Gear up for leadership role

Atul Kalia

A great leader should have high aptitude, talent and experience. Engineers go through rigorous technical education spread over four years, where they learn logical methods of problem solving. However, majority of universities don’t offer soft-skills courses for engineering students. Even MNCs don’t spend money or energy on developing ‘people skills’. Organisations don’t offer formal learning and development programmes for first-time engineering managers. As a result, even after joining a job, most engineers don’t possess adequate people skills and expertise in leadership or managerial strengths. Minus leadership abilities, even great engineers can struggle as managers.  

In order to be great leaders, engineers need to cultivate emotional intelligence. This is the building block for other leadership skills necessary for producing high-performance teams. Self-awareness, and emotional intelligence (EI), make a leader excel in critical areas like communication and listening skills, coaching and mentoring, conflict resolution and talent management. 

The good news is that leadership skills can be learned. In his latest book What Makes a Leader: Why Emotional Intelligence Matters, Dr. Daniel Goleman writes, “The best leaders have a high degree of emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is twice more important as IQ or technical skills and it can be learnt.”

The way ahead to becoming Ceo                                

Engineers can and do make great leaders. According to a Harvard Business Review report from 2014, 24 of the 100 top performing CEOs had educational background in engineering. Efficiency, reliability and the ability to navigate through trade-offs come naturally to engineers. 

If in addition to the technical skills, engineers are guided and coached properly in engineering management and leadership skills, the percentage of engineers among top CEOs can even be higher. 

Customised leadership development programmes (LDP) increase a leader’s self-awareness through use of self-assessment tools such as DiSC.  DiSC helps engineering leaders understand their behavioural pattern and enables them to use that understanding for better communication and conflict resolution with others.  

A typical LDP uses interactive hands-on activities, case studies, classroom theory and discussions, one-on-one coaching, individualised action plans and other techniques, which  engineering leaders can apply to actual projects or challenges at their workplace. The end result is a huge boost for the professionals’ career as well as a great return on investment in training for the organisation.

Competent professionals 

Engineers are process driven — analytical and logical. They love to figure out how things work. They are innovators, usually good at maths and science. It is mandatory to supplement the analytical strengths and IQ of engineers with soft skills and emotional intelligence so that they can deal successfully with co-workers. Dr Goleman states that EI adds value to a person’s abilities in many spheres of life — from leadership and workplace effectiveness to health and relationships.

—The writer is a coach and consultant