engineers and other workers who don't consider themselves as leaders are very effective leaders but they don't know it because they view leadership considering the broad array of traits that typically describe a good leader. When considering the influence these engineers might have in their organization, whether it's getting support for innovative new ideas, getting approval to spend money on equipment or a project, attracting the interest of peers to learn new skills or any other influential activity, leadership is commonly demonstrated through this influential work.

With this basic understanding of leadership, continued development of leadership skills does not seem so intimidating. Setting goals specific to building influence is a good first step in developing overall competency as a leader.