If you ever doubt the leadership ability of engineers, look to Virginia Rometty at IBM, Denise Gray at LG Chem Power, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, and Larry Page at Google and Alphabet. Each is an engineer and each an accomplished leader. And of course, there are thousands of others.
Yet, becoming a leader as an engineer usually requires a good deal of new learning. Engineers are motivated to solve problems or create new products. They may not be so motivated to engage with groups of differently skilled coworkers. Many techies need to work on people skills like interpersonal communications, listening to understand, and empathy.
Case in point, we’ve been working with a very innovative engineering-based organization for about 10 years now. This company has a leadership succession program that is continually identifying potential leaders from its ranks of STEM-educated talent.
There, our work involves leadership development specifically for technically gifted professionals.
Donna Warrick, President, Jamesson Solutions
Donna Warrick writes about it in Design News. You can read it here. Design News is a trade publication for design engineers that covers the profession from both a technical and human resources perspective. By the way, we found our engineer-leaders list above from Design News’ list of engineer CEOs.
We’d like to thank editor-in-chief Daphne Ryan Allen for editing and publishing Donna’s case study!
And remember, engineers are not just leading engineering companies. They’re key leaders in a broad range of enterprises. As leadership professor Randall P. White, PhD, told Donna in researching the article, “There are three professions at the top of most large corporations: lawyers, accountants, and engineers.”