Engineers who move up to management or start their own consulting businesses often face an adjustment period that involves adopting a whole new skill- and mindset. They must let go of their affinity for hard numbers and straightforward answers, and learn to embrace ambiguity. "In management, there's no right or wrong," Steven Cerri, head of STCerri International of San Rafael, California, tells Mechanical Engineering. "There are only effective answers. Management deals with ambiguity, with situations where answers don't exist in a right-and-wrong structure. I believe management is a whole new career for engineers, but that people don't treat it as such."

Cerri certainly does, offering workshops that show technical professionals how to effectively communicate and build interpersonal skills. As someone who has made the transition from engineer to manager, he points out that leading a group of employees necessitates what he calls a contextual leadership strategy. In other words, managers must adjust their leadership styles according to the dictates of each individual situation. For example, when Brett Lindenfeld, director of engineering at Alliance Spacesystems Inc. of Pasadena, California, was charged with the task of leading a team that had to build and test the robotic arms on NASA's two Mars Exploration Rovers, he quickly realized he had to forgo traditional project management methods because of an extremely demanding and fast-paced schedule. Instead, he focused on the big picture, took care of matters that could distract his team and provided them with all the tools they needed. "I had a team of superstars. They needed direction and guidance, not really management," he tells Mechanical Engineering. "These are the most driven people you can imagine."

Engineers not only have to adjust their communication styles to each situation but to each individual they're dealing with. In particular, they have to learn to grasp other people's sense of reality, Cerri says. "You have to learn how others process information," he notes. "While you're talking to them, there are ways to find out how they do that. Then you can send messages they'll understand. If you send messages from your own reality that they can't get, they'll need to translate. They'll get frustrated, drop information, and you don't want that." For example, in one class exercise, he instructs his students to program a videocassette recorder two separate times—with the exact same instructions—but using a condescending tone and body language the first time. Students report that they felt uncomfortable when he patronized them and that they were able to perform the task better the second time when he spoke calmly. "I say to them, 'I only changed my tone,'" Cerri says. "Then they get it. Engineers usually haven't gotten this before."

Engineers should learn and develop leadership skills as soon as they can in their careers—preferably when they're still undergraduates—says Steven Nichols, director of the Chair of Free Enterprise in the College of Engineering at the University of Texas in Austin. In fact, he believes leadership skills should be fostered in all engineers, not just the ones who are considering management positions. As such, his engineering school teaches students to be well-rounded, stressing the importance of creativity, technical excellence, and leadership and entrepreneurial skills. Engineering is so much more than just doing equations, he says. He points out that while companies with both engineers and managers can make ideas happen, it's the firms with engineering managers who generate novel ideas that will endure for 50 to 100 years.

The disparity in job demands is certainly not stopping engineers from choosing to become engineering managers or launching their own consulting businesses. And while the transition can be a rough one, engineers are tackling it by learning to adjust to each situation and individual and rounding out their technical skills with leadership and entrepreneurial savvy.

Source:

Going Soft
Jean Thilmany
Mechanical Engineering: Engineering Management, March 2004
www.memagazine.org/backissues/mar04/features/goingsoft/goingsoft.html